Chapter 30
Rose
The call came in on the second of February at half past ten. Rose was at her desk with three vendor contracts open and a coffee going cold beside her keyboard.
The number was unfamiliar. It was a Los Angeles area code she didn’t recognize.
“Rose Delaney Events, this is Rose.”
The woman on the other end was breathless. She needed a Valentine’s charity gala. She’d heard Rose’s name from someone at the wedding. At any rate. She just needed someone who could handle the scale.
Rose pulled up her calendar. Aggressive but possible.
Her hands needed the work. She needed something to do that wasn’t sitting with the low, persistent unease that had followed her since the withdrawal.
He made the calculation and walked. She kept turning it over.
Jeremy didn’t walk away from anything without a reason.
And then there was Lizanne’s odd behavior.
Those strange moments when she looked like she was elsewhere, as if her mind was … heavy.
“Send me the address,” Rose said. “I’ll come to you.”
The address the woman sent was not a venue. It was a restaurant in Silver Lake. Rose stood on the pavement and checked the text again. She went in.
The host led her to a corner table at the back. The woman was already there. Tall, hair in an updo.
She approached, shoulders pulled back.
“Hi, you must be Evelyn…”
The woman turned to face her. And Rose took a step back. Because the person in front of her wasn’t the client she’d expected.
It was Trina Holmes.
“Sit down,” Trina said.
Rose stayed on her feet. “Where is the client?” A dumb question. She knew it the second she’d said it.
“There is no client.” Trina gestured at the chair opposite. “I needed you here without a lawyer, a camera crew, or Pat Seahorn. Sit down, Rose. Please. This won’t take long.”
Rose calculated the distance to the door. Then she sat. She kept her coat on. “Ten minutes.”
Trina nodded, folding her hands on the table. “I want to start by saying I don’t dislike you. I want you to know that before I tell you the rest.”
“Strange opening.”
“You look good. A fake marriage suits you. Still more real than your engagement.”
The air in the room shifted. Rose kept her face still.
“What does that mean?”
“I mean being married to my fiancée suits you. Probably is more profitable than that fake one you cobbled together. What was his name? Derek?”
Was she here because of a lie she’d told months ago?
“Lizanne knows.”
“I know. She told me.”
Rose blinked.
“Not recently,” Trina continued. “It was before any of this — before the wedding, before the show. We were still together. She left me a voicemail. Giddy, actually. I don’t think I’d heard her sound like that in years.
” A small, humorless smile. “She’d figured out the fake fiancé, the registry, the brother in the photo.
She thought it was the funniest thing she’d ever seen.
” She paused. “The next day, the photos of me and Marcus were everywhere and our world fell apart. I never got to tell her what I thought about it.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because I assume that is how she got you to marry her in such a rush. She blackmailed you. Didn’t she? That’s just like my honey bee.” Trina placed her phone on the table, face up, and turned it toward Rose.
Rose’s stomach turned. First at the term honey bee, as if they were still some sort of fated pair only temporarily parted by some unfortunate incident. Then, at the photo.
It was taken from the outside, by a paparazzo, no doubt. Lizanne was in the driver’s seat. Trina was beside her. They were kissing. Her gut clenched as she stared at the time stamp. After the wedding. When they were already together…Already in love.
Rose looked at it for three full seconds. The late texts she’d put down to work. The moments of odd silence, as if Lizanne was elsewhere.
She looked up from the phone.
“I’m not finished,” Trina said. “I am sorry. She should have told you. She and I…I love her. But she feels trapped in this thing with you. The contract… all of that. I know she wants to be with me. But you are… in the way. You need to walk away and let us be together again.”
“I don’t believe you. She and I are in love. We have a family together. It’s what she wanted. What we both wanted.”
Trina snorted at that. “Has she told you her parents are dead?” Trina continued.
“That she’s been lonely? That she always wanted a family, and I was the one who didn’t want children?
” She paused. “Oh Rose. You are really falling for it, aren’t you?
That’s all part of her spiel. Part of the show.
She’s making you fall in love with her because it plays better on TV. ”
“No, she isn’t. We are together. We’re…”
“Rose, she is using you. Skillfully, I might add. The show is a hit. She has a spin-off coming when her show is over…. And you …Don’t let her play you. Walk away. I can help you negotiate your way out of things.”
