“Twenty-one pills, Nico. She might have just taken them.”

  He lowers his head. “She had the lights off. And the door locked. She didn’t leave it open because she didn’t want me to find her. Because she meant it. And she left a note,” he says again, as if reading from a list he’s compiled at night, all the ways he’s reassured himself. “There was no pulse, nothing I could—” He stops. “She meant it.”

  Later she will wonder if she was cruel. Later she will remember that the medical examiner said undissolved and partially dissolved pills, and that without a real autopsy whose purpose was to find the truth—rather than scratch the surface for appearances—there’s no way to know what impact the pills truly had, or what she might have taken prior. Was she as good as gone? Or was she gone? All Frankie knows for sure is Nico’s done enough, and forcing June and Jack to marry could’ve been the final straw. The bottom line is that, for years, June was made to lead a life that wasn’t her own, and now he’s trying to take away the truth of her death as well.

  Calmly, Frankie replies, “Maybe she did mean it. And maybe it was too late. But we’ll never know, because you cared more about saving the studio than you did about saving her.”

  The second she says it, he nods as if a new understanding is taking hold. And though his eyes are red and shine as if he’s holding back tears, his gaze is steady.

  “The house is ours. The apartment is ours. The car is ours.”

  He’ll take everything. It’s as if the moment has finally arrived. As if all her life she’s been running toward an edge, closer and closer, and here, right now, her feet have found the air. She will be alone and she will have nothing. Somehow, though, she’s not afraid. Because she had what she thought was right and told herself she didn’t need anyone and that the goal was a house on a hill and silence, and she had all that within reach. The steady check and the safety net that Nico affords her. But now she sees what it truly amounts to.

  “If you make this choice,” he continues, “it’s a big one. You don’t come back from it. And don’t think the tides won’t turn on Jack. I’m the one who’s keeping him safe, for now.”

  The necklace. The gun. He has the means to frame Jack, anytime. And maybe this ruthlessness drives it home: If she embraces her long-held idea of success by turning her back on what’s truly right, that’s when she’ll fail. That’s when the ground beneath her feet will disappear.

  So she stands. He looks at her only for a moment before angling the lampshade on his desk as if the light has grown too much, and doesn’t watch as she walks out the door.

  She doesn’t tell Betty what happened, but from the way Betty looks down, the way she fills the silence with typing, she knows. What all did she hear? Betty, whose desk fills with flowers on her birthday and who’s invited to every premiere and party. How much does she keep quiet about? One last time, Frankie goes to Romeo and Juliet, whispering a goodbye, then gathers her belongings at her desk: a photo of her and Nico in front of the New York restaurant facade, a Bayer aspirin tin, and the script of The Last Chance that the cast signed. Frankie, It’s always a good day for a beach day! —Jack

  Venice. The little house.

  With her back to Betty, she picks up the phone and asks to be put through to Jack’s Pasadena residence, where O’Shea answers. Quietly, she says, “Tell him Frankie needs a beach day and is going there. Tell him that I need to do this, and I hope that’s all right with him.”

  O’Shea knows what she’s referring to, and must know she doesn’t want the studio operator to hear. She can hear the concern in his voice. “Of course, but are you—”

  “I’m fine. I will be fine. Right now, I just need a beach day.”

  When she hangs up, Betty is standing at a plant nearby, slowly pouring in water. “They loved each other. You should know that.”

  Frankie glances at Nico’s closed door. “Who did?”

  “June and Tank.”

  Does Betty know that Tank called her? It’s not far-fetched to think she checked in with the studio operator after overhearing a call that seemed suspicious. “I was still in New York then.”

  Betty gives a short laugh. “Then? You mean a few weeks ago you were in New York?”

  Frankie tries to play it off with a laugh of her own. “I just mean I wasn’t always sure it was love. Real love, I mean.”

  “You weren’t? Seemed clear to me. I blame Iffy,” she says about June’s sister, “if you want to know the truth. If she didn’t run her big mouth to Nico the second June told her they were eloping, everything might’ve been different.”

