Chapter 29
Rose
The angry letter to Jeremy sat in her drafts folder for two weeks. It was three lines written at midnight—words she wanted to say to him directly, without a lawyer in the room. Every time she opened it, she read it once and closed the tab.
She didn’t send it. Reiss had told her not to contact him, and he was right. That was the problem with being an adult: you knew the correct choice, you made it, and it didn’t make you feel any better.
By late January, the world had moved on with its usual, indifferent momentum.
Quinn was everywhere—his reality fame had landed him a high-end toothpaste commercial that seemed to loop on every screen in the house.
Kayla had finally settled into the pool house, relishing the quiet, while Rose and Daisy had completed their migration into the main house.
But the anvil of Jeremy’s custody filing hung over them, invisible and heavy.
The days were full, yet fractured. Rose went through the motions well—confirming vendor emails, helping Daisy with her homework, and playing the part of the successful entrepreneur.
In the evenings, she sat with Lizanne on the sofa and let herself be held.
She tried not to think about Jeremy Planter reading a tabloid and deciding there was something in her life left for him to take.
Lately, though, the closeness felt brittle. Lizanne was distracted. Her phone would buzz on the mahogany coffee table, and she would snatch it up with a sharp, frantic intensity. She’d spend long minutes staring at the screen, her jaw set, before offering Rose a distant, practiced smile.
“Just work,” Lizanne would say, her voice sounding like it was coming from the other side of a glass wall.
The only reason Rose did not allow herself to think more about it was that she didn’t have the bandwidth.
***
The morning of January 30th arrived gray and cold. Rose lay awake, running through the legal timeline: the filings, the hearings, the months of exposure. Lizanne slept beside her, but even in sleep, she looked tense, one hand curled into a fist on the pillow.
By nine, the living room was a hive of activity. The camera team was setting up for the confessionals. Quinn was sprawled on the rug, helping Daisy with a star chart. Everything was as it always was.
They were filming a quiet moment in the kitchen when Rose’s phone buzzed on the counter. Daniel Reiss. Her stomach dropped. She motioned to Loraine for the camera to move out. She did.
She picked up before the second ring. “Daniel.”
“Rose,” his voice was measured. “I have news. Jeremy Planter’s lawyer contacted me an hour ago. He’s withdrawing the filing. All claims dropped.”
Rose stood very still. Behind her, the espresso machine hissed. “It’s over?”
“It’s over. I suspect he realized that years of unpaid support wouldn’t play well in discovery.”
She hung up and turned around. Lizanne was already watching her. She had read it in Rose’s face before a word was said.
“He dropped it,” Rose said.
Lizanne crossed the room. She took Rose’s face in both hands and kissed her forehead, then held her.
There was no performance in the hug, just the weight of another person choosing to be there.
Rose pressed her face against Lizanne’s shoulder and exhaled a breath she’d been holding since the first letter arrived.
“I don’t understand,” Quinn said. “Why would he leave with nothing? That’s so not Jeremy.”
Lizanne shrugged. “Does it matter?”
Rose nodded along, although inside, she had to admit, it was odd. This whole event had been like a flash in the pan. The sudden demand for custody. The threats. And now, a few weeks later, he gave up?
Just like that? Without so much as a single news story leaked?
It didn’t add up. And yet, as she looked at the way Lizanne had lifted Daisy up, both laughing before returning to the star chart they’d been working on for a few days, she decided that perhaps her mother was right and she should take the win when it presented itself.
And yet, something wasn’t right here. Not at all.
***
The desk in Lizanne’s home office was a masterpiece of mid-century minimalism, but tonight it felt like a cage.
She kept her eyes tracked on the script for the new season, yet the lines blurred into a haze.
Every time she heard the floorboards creak in the hallway, Lizanne’s heart did a jagged little stutter.
She understood performance. She understood that the most convincing lies were the ones told with a steady gaze. But tonight, her skin felt too tight for her body.
“Still staring at the same page, I bet.”
Pat was leaning against the doorframe, a glass of scotch in one hand and her tablet in the other. She’d come over for dinner that evening and stayed to work with Lizanne on a few offers.
She didn’t wait for an invitation. She walked in and sat in the velvet armchair, her sharp eyes dissecting Lizanne with the clinical efficiency that had made her the best in the business.
“I’m memorizing,” Lizanne said, her voice tight.
“You’re vibrating,” Pat countered. “And Rose is downstairs looking like she’s still running numbers in her head. Quinn’s right, you know. Jeremy doesn’t walk away from anything without a reason. Not if he’s anything like the man Rose and her family described.”
Lizanne said nothing.
“You should tell her,” Pat said.
“No.”
“Liz—”
“Not tonight.” Lizanne set the script down. “She just exhaled for the first time in weeks. She laughed today. Properly. I’m not taking that from her the same afternoon it arrived.”
“And tomorrow?”
Lizanne looked at her phone on the desk, the device that had felt like a ticking bomb since the moment Reiss had delivered the news and she’d watched Rose’s face flood with relief.
Relief Lizanne had purchased. Without asking.
Without telling. Without any intention of telling Rose that she’d made the executive decision to make Jeremy Planter go away.
She remembered the cold, authoritative tone she’d used in the car that morning — I cannot be the last person in the room to find out something this important.
The hypocrisy was a bitter taste at the back of her throat.
She had stood on her moral high ground, playing the part of the transparent partner, while her own pockets were full of things she hadn’t shared.
“I did it to protect her,” Lizanne said.
“I know why you did it.”
“She told me explicitly that she wasn’t paying him. That she wanted to fight it properly.” She paused. “If I tell her how it really happened, it turns us back into a transaction. It makes me the person who bought her daughter’s safety after she explicitly told me not to.”
“You did it to save her from a custody war,” Pat said.
“It doesn’t matter why I did it. It matters that I broke her trust to do it.” Lizanne stood and walked to the window, looking out over the dark grounds, the pool house lights glowing at the far end of the lawn. “She’d never look at me the same way.”
Pat sighed, swirling the ice in her glass.
“You’ve always been like this. You think if you carry the weight alone, it doesn’t count as a burden on the relationship.
But secrets eat people. You build these beautiful lives and then you lock all the doors and wonder why you feel like you’re suffocating. ”
Lizanne sat back down at her desk, her hands flat on the cool wood. The house was quiet.
“Some secrets are worth keeping,” Lizanne said quietly. “To protect the person you love from the parts of yourself that are willing to play dirty to keep them safe.”
“And if she finds out on her own?”
Lizanne looked at the phone. “Then I’ll deserve whatever comes next.” She stood, smoothing her clothes. “But for tonight, she’s happy. Daisy is safe. And I’m going to leave it there.”
She walked to the door, then paused with her hand on the frame.
“Don’t tell her, Pat. Not about Jeremy. And not about Trina.”
“She still trying to get back with you?”
Lizanne shook her head. “No. I haven’t heard from her in weeks.”
Pat looked at her over the rim of her glass. “Good. Let’s hope it stays that way.”