Rose shook her head. This wasn’t true. None of this was. Lizanne loved her. They trusted one another.
“I am not going to let you drive a wedge between us.”
“Honey, its you driving the wedge. I can’t even blame you. She took advantage of you. But, at least she did the right thing, paying off your debt and paying off that…what’s his name? Jeremy?”
Rose felt her pulse in her palms. She kept her hands flat on the table.
“What about Jeremy?”
“She paid him off,” Trina said. “She told me so. She couldn’t afford a custody battle in the middle of her show taking off.”
“She wouldn’t. I told her not to.”
Trina rolled her eyes. “I can see this relationship is still green. Rose, do a bit of digging. You’ll see.
It’s true. Ask Peter. Craig’s husband. Craig can’t keep his mouth shut and tells Peter everything.
And Peter is a gossip monger. Lizanne is doing everything she can to make this show a success.
I bet she’s even entertaining you with her special talents …
” she let her eyebrows dance in a suggestive manner. “But don’t worry. I don’t mind.”
“What do you want?” Rose asked, breathless now.
“I want you to end things with her. Walk away. If money is an issue…”
“I don’t need anyone’s money,” she hissed.
“I figured. Your business is taking off after all. Look, I’m sorry your heart is getting broken in all of this. But Lizanne and I are good together. We will be again. And you’ll do fine. Just…take my advice. Don’t trust Lizanne.” She picked up her bag and left, one sly smile on her lips.
***
She had rehearsed it in the car. Not the words exactly. She was going to be direct. She was going to give Lizanne room to respond.
The truth was, she still didn’t quite believe Trina.
In her gut, she trusted Lizanne. And yet.
The photograph existed. The strange silences existed.
The evenings when Lizanne’s eyes went somewhere else and her smile came back a half-second too late — those existed too.
Rose had noticed them and filed them away under the show, the pressure because she hadn’t wanted to look at them directly.
Because looking at them directly meant asking a question she wasn’t sure she wanted answered.
She found Lizanne in the kitchen, reading a cookbook aimed at parents trying to hide vegetables in food.
“Trina came to see me today.”
Lizanne went very still. She set the book down slowly. “What?”
“I thought it was a client meeting. A restaurant in Silver Lake. She set up a fake consultation. I walked in and she was sitting there.” Rose watched her. “She said you’ve been in contact.”
A beat. “Yes.”
Rose’s teeth hurt from the force she’d used to press them together so she would not scream. “You didn’t tell me.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I hadn’t heard from her in weeks. I thought it was over.”
“Did you meet her in person?”
Lizanne looked away.
“I already know you did,” Rose said. “She showed me a photograph. You were in a car. You were kissing.”
The color left Lizanne’s face in a clean, visible sweep.
“She texted me a few times. I don’t know how she got my new number.
I ignored her. Then, the day I met with the network, she cornered me.
Got in the car with me and told me she wanted to get back together.
I told her no. She reached over and kissed me.
” She held Rose’s gaze. “I pushed her away. It lasted two seconds. It was not something I wanted or invited.”
“She has a photograph.”
“She was clearly prepared for the meeting in ways I wasn’t.”
“She told me something else,” Rose said.
“She said the whole thing is for the show. That you don’t love me — you’re performing it.
That every version of this is a story you built because it plays well on camera.
Because the ratings are good and the spin-off is coming and I am a convenient leading lady with a ready-made child and a debt you could pay off. ”
Lizanne stared at her. “You don’t believe that.”
“I don’t know what I believe right now.” Rose kept her voice level.
“I know that two months ago I would have said without hesitation that I knew the difference between you performing and you being real.” She paused.
“And then I find out you’ve been meeting your ex and not mentioning it, and I think: what else have I missed?
What else have I decided was real because I wanted it to be? ”
Lizanne was quiet for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was low and direct. “I love you. That is not a performance. It has never been a performance.”
“Jeremy,” Rose said.
Lizanne’s jaw tightened. Just slightly.
“Did you pay him off? She said you did.”
The pause this time was not small. It was long enough to drive a truck through long enough for Rose to watch Lizanne arrive at the decision to tell the truth and then tell it.
“Yes,” Lizanne said.
The word dropped into the room.
“When?”