  Frankie tries to keep the surprise from her face as Betty continues. “I think about it, sometimes. How different it all would’ve been. The two of them married, and not one thing we could do. Not one thing.” She pulls a dead leaf off the plant, and then another one, crumpling them in her hand. “Husband and wife happy and together, at last. Call me old-fashioned, but I think a man should at least have the option of raising his own child.”

  Words stick in Frankie’s throat. She wants to throw the phone against the wall, to slam open the window and scream across the lot. Because Tank was the father, and Tank and June were in love. They wanted to be together. June was trying to fix her own life when the studio stopped her.

  All she manages to say, quietly, is, “You’re right. It would’ve been so different.”

  That one moment, the moment Ida heard the plan. If she congratulated her sister. If she forced a smile. If she turned away and let the rest unfold.

  Betty tests the soil in another pot. “I know Iffy thought she knew what was best for June, everyone did. But I’m not forgiving her. No way. And I know Tank wasn’t perfect, but he’s still doing right by June’s reputation. The way I see it, that’s love.”

  Tank, who the studio most likely strong-armed into not talking about his relationship with June or the truth of their feelings or the child that they’d wanted, because it would damage her reputation. Tank, who behaved, even when the police dragged him in and kept him for questioning, because he genuinely wanted what was best for June.

  Tank, who just wanted to know that June really loved him.

  A bit of water splashes onto the floor, and Betty uses her shoe to spread it out till it’s almost gone. What did Nico tell Frankie? That in that last call June made, she said he didn’t even show up. June meant Tank. He was who the other glass was for. But June didn’t know that Nico made him leave that night, that Nico had enough on Tank to ensure he listened. Did he pay him? Threaten him? Or just lie?

  She doesn’t want to be with you, and you will destroy her. Did Nico say that?

  If you love her, you will let her go.

  Frankie can almost hear him saying those words.

  I messed up, Tank told Frankie. Because he listened to Nico, because he didn’t go to June that night.

  Softly, Frankie says, “If only Tank didn’t buy the lies, hook, line, and sinker.”

  “People are so vulnerable when it comes to love. I guess I see why. Love is pretty unbelievable, so maybe it just makes more sense to think it can’t be real.”

  “It’s easier to think it’s not real.”

  Through this new lens, everything with Tank and June looks different. June never wanted to be rid of him. And he was never stalking her or invading her privacy—they were simply caught trying to have a forbidden relationship. When he showed up at nearby hotels when she was on location, it would’ve been because June told him where to go. When he was at the premiere, it was because he was proud and wanted to be close by, any way he could. And at the funeral, he was only trying to grieve.

  “The whole Jack-and-June thing was a mess,” Betty says. “I love a good romance, but some things are just cruel. And really, it gives me hope that an even better love story could be the one without an audience. Bodes well for the rest of us, doesn’t it?” Looking straight at Frankie, Betty adds, “Still, it might be nice for him to know it was real. That she did really love him.”

  “You’re right.” Frankie glances toward Nico’s office door. “Love is hard enough without other people making it impossible.”

  “Well, I expect you might know a bit about that too.” Betty gives a small smile, and then, as if she never spoke, she turns to a palm tree in the corner and pours in the rest of the water.

  Betty. Sometimes forgotten, but always listening.

  Frankie needs to get out of here. But for the first time in years, she has no direction and no plan. And worse, she’s walking away from the best thing she’s ever had.

  Silently, she puts The Last Chance script in her bag when she sees the corner where June signed her name:

  Frankie, don’t worry, it’s not your last chance . . . it’s all just beginning! June

  Chapter 32

  You Can’t Win if You Don’t Play the Game

  Palm trees line the path to the parking lot, fronds splayed against the blue dome of sky. The box of Frankie’s belongings is under her arm, an announcement to the world that she’s now unemployed. Even the word sparks fear into her heart, because it’s the state she’s sworn to avoid, the beginning of the end. But somehow it doesn’t feel that way. Somehow it feels as though she already reached the end and is about to keep going.

