Four Years Later
A man dressed in a black tux and white Adidas turns my way, a handheld camera perched on his shoulder.
I know I’m supposed to pretend he’s not there.
That I’m used to cameras swiveling in my direction.
That it’s not strange at all to be filling an aisle seat in the second row at the Oscars as last year’s Academy-anointed Best Actress includes my name among this year’s nominees.
But the camera is there, the blue-black gleam of its lens staring right at me. So I stare back, just for a moment, treating the billion people watching around the world to a tiny wave and an I can’t believe this is happening lift of my brows.
In truth, I expected to be here. After the past six months, it had become a given.
Ever since my latest movie premiered in Venice, I’d been considered a shoo-in for a nomination.
“The first of many,” I’ve been told so often that I’ve lost count.
Others have been even more bold, saying, “I hope you’ve written a speech, because you’re going to need it. ”
Seeing how I’ve won every precursor award this season, I suspect they’re right.
And so a hastily scrawled thank-you speech currently sits in the clutch purse on my lap, tucked next to lipstick, gum, and a wad of hundred-dollar bills to be doled out to all the bartenders and servers I’ll encounter tonight.
You’d be shocked by how stingy A-listers can be with their tips.
Across the aisle and several rows behind me sits Violet Wright. She’s not a nominee this year, despite campaigning heavily the entire awards season. As a consolation prize, she was asked to present Best Picture. An honor, sure, but if I know Violet, she would have preferred a nomination.
I wonder if, like me, she’s thinking about Darkness and how we might have ended up in this same position a few years earlier if the movie had gotten made.
To appease me, she and Loretta tried to keep it going, but since production hadn’t technically started, the studio decided to cut their losses, shut it down, and collect an insurance payment.
The wisest choice, really. No one wanted to be attached to a project that spawned a lawsuit from Ronan’s parents—quickly settled out of court, despite the waiver he’d signed—and rumors about a preproduction cursed by spirits.
Rumors, I must add, that were stoked by Susie Hutchinson, the only one of us to speak publicly about our experience on the island.
At first, no one talked, bound to remain silent thanks to that NDA Loretta made us sign.
Rather than dwell on it, most of us chose to get on with our careers.
Julianne returned to the stage, working intermittently in the Chicago theater scene.
Heather booked another cop show, which was canceled after five episodes, then joined a reboot of a law show that’s still running.
Brad is still working his magic in various special effects departments around Hollywood.
Only Susie struggled to find work, which is likely what prompted her to go to the press.
It helped a little, raising her profile enough to snag a season on Dancing with the Stars and a godawful rom-com that went straight to Netflix.
Since she couldn’t tell the truth about what happened, the interviews Susie gave to Deadline, Variety, and the Hollywood Reporter were filled with vague, ominous mentions of séances, the sensation that we weren’t alone, and how she got a bad feeling the moment she set foot on New Avalon.
“There’s something wrong about that place,” she said. “Looking back on it, I’m not surprised at all that it ended in tragedy. Poor Ronan. I still can’t believe it happened.”
The “it” she was referring to is how, while conducting an elaborate acting exercise in which history seemed to be repeating itself on a remote island in Vermont, Ronan Peters, the most talented young director of his generation, accidentally fell to his death in the dark of night.
That’s the official story, given to the police by Violet Wright and corroborated by yours truly.
The police believed everything. They did find Ronan’s mangled body at the base of the cliff on the island’s northern end, after all, just like we said.
Besides, no one dared doubt the legendary Violet Wright.
For Violet, the only downside to getting away with murder was that no one wanted to report the accusations that the late, great Ronan Peters had seduced a young actress, recorded the encounter, and distributed it to his slimy group of friends, driving the woman to suicide.
Sure, people in Hollywood whispered about it at parties and over long lunches at the Ivy, but no one would go on record about it, thereby denying coverage in the same trade papers that were so eager to print Susie’s story.
To most of the world, Ronan remains a genius who tragically died too young.
I once asked Violet about it during the one and only film we made together.
It was a tearjerker in which she played a painter dying of cancer and I had my breakout role as the daughter still bitter about being neglected in favor of her mother’s art.
Finding myself alone with her in the hotel bar after a sixteen-hour shooting day, I asked Violet if she regretted it.
That if, in her mind, it was better to have killed Ronan than have the truth about his actions come out.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Marin,” she said before downing her drink and walking away.
