Chapter 62
Ingrid’s at the ICA Women in Hollywood rooftop party, holding a martini.
She’s in a blue, one-shoulder Tom Ford cocktail dress.
She didn’t want to come, but after Cassie uploaded her script to Tasha’s incubator this morning, Ingrid damn near cried.
She hopes if she talks to Tasha in person, she’ll understand.
Her daughter’s young. It was simply a rebellious act, though she’s fairly certain Maggie put Cassie up to it.
Surely, Tasha will be gracious enough to give the script back.
But before she can even find Tasha, she sees Maggie walking into the party.
The girl’s in a floor-length black dress with bead trim.
She looks nice, Ingrid will admit, but how did she score an invitation?
Then she remembers they have the same agent.
Jack must have invited her. Ingrid gives her a little wave, but the look on Maggie’s face is ice.
“You poisoned me,” she blurts out.
Ingrid almost spills her drink. Her eyes warn Maggie to shut up; they’re in front of her colleagues! As the other guests look their way, Ingrid tosses back her martini and grabs Maggie’s hand. She drags her to an empty stairwell.
“What the fuck is the matter with you?” Ingrid demands when they’re alone.
Maggie slams a hand on the steel railing.
“I want to know the same thing! Did you really think you could just take someone off the street and give them your cancer?” she shrieks.
Before Ingrid can respond, Maggie reaches into her purse, takes out their contract, and throws the pages at Ingrid.
To her horror, the papers plunge down the stairwell, falling onto thirty-seven floors.
Maggie just threw their confidential contract all over ICA for anyone to find.
“I’m not going to have this conversation here,” Ingrid says, so disturbed she can barely speak. “If you want to talk, make an appointment with my lawyer. You knew there were risks. That’s why you’re getting three million dollars.”
Maggie grabs her arm. “I was just at the hospital. I have the heart of a forty-seven-year-old! My organs are old!”
She’s screaming with such vigor, Ingrid can feel Maggie’s spittle on her face.
“I don’t know what to tell you. We set you up with the best doctor we could. He walked you through everything. You had plenty of time to do your due diligence. And I don’t have cancer, I have precancer signals, which every older person in the world has!”
“You didn’t think of telling me that?”
Ingrid feels her throat tighten. But she ignores the question.
“May I just remind you, nobody made you do this. You begged me to give you the chance, not someone else!”
“I didn’t know!”
“You knew. You just don’t want to live in a world of facts.
You could have done more digging. Instead, you want to live in an alternate reality where it’s everyone’s God-given right to be a millionaire.
So you snatched the deal. You didn’t want to earn success the hard way; you wanted to jump the line!
Just like you did with the screenwriting! ”
Maggie lets go of Ingrid’s arm and takes a step back.
“So it was you,” she says. “What did you tell Charlie?”
“That you rushed. It wasn’t your finest work. If you would have just listened to me—”
“I did listen to you! I listened to you until I couldn’t hear my own voice anymore!”
Ingrid shakes her head. “Don’t put this on me. I know it’s convenient. But your script didn’t stink because of me. Just like your book didn’t fail to attract an agent because of Estelle Lu. Your words just weren’t good enough. I’m sorry.”
Maggie’s laugh erupts in the hollow stairwell. “Is that what you told Prisha, too?”
Ingrid feels herself shriveling as Maggie rams her fingers into her purse and pulls out her phone. She taps on Instagram and shows Ingrid all the DMs between her and Prisha. Ingrid’s heart hammers.
Then, ever so slowly, Ingrid takes her own phone out from her clutch and taps on Instagram. She shoves it in Maggie’s face: all the chats between her and Maggie. “There is no Prisha.”
Ingrid wishes she could frame Maggie’s face.
Did she really think she wouldn’t see her little comment on the post?
She might not have social media, but Roxanne does.
She asked her assistant to monitor that ridiculous post ever since it went up, just in case.
She didn’t actually think anyone would be so stupid as to write a comment on it publicly!
It only took two seconds for Ingrid to make an account on IG.
She’s so glad she did. Of all the gems Maggie said about her in their DMs, the words sick, selfish, racist white woman, clinging to her last inch of relevancy are forever burned into her skull.
Maggie takes a huge step backward, almost tumbling. “You’re Prisha? Why would you pretend to hate working for yourself?”
“Why would you believe it?” Ingrid tosses back at her. “After everything I’ve done for you and given you—all that time we spent together. The millions I gave you! The backflips I did for you to get the job after you blackmailed me using my health. Do you know how cruel that was?”
Maggie’s gaze plunges.
“You want to talk about sick and selfish,” Ingrid says, “that’s sick and selfish! I did everything you wanted, and you still ate up every lie about me. You would have believed anything over the truth, which is that your writing’s mediocre!”
“Shut up,” Maggie commands.
The girl turns to leave, but Ingrid holds the exit door closed. “No, I won’t shut up. Why did you believe all those lies about me?”
“Because you took and you took and you took! You took my blood and my story! You took my sanity and my family!”
“You took my family!” Ingrid hurls back. “You turned my husband and my daughter against me!”
“You took my words, my experiences! Stole the words right off my pages and expected me to smile!”
“You took my love.” Ingrid pounds her chest. She’s blind with tears now.
Maggie looks away. “Don’t say that,” she whispers.
It’s too late.
“I will say it,” Ingrid wails. Her legs and arms go limp as she tells Maggie the thing that has been choking her throat.
“I mentored you! I cared for you! I saw myself in you, and you squandered that love. Why? For the hope that someone more important would pay attention to you? If you had just been a little more patient, I would have given you everything! Why wasn’t that enough for you? ”
Ingrid waits in the cold, sterile stairwell with her whole exposed heart. She’s blind with tears and shame, but she needs to hear it from Maggie. She needs to understand what happened in their story.