  At the parking lot, a group of executives avoids her eyes, sensing devastation. But then there’s one person, leaned against a car, smoking, who looks hard at Frankie and doesn’t look away.

  “No,” Magda says. A cloudy wisp escapes her mouth, a smoky tendril. “I don’t believe it.”

  Frankie hoists the box up on her hip. At the corner, a man in a Ford De Luxe Roadster pulls to the side to let out his passenger, a woman dressed in a ball gown. With one gloved hand, the woman holds up her jeweled hem as she hurries toward the path.

  Frankie looks away. “Magda, don’t you know that anything is possible.”

  Not a question but a statement. A slightly angry, sarcastic statement.

  A laugh. “We didn’t always see eye to eye, but I respect you, Frankie. I do wish you the best.”

  Instead of leaving, Frankie sets the box on the hood of Magda’s car. “Why?”

  Surprise widens Magda’s face. “Why what? Why do I wish you the best, or why do I respect you?”

  “The respect. What have I done to deserve it?”

  “Oh, well. You work hard. You’re determined. I can tell you’re smart. Women don’t have an easy road here, so you must’ve done something right.” She glances at the box on the hood. “I’d venture to say you’re still doing something right, and it wasn’t taken kindly.”

  Right; Frankie thought she’d been right, and was helping people. She saw the relief when she or Nico swooped in. She witnessed the happiness when she fixed things. “I don’t know what’s right anymore.”

  Magda drops her cigarette on the ground. Grinding it with her heel, she says, “Good grief. Do I need to worry about you now?”

  “No. Worry about all the people that you don’t . . .” She stops, searching for the words. “Worry about your part in this.”

  Immediately Magda’s brows rise. “Boy, Frankie, I was trying to be nice.”

  Behind Magda are the studio gates, the giant arches that dwarf the street. A flock of birds twists and turns above, slipping like rope through the sky. “I’m not trying to insult you. It’s that the stories you write, they’re stories. And you see what’s wrong. You must. The studios own the actors, and they own the stories that come out about them, and everyone lives in fear of not being loved, and it’s impossible and it’s not real.”

  “Slow down, Frankie, the whole world’s not—”

  “You, me, Nico, we’re all complicit. We’ve turned entertainment into reality and reality into entertainment, and somehow it’s all become a lie.”

  “I write about movies. You’re saying you don’t like movies?”

  “Are you kidding? I love movies. Movies saved me, more than once. What we do is important, but there’s more alongside it, isn’t there? How many articles do you really write about the actual movies?”

  Magda purses her lips, defensive. Still, she considers her words before saying, “I give people what they want. If they want a gossip story, that’s what I give them. I don’t tell people what to want. I’m not good at making people want something. I’m good at figuring out what they want.”

  In a way, Frankie agrees. But it’s more than what the people want. It’s filtering what they believe is possible. It’s pressure to be perfect. It’s thinking that perfection exists and should be aspired to. She thinks of Virginia. How does it help if I spend my whole life thinking I could’ve had it better, because of a lie? Because I believed in some impossible perfection? Maybe it boils down to the fact that the dream can be great, but it’s a temporary fix. The lie, however, can lead to a lifetime of heartbreak. And if it’s up to people to sort through what’s what, then they need to have a chance at true understanding.

  At last, she says, “Strategy relies on information. People need truth.”

  Magda laughs. “You try your hand at a paper that only tells the truth. See how far you get.”

  “That’s why you stopped, because it wasn’t easy. Isn’t that what you said?”

  Magda sighs. “Right now, I’m trying to figure out how to get back on Nico’s good side, and from the looks of things, you know how important that is. So, let’s leave it at this: I respect you, and I wish you the best.”

  With that, Magda walks onto the studio lot.

  Leaving her life is easy. The five boxes are already packed, and Frankie loads them into her car, which she’ll ask O’Shea to return tomorrow. Tonight, she just needs to get to Venice. Someplace safe, a house that might be small and worn but reminds her of better times and all that’s right in the world.