Violet has made sure that we haven’t been alone together since.
Still, both of us know our secret is safe with each other. It’s far too late to change that. We’re bound to each other for life, whether we want to be or not.
As for the others, I honestly don’t know if Violet ever told them the truth about her bravura performance during that final fake séance and what happened afterward.
The stabbing. The cleanup. The cover-up.
Loretta knows. But Heather and Susie, Julianne and Brad?
I’ve got a feeling they might all believe Ronan’s death was simply an accident.
The only person I’m certain who doesn’t is Lindy Garrett, who left Hollywood to become a yoga instructor somewhere in the Midwest. Like the others, she’s never spoken publicly about the plot to get Ronan to admit what he’d done to Elise Haines.
I assume Loretta and Violet had something to do with that.
Surely the money they gave Lindy came with strings attached.
So imagine my surprise when, a few months ago, I received a late-night text from her.
was it worth it?
Rather than respond, I blocked her number. Besides, I suspect Lindy already knows the answer.
Yes.
It was absolutely worth it.
Especially since Violet kept her end of our bargain.
I stayed quiet and, after much forceful lobbying by her and Loretta, landed the coveted part of the daughter to her artist. Despite the New York Times calling the movie “obscenely maudlin,” it did well in theaters, even better on streaming, and ended up earning Violet her third Oscar.
Although I didn’t win any awards, Violet made sure to herald my talent in every interview she gave, calling me one of the best actresses she’s ever worked with.
In meetings, she suggested me for parts casting directors were having trouble filling, thus putting me on a career path that continues today.
Not an ingenue. I’m still not pretty enough for that, despite a few procedures to make myself less plain.
Instead, I specialize in prickly women who start off unlikeable but eventually earn the audience’s sympathy through realness and raw emotion.
A character actress, basically, who now gets cast in lead roles.
Two weeks from now, I start work on a spy thriller set in Paris. Later in the year, I’ll be doing a limited series for HBO, and my new agent is currently in talks with Marvel about my joining their next movie.
Right now, though, it’s all about the Oscar, the winner of which will be announced in seconds. Just before the envelope is opened, I dig into the clutch, searching for my speech. I find it at the bottom, stuck to a copy of a photograph I discovered while doing research on New Avalon.
It’s my new hobby.
Okay, obsession.
But someone still needs to be obsessed. The news surrounding the most recent deadly incident on the island has overshadowed the long-ago disappearances that brought us there in the first place, despite my discovery of Ruth Hume Semple’s remains.
Because I’m sworn to silence about New Avalon—and since Violet destroyed the evidence—I can’t tell the world the truth about “Daisy” and Mrs. Semple and how those other missing women never existed in the first place.
For the longest time, all I could do was keep digging, trying to discover the fate of the sole person who did vanish without a trace.
Azra Kovacic.
Finally, a few weeks ago, while scouring the University of Toronto’s online archives, I stumbled upon a photograph taken in 1931. It was of a woman wearing a cloche hat and wool coat. A woman who was the spitting image of the sketch Ruth Hume Semple had made of Daisy.
Same cherub-like face.
Same coy smile.
Same dark eyes that looked like they were hiding a secret.
The scant information provided with the photograph identified her as Zara McCutcheon, the wife of a Canadian businessman who’d made a lot of money ferrying booze to thirsty Americans on Lake Faraday during Prohibition.
When and where the photo was taken—not to mention the woman’s uncanny resemblance to Mrs. Semple’s sketch—have me almost certain she was on New Avalon.
Maybe she hid on the island, evading searchers long enough to catch a ride with one of the bootleggers? If so, which personality was it?
The name and its anagrammatical implications suggest it was Azra.
But the flower pinned to the woman’s lapel says otherwise.
It is unmistakably a daisy.
Looking at the picture now, I have no doubt that it was Daisy, and not Azra, who made it off the island.
That she somehow managed to cling to her existence.
That through bloodshed, cunning, and sheer ambition, she managed to escape New Avalon with a new life.
I know I did.
With the camera still aimed my way, I close the clutch and stare straight ahead as five fateful words emanate from the stage.
“And the Oscar goes to…”
Silence settles over the auditorium. Next to me, my mother has already started to cry. My father reaches out and gives my hand a squeeze. I squeeze back, pretend I no longer see the camera, and wait for the world to hear my name.