12
“THE MYSTERY ILLNESS,” I say. “I remember reading about that. Two years where Nina Gill couldn’t work. Right as talkies started coming out.”
“And she was in the news more than ever,” Margaret agrees. “I can guess what your Dove Franklin had to say about all of that in his so-called book.”
“Since when am I responsible for him?” I tease. “I’m not even the one who bought that book! Blame my parents. But yes, he had his theories about her time away.”
She flashes me a smile over the ceaseless movement of her hands among the glass shards. “Let me guess: She couldn’t hack it in the changing landscape of Hollywood. No one wanted her in the talkies and her star began to fall even faster than it had risen, leading to a two-year mental breakdown, the likes of which she never fully recovered from.”
I nod. “An actress at the height of her fame, taking a two-year hiatus and then spending the majority of that in and out of hospitals around the world—a mental breakdown seemed less far fetched to me than some of his other theories.”
Her hands still on her tools, and something passes across her face.
“There are all kinds of reasons for a woman to want to disappear. Always
have been.”
“Such as?” I say gently.
Margaret peels her gloves off her small but calloused hands. “Let’s walk back to the house. Jodi will certainly bring lunch here, but she won’t be
happy about it. She doesn’t like waiting on me.”
“Is she paid to?” I ask, since, still, no information about their relationship has been provided to me.
Margaret’s head cocks prettily to one side. “No, I wouldn’t say that,” she settles on, as enigmatic of an answer as I would’ve expected from her.
I pack up my things, and we leave the workshop, the doors still ajar and unlocked, the ceiling fans still twirling.
We start down the path, in the opposite direction from which Jodi and I arrived, curving around the other side of the garden beds back toward the house. When I point this out, Margaret nods. “It’s all the same path. You just stay on it, and you’ll get where you’re going, eventually.”
“Like the labyrinth,” I say, clutching my recorder, still running, in one hand and my phone in the other.
“More or less,” she says. “I’ve thought about turning the whole thing into a mosaic, connecting it to the labyrinth. Probably don’t have that many years left of my life though. That’s a lot of work.”
“So it was on purpose?” I say. “The unicursal path.”
“I like taking away that element of decision, whenever I can.”
“Why’s that?” I ask.
“Because it gives me peace,” she says. “Remembering my decisions don’t make much of a difference in the end.”
I balk, even miss a step. “You really think that?”
Another sly, nearly coquettish smile, and at eighty-seven years old, she’s still pulling it off. “Think. Hope. Somewhere in between the two.”
The path curls down to walk along the marsh, and I see a fan boat docked among the reeds. “You use that much?” I ask.
“Not much,” she says. “But more often than I use the car.”
“That hardly tells me anything,” I point out.
“Now you’re catching on,” she teases.
But honestly, I’m not. When I let her talk, she’ll talk. But when I want a straight answer, she’s more evasive.
Which once again begs the question: What am I doing here?
“I’m curious about something,” I say.
“I’d describe you as curious about everything,” Margaret parries.
“Hazard of the trade,” I say, then admit, “or more realistically, I was just born this way.”
“Sounds like you’re on a unicursal path of your own,” she reasons.
She doesn’t invite me to ask my question, but I do anyway: “Why now?”
“What do you mean?” she says innocently. I give her a look, and she laughs. “Every once in a while, you’ve got some bite, Alice Scott. I like that.”
“Thank you. And I like when you answer the questions I ask.”
Another laugh. “I know I look great, but I’m old. If not now, when?”
“Right,” I agree. “But ‘never’ was an option. Something had to have convinced you to talk to me. And as great as I am, I don’t buy that it was my rambling voicemail.”
We pause at the back doors to Margaret’s house. “I made a promise to someone,” she says. “And then they died before I could tell them I took it back.”
“You’re not going to tell me who, are you?” I ask.
She smiles and opens the door. “Not today.”
As we step inside, from somewhere deeper in the house, Jodi grunts, “You’re back.”
“Nothing gets past you, does it?” Margaret leads me through a door into a bright, powder-blue kitchen, where Jodi’s slicing sandwiches into tiny triangles.
“Tuna salad?” Margaret asks, leaning over Jodi’s shoulder to look at the cutting board.
“Cucumber,” Jodi says, “and now that you’re back, you can take over.”
Margaret gives a belabored sigh, but still steps up to the task when Jodi retreats to wash her hands over the deep double sink, its overhead window looking out on the backyard.
“How long does it usually take a person to get used to this house?” I ask. “I don’t understand how anything is connected. I would’ve thought we were at the front of the house here.”
