Chapter 32
Rose
It had been a week since the confessional filming. They had been professional about it. Lizanne was very good at professional. Rose was getting better at it than she wanted to be.
She came down to the pool house kitchen in the morning to find Quinn and Kayla already at the table. Quinn was never voluntarily awake before nine. Kayla had her laptop open.
They both looked up when she came in. The look on their faces stopped her in the doorway.
“What?” Rose said.
Quinn turned the laptop around.
The headline was large. The photograph larger. Lizanne in the driver’s seat. Trina beside her. The kiss. Rose had seen it before, but seeing it blown up on a gossip site with a headline reading POWER COUPLE REUNITED? was a different experience entirely.
She sat down.
“Trina leaked it,” she said.
“Obviously,” Kayla said. “Which, for what it’s worth, kind of proves what Lizanne was saying. She’s fighting dirty. Clearly, Lizanne did say no to getting back together, and now here is Trina doing her worst.”
Rose said nothing.
“Rose.” Kayla’s voice was careful. “The fact that Trina is the one who put this out — that matters. It means Lizanne was telling the truth about being set up.”
“I know,” Rose said.
Quinn and Kayla exchanged a look.
“You seem very calm about this,” Quinn said.
“I’m not calm.” Rose looked at the table.
“I’m numb. There’s a difference.” She was quiet for a moment.
“I was blackmailed into this marriage. Then I fell in love with the woman who blackmailed me. Now the same woman has been photographed kissing her ex, it’s on the front page, and I’m sitting in a pool house that isn’t mine.
I cannot locate the part of me that’s supposed to be surprised. ”
“She pushed Trina away,” Kayla said. “I talked to her. She says—”
“She can say whatever she wants.” Rose’s voice didn’t rise. “How do I know it’s true? Even if it is, it doesn’t change what she did with Jeremy.”
Quinn cleared his throat. “She’s not the only one who did things wrong here.”
Rose looked at him and knew exactly what he was going to say.
“You lied to her first,” he said. “Made up a fiancé. Then you didn’t tell her about Jeremy reaching out. You were managing information too. You just didn’t do it as effectively.”
“I didn’t kiss anyone,” Rose said.
“No. But you’re not entirely clean, and you know it.”
She knew he was right and didn’t know what to say for a while before she made a half-hearted attempt at a reply.
“Even so,” Rose said finally, “there are forty photographers outside the gate right now. Whatever Lizanne’s intentions were with Jeremy, the scandal happened anyway.”
“Not the same scandal,” Kayla said. “One of those scenarios involved Daisy. A custody filing, depositions, her name in the press. That’s what Lizanne was trying to prevent. You can be angry about how she did it and still acknowledge what she was protecting.”
Rose looked out of the window at the main house, pale and still in the morning light.
“Maybe. But I’m going to have to go through a scandal anyway. They won’t leave us alone now. And if Trina really wants to bring us down, she’ll find a way to leak Jeremy’s custody filing and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
A knock on the door saved Kayla and Quinn from having to concede.
Lizanne was standing on the step in the cold morning air, her hair down, no coat. She had been awake for a long time and had stopped caring what that looked like.
“I’m sorry,” Lizanne said. “About the photograph. I didn’t know she was going to—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Rose said. “I’m sure you’ll handle it.”
Hurt moved across Lizanne’s face. She reached out and caught Rose’s wrist, gently, just enough to stop her from stepping back.
“Nothing happened,” she said. “What you saw in that photograph is a lie. I need you to know that.”
Rose looked at her hand on her wrist.
“I don’t know what to think,” Rose said. “I don’t know what to do with any of this.” She heard herself say it before she had fully decided to: “Maybe this is a sign. Maybe we should stop pretending. Tell the truth and let you go back to—” She gestured vaguely. “Maybe that’s the better story.”
“You don’t mean that.”
Rose looked at her for a moment. Then she stepped back inside and closed the door.
She made it to her bedroom before the composure came apart. She sat on the edge of the bed, pressed her hands over her face, and cried — properly, the way she hadn’t since the night of the argument. Not a dignified cry. The kind that came from deep within and didn’t much care what it looked like.
The bed dipped beside her a few minutes later. Kayla lay down without a word, put an arm around her, and Rose leaned in.
“You didn’t mean that,” Kayla said. “Did you?”
“No.” Rose’s voice came out wrecked. “I love her. I want to be with her. I just—” She exhaled. “This is too much. All of it.”
Kayla held on and didn’t try to fix it, which was exactly right.
***
Lizanne
She stood on the pool house step for a moment after the door closed. Then she walked back across the grounds, her phone in hand.
Pat picked up on the first ring.
“I need to do something,” Lizanne said.
“Define something.” Pat’s voice was already in working mode.
“The general consensus right now is that you and Trina are reconciling, and your actual wife is a footnote. The network has called twice already wanting to know what is going on. Loraine is losing her mind. Rose is who the audience loves. She’s who this show is built around at this point.
Whatever you intended when you started this, she is the—”
“I know,” Lizanne said. “I know exactly who she is. That’s the trouble.” She stopped walking. The pool house behind her. The main house in front. She was standing exactly between them in the cold morning light. “I have to fix this.”
“Tell me how,” Pat said. “I’ve been waiting for a lever and I’m not seeing one.”
Lizanne took a breath.
“By finally telling the truth,” she said.
A pause on the line.
“All of it?” Pat said.
“All of it.”
A longer pause. Then: “That’s going to be a very interesting conversation. You understand what you’re admitting on camera — that you forced her into it. That’s not a dent, Liz. It’s the kind of thing networks and lawyers lose sleep over.”
“I’ve already had it looked at. It lands on me, not her — I’ll tell it so the only person who comes out of it having done anything wrong is me. Whatever it costs me, I can take it. Set it up,” Lizanne said.