I was already twenty minutes late to meet Cam in the garden. By the time I got off the phone with Gaitlin my hair had half dried and was frizzy and completely unmanageable. I pulled it back into a bun, quickly got dressed, put on a little bit of makeup and then grabbed my script.
As I was halfway down the stairs my phone dinged with a text from Gaitlin: Mare. That was her college friend’s name.
My heart thudded in my chest, and I leaned against the railing, trying to remember how to breathe. Mare. My mother and Gloria really, truly had been friends, once. They’d stayed in touch after college. And yet my mother, big fan that she was of Gloria Diamond novels, had never mentioned this one tiny, enormous detail? Why not?
Then I remembered again what Gloria said to me yesterday, about looking like my father. Maybe she actually had met Gaitlin, once, many years ago. So why hadn’t she just told me that when I’d asked her?
I stumbled down the last step, into the lobby, but then instead of walking out back to meet Cam, I got into the birdcage elevator. I took a deep breath as it made its wobbly ascent to the penthouse, and I texted Cam, told him something had come up and that maybe we could meet later today. I was pretty sure he was minutes away from complaining to his agent and/or the director about how difficult I was, but I didn’t care. There was plenty I could complain about his behavior too.
But then he surprised me by texting back. No worries. I want to get another workout in anyway. Well, of course he did.
My finger shook as I rang the penthouse bell and it occurred to me that I didn’t quite know how to ask Gloria about my mother. I couldn’t very well let her know about the picture Will had sent me or mention Will’s involvement in this. But I couldn’t not ask her about my mother either. Gaitlin. That’s what I would say—that Gaitlin told me.
The door swung open, and Tate stood on the other side, her eyebrows raised. I was glad to see she hadn’t been fired. “Gloria isn’t expecting you,” she said with a frown.
I nodded to acknowledge what she said, but then walked inside the penthouse anyway. “I really need to talk to her. Does she have a few minutes?”
“I wish you had called first.” Tate’s frown creased deeper.
Will walked out from the kitchen, noticed me and his face erupted into a smile. He put his hand to his mouth as if realizing that might give him away.
I averted my gaze and smiled sweetly at Tate instead. “Can you please go see if she can give me a few minutes this morning? I can sit here and wait until she has the time.” I plopped onto the couch, knowing full well that Tate wasn’t going to physically remove me from the penthouse. I was leaving her no choice. She was going to have to deal with me whether she liked it or not.
She sighed heavily, and I almost felt a little bad thinking about Gloria yelling at her at my expense. But then she did what I’d asked, walked back toward the bedroom.
Will came over and sat down next to me. “Hey, what’s going on?” He kept his voice low, barely a whisper. “You look a little pale. Is everything all right? I thought you were running lines.”
I looked behind me, but Tate and, I assumed, Gloria were still in the bedroom with the door firmly closed. I opened my phone and pulled up the picture he sent. “This woman,” I whispered back, “is my mother.”
“What?” Now it was his turn to look a little pale, and it was obvious he’d had no idea.
The bedroom door burst open, and the thump of Gloria’s cane preceded her. Will and I both jumped and turned around. She was wearing a bright red terry cloth bathrobe, no makeup, no wig, her thin hair pulled back into a tiny bun at the nape of her neck. And still, somehow, she appeared terrifying as she thumped her way toward the couch, frowning deeply.
“Amelia, I thought we were done. Filming begins tomorrow! What else could you possibly need?”
I stared at her but didn’t say anything for a moment. Nothing. Everything.
It had been clear to me for days already that Gloria was indeed a liar but now that it felt like her lies had been hiding some connection to my dead mother, I felt it all personally, a gut punch, and it was difficult to catch my breath. “You knew my mother?” I finally said.
Her cane crashed to the hardwood floor with a loud, shattering thud, and then she gripped the side of the couch, maneuvering around it to sit down. “Why would you ask me that?” she finally said softly, once she was seated.
Will’s eyes widened, and I could practically hear the words rattling around in his brain, ground rules. Ground rules! I shot him a look that I hoped he understood meant calm down. I’m a professional, remember?
I forced myself to offer a half smile to Gloria. Young, eager actress. No, young grieving daughter. I cast my eyes toward my feet. “I was just talking to my dad,” I said slowly to the tops of my tennis shoes. “Telling him about playing this role. And he mentioned that my mom was friends with you in college.”
“College...” Gloria spoke with hesitation now. “College was...a very long time ago.”
“My mother’s name was Elizabeth Gaitlin.” It felt weird to say my mother’s name aloud. Weirder to remember that she didn’t exist here anymore, in the flesh. She was a name, a memory, but no longer a living breathing person. And I wondered if there would ever be enough time that could pass that would not make me feel a crushing heaviness in my core at that thought. My mother no longer existed. I struggled to keep my breathing even as Gloria stared at me, frowning, not saying anything at all. “Or I guess she would’ve been Masters back then,” I added softly. “Elizabeth Masters.”
“Bess,” Gloria whispered. Then covered her hand with her mouth as if the name had slipped out of her and she hadn’t meant to say it.
My mother sold her art under her legal name, Elizabeth Gaitlin. But it was almost like a weird alter ego. Because in real life, no one called her Elizabeth. And Gaitlin referred to a marriage she’d been in all of three years. Still, she always said she had kept his last name legally simply because it was my last name too. And even when I got rid of it, she used to say it was too late for her to change by then. But the people who knew my mother, her friends, had called her Bess. Gloria, no, Mare, truly had been friends with her.
“I knew her back in college, yes,” Gloria finally said. She stared at me for another moment and then continued: “But I only put two and two together after you arrived and told me your mother had recently died. I told you I googled you. When I did that, I found her obituary. That’s when I realized the connection.” She paused and then she added, “I was very sad to learn what happened to Bess.” Her face turned, and she genuinely did sound sad. “But I had no idea until you got here.”
“So it’s just...a giant coincidence, then?” It felt impossible, even as I said the words out loud. “You didn’t even realize you knew my mother when I was hired for this role?”
She slowly nodded. “Just a coincidence,” she said softly. I glanced at Will, and he frowned, like he too didn’t believe her.
“And you didn’t think to tell me, once you figured it out?”
“What good what that have done? I hadn’t seen or spoken to your mother in so many years. We were girls back then. It was a lifetime ago.”
“But you mentioned yesterday I reminded you of my father when I made a face. You must’ve met Gaitlin.” Even as I spoke I knew this didn’t quite add up. Gaitlin hadn’t even known who she was until he’d googled her. But I supposed it was possible they had met and for some reason Gloria remembered it, while Gaitlin did not all these years later.
“A lifetime ago,” she repeated softly. “We lost touch after college.”
I thought about the photo Will had sent me, with my mother visibly pregnant. I was born a whole six weeks early, on the last day of 1986. That photo couldn’t have been taken too much before that. And my mother surely would’ve already been a few years removed from college by then. I bit my lip, not quite sure yet how to call her out on this lie without giving away Will’s snooping.
“But then here you were before me, just like that. Isn’t it funny,” Gloria was saying now. “How life is a circle sometimes?”
Is that what this was? Is that what was going on here?
And then she gestured for Tate to pick up her cane from where she’d dropped it on the floor, leaned onto it and stood. “Now if you’ll excuse me,” she said. “I have a spa appointment.”