  She’ll talk to her roommates later, explain as much as she can. For now, she’s got what she needs and is readying to leave the apartment when the radio host follows up an advertisement with an excited trill and whistle.

  “Folks, have I got a juicy rumor for you. I’ve just been handed the scoop of the century or, at least, the scoop of the week, because Hollywood’s moving fast these days. But dare I say, one of Hollywood’s preeminent tabloid reporters just let me in on the possibility that RCO Studios may be admitting that Jack Sawyer’s alibi is suddenly not sure if he’s remembering things correctly.”

  Frankie stares at the radio, her car keys hanging in her hand, forgotten.

  “You heard me. Not sure. How can this guy be confused? Don’t you remember if you play cards with someone like Jack Sawyer in a fancy Malibu house? All I know is things could get very interesting in the next few days.”

  A song starts up, and Frankie switches off the radio, reeling. Heavily, she sits in the nearby chair, weighted with fear, because she knows this is Nico. Magda’s caved to his pressure, and he’s telling Frankie to back off. What she just heard was a warning shot.

  Without thinking, she sets her keys on the table, picks up the phone, and calls Magda’s office.

  The second the woman answers, Frankie says, “How could you?”

  There is a beat of silence before Magda says, “Frankie. That wasn’t me.”

  “The preeminent Hollywood tabloid reporter? After you just told me you were trying to get back on his good side? I thought you understood what I meant when I said we were all complicit. I thought you were listening and maybe even agreed, but then you went and—”

  “Stop. Frankie, stop. It wasn’t me.” There is a loud sigh, and Magda continues. “I think they meant Dottie.”

  Dottie. Of course. Nico’s playing the reporters against each other, and no doubt made Dottie promises in exchange for this favor. The truth means nothing? Once upon a time, Dottie asked Frankie this question as they walked through the parking lot at the Ambassador Hotel. It wasn’t even that long ago, but it feels like a different lifetime.

  Worse, Nico’s sending the message that he can take down Jack, just like that.

  You can’t win if you don’t play the game.

  An idea is forming. A plan. But she can’t spell it out with the operator listening. “Magda. I can’t say much now. And you might hate me, and I don’t blame you. I hate me too right now. But somewhere deep down, you know things aren’t right.”

  There’s no response, and Frankie glances at the clock on the wall. She wants to get to Venice before it gets dark. Maybe nothing she does will make a difference, but she thinks of Dede, who’s already hailed as the next June, and all the actresses who will follow, and of Jack, who will never be free from the studio’s grasp. “If you want a chance to do what’s right, and you want to know more about that night, then I’ll tell you.”

  Magda’s voice emerges in a whisper. “That night? As in—”

  “Yes. That one.”

  “And you know more?”

  Frankie thinks of the operator possibly listening in, and knows there’s no way the person would know which night she’s referring to, at least not definitively. “I know everything. Call O’Shea, Jack’s valet. Tell him Frankie wants you to join her beach day, and he’ll tell you where to go.”

  It’s an extra step, but a different operator will connect that call, and that will ensure nothing could be pieced together.

  Frankie picks up her keys. “Maybe you were right, and we only give people what they want. But I have to do something, because I’m not sure I want to live in a world where what’s real doesn’t matter.”

  Chapter 33

  The Big Picture

  Dusk is falling, the world lilac-tinged and furtive. Dusk is the time things disappear, her mother used to say when cautioning her to be careful crossing streets in the evening. Frankie thinks of Fiona, can practically hear her urging her to act, to do something. Her mother was no stranger to mistakes, but she lived life fully. Fear never factored into her decisions.

  Jack keeps a spare key under a pot near the back fence, but on her way to Venice, Frankie realizes he might have removed it. Maybe he didn’t want to risk her dropping in. Then she thinks of the quake, of the damage the house might have endured since it’s closer to Long Beach. She didn’t think any of this through, but she tightens her grip on the steering wheel all the same, determined to keep going.