Great Big Beautiful Life(38)

“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.”