I opened the study door for Evan and indicated for him to sit, but he declined, so we both just stood there. He had called this meeting, so I waited for him to speak. When he finally did, his voice was raw, stripped down to pure emotion.
“I have some difficult news,” he began. He looked exhausted. Whatever he was about to tell me had really rattled him. I braced myself for the worst. He looked up at me with hollow eyes.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Holly tried to kill herself today.”
Shame bubbled up from the pit of my stomach. I grabbed the desk as my legs went numb. We had talked about her “breaking,” but never in a million years thought we would push her to this.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered. I thought about Savannah, how happy we’d been that we’d gotten to her first. We never thought about what it might do to her mother. “Is she going to be all right?”
He nodded and said, “Yes, thank God,” then sank down onto the couch. “I got her to the hospital in time to pump her stomach.” I let the image wash over me. I deserved to feel the grotesque shock of it. Neither of us spoke for a long, solemn minute.
“Maybe I should talk to her?” I finally suggested. I hated hiding in the shadows like this. Perhaps the best thing to do at this point was to tell her the truth.
But Evan wouldn’t have it. “Absolutely not,” he said firmly. He was right, of course. My fame and popularity had smoothed many a ruffled feather in the past, but this was bigger than even me.
“There’s something else,” Evan said, and now I sat down, too, hoping he had led with the worst of it. “Your son came to her hospital room.”
And that confused me. “He did what?” I asked dumbly, unable to make sense of it. “Why would he do that? How did he even know?”
And Evan’s reply was so absurd I almost laughed.
“He’s dating Holly’s daughter.”
I repeated his words in my head to make sure I’d heard him right, then shook my head. “Logan knows better than to go anywhere near either of them,” I insisted. “He’s smarter than that!”
But Evan was insistent. “They’re dating. He introduced himself as her boyfriend. They were holding hands.”
I felt anger rise up the back of my neck. I wasn’t sure if it was meant for Evan for saying something so implausible, or for my son, because I thought there was a chance it could be true.
“Maybe it’s a coincidence,” I suggested, and Evan laughed out loud.
“No way.”
My anger turned to panic. Because Logan was smart—deviously smart. Which meant he knew exactly what he was doing. Even though I didn’t have a clue.
“There could be a perfectly reasonable explanation,” I offered, even though I couldn’t think of one. Logan was a good kid, a varsity athlete and straight A student. I knew it was hard for him sometimes, being the son of a celebrity—never knowing who your friends are and having to share your dad with the world. But he handled the pressure of being under the public eye well—or at least he seemed to. Maybe I had missed more than I knew during all those months away shooting movies. Had I overlooked something? Was there a side of him I’d never seen?
“Where is he now?” Evan asked, and I shook my head.
“I don’t know. He’s an adult—” I started, by way of excuse, but he cut me off.
“You need to find him,” my lawyer said. “We need to talk to him about what the hell he thinks he’s doing.”
Evan had never raised his voice at me before. But I let it go. Because in this fraught moment, I knew I was going to need him now more than ever.
SAVANNAH
Three months ago
There was a knock on our door at eight a.m.
We knew the police were going to want to talk to us, we just thought they would come at a decent hour.
I showed Officer Kellogg and his plainclothes sidekick into our living room, then went to the bedroom to wake up my mom.
“Mom,” I said as I touched her arm. “They’re here.”
She blinked herself awake. She looked disoriented. But that was not uncommon these days.
“I’ll make you some coffee,” I told her as I handed her a bra and a pair of sweats that would fit over her brace. There was no point in asking them to come back later. The sooner we got this over with, the better.
“You can sit down if you want,” I told the policemen as I returned to the living room after putting the coffee on. Kellogg looked a little winded from those three flights of stairs, but Plainclothes dismissed my offer with a stoic smile, so they both just remained standing.