“There’s no ‘usually,’ ” Margaret says.
I frown, which makes her laugh.
“Not a facial expression I’ve seen you do much of,” she says.
On her way out of the room, Jodi says, “No one has to get used to the house, because no one except us is ever in it.”
“Ever?” I ask.
Margaret gives an unbothered shrug. “More or less.”
“How do you sell your work, to the shops and galleries?” I ask.
She waves a hand. “Oh, Jodi handles all that. Not that there’s much to handle. Like I said—most tourists are looking for a different sort of thing than what I do.”
That certainly explains the reaction from the shopkeeper who’d finally passed along Margaret’s contact information. He’d said something along the lines of, You’re welcome to it, but if Irene Mayberry is actually Margaret
Ives, then I’m Elvis.
“What about groceries?” I ask.
“Jodi,” she says. “Jodi handles it all.”
“And what, you just stay in this house all day?”
“I stay in the yard mostly,” Margaret says. “Or out on the boat. Or in my
home.”
“That’s got to be lonely,” I say.
“Less so than you’d think,” she retorts. “You get used to it, isolation.
Funny thing is, I was already used to it by the time I ‘disappeared.’ ”
“Meaning?” I ask.
“No more chitchat right now,” she says. “It’s nearly dinnertime, and no one needs to see the inside of my mouth while I’m eating.”
• • • ON FRIDAY, THE morning after my best session with Margaret yet, I’m picking through my notes—and typing up an extremely uninspiring (though blessedly short) article on new skin-care trends for The Scratch—when Theo texts me.
I’m shooting in Atlanta rn, he says.
Oh, nice, I write back. Who/what?
That new fashion designer Mogi, he replies. Should be a good time.
He’s not giving me a ton of conversational ammo here, but I’d rather be doing anything than working right now, while sitting out on Little Croissant’s patio, sweating through my sundress, so I write back anyway: Yeah, Atlanta’s super cool! Let me know if you want any recs.
How far is it from where you are? he says.
I do a quick search to double-check. Not that close. Like three and a
half hours by car.
Shit, he says.
A second later, a new message buzzes in. What are you up to this weekend?
Oh, nothing, just more meandering interviews that manage to avoid almost anything juicy from a story I’m sure is ninety percent juice.
Nothing today, working tomorrow during the
day, then nothing Sunday and Monday.
Nice, he says, adding, I prob will be done by Saturday night too.
The text just hangs there, and understanding clicks into place. He’s doing what he always does: not quite asking me to ask him to hang out. It’s annoying, how indirect he always is, but at least there’s some comfort in knowing him well enough to read between the lines. Unlike the horror that unfolded between me and Hayden the other night.
I take a screenshot of the exchange and text it to my friends.
Priya is the first to reply: A girl’s gotta eat, Alice.
Bianca is right behind her: Turn in your skincare piece. Also BARF.
Cillian slides in next: MY ENEMY.
I thumbs-up Bianca’s text first, then write out my reply: I’m going to invite him to come down but that’s where I draw the line. I will NOT
be asking whether I can fly to HIM.
Tell him he can meet you there, then send him this address, Cillian says. I follow the link he’s sent.
It takes me to a map of Antarctica, a little pin over something called the Pole of Inaccessibility research station.
Will do! I say, then text Theo: You’re welcome to come down if you want. There’s not a ton to do, but there’s at least one cute bar/restaurant and a good coffee shop, and it’s beautiful.
Really? Theo says.
Yes.
Sure, why not? I could drive down when I
finish up tomorrow afternoon. Meet around
seven?
Sounds good, I tell him, then turn my phone over and click back to
yesterday’s notes.
We covered a decent amount of ground.
Nina Gill’s mystery illness. The fluctuating weight. The hair loss. The months she’d spent in the Swiss Alps while she recovered.
During their time apart, Nina had fallen in love with her doctor, and in the aftermath of her and Gerald’s breakup, he finally reconnected with his sister, Gigi, whose English husband had died not long after she discovered she was pregnant.
Gerald insisted on moving Gigi and her new baby, Ruth, onto his estate, now that Nina had moved out and on with the doctor.
“Out of the blue?” I’d asked Margaret, and she’d given one of those dry, secretive smiles.
“Nothing is out of the blue, when it comes to my family,” she said. “Not ever.”
I could feel the hidden meaning beneath the words, but when I pressed her on it, she evaded me. Just kept going with her story.
For a time, Gerald had continued his management of Nina’s career, even after her marriage, but the truth was, even with his media pull, the time away had changed the landscape too much for her. The reviews of her newer films were mostly concerned with the physical toll her illness had taken on her—she’d visibly aged and gained a fair bit of weight, and an outlet beyond Gerald’s control had nicknamed her the not-so ingenue. With the emphasis on new.
The audiences had tired of her too. As far as they were concerned, she belonged to the silent-film era, and every time she spoke, her surprising voice convinced them she’d overstayed her welcome.
She left the business entirely in 1931, and that same year, Gerald moved his wife, Rosalind, and his now grown children down to the House of Ives, as if the last twelve years apart had never happened.
Freddy and Francine were twenty-seven and twenty-six respectively by then, both unmarried and neither excited about relocating their entire lives.
But Gerald controlled all the money, and so when he said jump, they jumped. Thus, he; his wife; his grown children; his sister, Gigi; and her daughter, Ruth, all wound up living in the same house. If you could call the Ives estate a house, and honestly, I don’t think you can. But still.
“Gerald and Rosalind never shared a room again, of course,” Margaret told me. “They were cold but cordial. And it was much too late for him to fix his relationship with his own children, but his niece was just a baby, so essentially all that opulence Gerald had lavished on his mistress was turned toward baby Ruth at that point. She was the light of his life. The world had probably never seen such a spoiled child—until Laura and I came along, anyway—but she was good natured to her core. When she was small, her nickname was Little Princess, and even when Laura and I were little girls and Ruth was a young woman, we all mostly called her LP.”
It wasn’t a bad interview. It was arguably good! But I could feel that there was more lurking just underneath what she was saying, and she still didn’t trust me enough to share it.
I’d offered multiple times to stop recording, but she’d waved off the
offer.
“You can trust me,” I promised her.
She parried with, “You can trust me too.”
It effectively ended the discussion. If I wanted her to open up to me, I had to respect that she had her own reasons for what she chose to share and when.
Margaret refused to be rushed, and I knew that pushing would only slow us down in the long run. If I got the job, there’d be plenty of time to dig into these stories. My only real goal, these next three and a half weeks, was to earn her trust.
I just had to hope Hayden wasn’t having better luck than I was.
• • • ON SATURDAY MORNING, I’m driving through the fog to Margaret’s house when she calls to cancel on me.
“Something came up,” she says through my rental car’s speakers when I take her call. I put on my blinker and pull off into the Little Croissant / gift shop / enclave parking lot.
“No problem at all,” I assure her. “If you just need a few hours, we
could meet later?”
“Not today,” she says stiffly.
“Then tomorrow?” I suggest.
“Not tomorrow either,” she says.
And Monday she’ll be meeting with Hayden. I ignore the sinking sensation in my chest, grapple for a grip on the hope that this doesn’t mean she’s close to firing me, before I’ve even been hired.
I clear my throat. “Should we just pick things back up during our Tuesday session?” I ask, crossing all of my fingers against the steering wheel as I pull into a shady parking spot.
“If I can, yes,” she says, but offers nothing else.
“Okay, well, if things change on your end, or even if you just need something, don’t be afraid to reach out.”
“You’re a sweet girl,” she says, and I swear there’s a hint of regret in
her voice.
She’s about to fire me. Isn’t she?
I swallow a lump of emotion and let my hand hover over the button to end the call. “Okay, well, take care, Margaret.”
“You too, Alice,” she says, and we hang up.
I sit, staring at the wheel, trying all my best pep talks on myself and, for once, getting nowhere. With a groan, I slump forward.
Something thunks next to my left ear and I sit up with a yelp, spinning toward the window.
A gap-toothed man in a bucket hat grins at me from the other side of the glass. Captain Cecil gives a hearty wave, then steps back to make room for the door as I swing it open and step out into the heat. “There she is!” he says, like I’m just the person he wanted to see.
Me, a perfect stranger he’s bumped into twice.
Instantly, my mood lifts. My heart very nearly soars. I’ve found a kindred spirit in Cecil, and it makes me realize how lonely I’ve been since the awkwardness with Hayden last week. I should be used to the isolation of this job, but I’m not sure I ever will be.
“I was wondering when I’d run into you again,” I tell him.
“And I you,” he says. “I have an invitation for you.”
“Oh?” I say, intrigued.
“Fish Bowl’s having a little soiree tonight,” he says.
“I do love a soiree,” I say. “Celebrating anything in particular?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” he says. “It’s an annual fete. In honor of my
birthday.”
“Oh, wow! Happy birthday!” I say.
He chortles. “Thank you, dear, but my birthday isn’t until December.
This is just in honor of my birthday, which happens to be Christmas. I always thought that was a raw deal, so I started throwing myself a summer bash about ten years ago and never looked back.”
“Genius,” I say, and his grin widens again.
“I think so,” he agrees. “Anyway, small bites provided, no gifts required, and drinks at happy hour prices. Stop by if you feel so inclined.”
“I will,” I promise him. “Would it be all right if I brought a friend?”
“Already made a friend!” he cries. “Other than me, of course.”
I laugh. “Well, no. Someone from back home. He’s driving up from Atlanta later today.”
“Sure, bring him along,” he says. “It’s a more-the-merrier situation.”
“My favorite kind,” I say.
“Then I’ll see you sometime between seven and midnight, Ms. Scott.”
He tips his bucket hat at me and saunters off.
The smell of ground coffee beans beckons me, a siren call coming from Little Croissant. I grab my laptop from my back seat and head toward the robin’s-egg blue coffee shop’s elevated platform.
I’m out, so I might as well enjoy it, but if I can’t interview Margaret, I’m at least going to do some more independent research.
I order an iced brown sugar latte at the window, then take it down to the flagstone patio.
Some deep part of my subconscious feels his presence and sends an uncanny prickle to the back of my neck in the second before my gaze sweeps over the hunched, hulking shape of Hayden Anderson.
His computer sits on the little mosaic table in front of him, but his eyes are right on me.
There’s no pretending we didn’t see each other.
For once, I wish I was a little less chronically polite, that I was as comfortable with a good scowl or blank stare as the man four feet in front
of me.
“Hello,” I say coolly.
“Hi.” His reply is terse, uncomfortable. Everything about him is terse and uncomfortable, which makes me feel a little better about our last humiliating encounter.
Another beat. “Anyway!” I turn toward the table farthest from him. It’s probably only fifteen feet away, but I think I can manage to pass five
minutes there before finding an excuse to leave.
“Shouldn’t you be with Margaret today?” he asks.
My shoulders rise protectively. I should brush him off, make an excuse, or flat-out not answer. That’s what he would do.
Unfortunately, I’m still—at my core—me.
I’m already marching back to his table, the truth pouring out of me.
“She canceled.”
His face betrays nothing. It so fully betrays nothing that I’m positive he knows something. Which I say, as I plop down in the iron chair opposite
him.
“I don’t,” he says.
Somehow, I can hear the technicality in his voice. He’s telling the truth, but only just.
“So you don’t know why she canceled,” I say, “but you have a guess.”
He lets out a sigh. “I’m not going to speculate, Alice.”
“No, I know,” I say. “You wouldn’t possibly share any helpful information with me, even though I am the smallest and least significant threat to this job that you can possibly imagine.”
His jaw clenches. “You’re putting words in my mouth.”
“I’m reading between the lines,” I counter.
He leans forward over the table, our knees clashing under it. “Just because you’ve made a decision about how I feel,” he growls, “doesn’t make it true.”
“So, what, you’re not positive Margaret’s going to hire you over me?” I ask.
“I’m reasonably certain,” he replies cautiously. “Would you rather I kept that from you?”
“You’re pretty keen to keep everything else from me,” I say.
His frown deepens. His lips part, as if he’s debating saying something.
A sigh escapes him right before he caves: “I can’t give this up.”
I shift in my seat, my anger abating and leaving me unpleasantly vulnerable. That much I understand. That much I don’t blame him for. I expected him to fight for this opportunity, just like I am.
“I know,” I admit. “Neither can I.”
He holds my gaze for one long moment. “I would like to be friends.”
At my surprised laugh, his inky brows draw together.
“What’s funny about that?” he wants to know.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I warn, “but you sound like a robot learning to love.”
His face screws up in bafflement. “I don’t know any way to take that.”
“I just mean, you’ve pushed me away, kissed me, and insulted me,” I say. “And now you’re formally proposing friendship.”
“I wouldn’t describe our relationship until now like that, exactly,” he says, visibly and audibly dismayed.
My head cocks to one side. “How would you describe it?”
His eyes train on his green tea. He pushes it farther from the ledge. “So you don’t want to be friends.”
“You’re putting words in my mouth,” I retort.
He barely smiles. “What are you doing tonight?”
“Tonight?” I ask. “Hot date. At Fish Bowl.”
“Ah. Too bad,” he says.
“Were you going to ask me to hang out?” I ask.
“If you thought you could go one night without talking about Margaret
Ives,” he says, “then yes.”
“Ah,” I say. “Too bad.”
“Maybe next month,” he says.
“Maybe,” I agree, standing. “If you can forgive me for taking your job.”
