“It would be helpful if you had an address or phone number on your website.” Like most nonprofits did. “I could have called you there.”
“Are you Harper Rayne?” he asked, drawing out her name with an eternal-e.
“My last name’s pronounced like the stuff that falls from the sky.”
“Ms. Rayne, then.”
“I’m glad you saw my message.”
“And I replied, right before receiving an alert that someone was trespassing again on the estate.”
“The email said you had no plans to option Via Belle’s books.”
“I’m glad you read it.”
She glanced over at the stormy blue shutters and lacy white curtains. “You manage her property and literary estate?”
“That’s correct.” He sat in the chair beside her. “And apparently you’ve returned to ask about movie rights.”
“I was up most of the night, readingSilver Summer,” she said. “It would make an incredible film. Millions would watch it in the theater and then book sales—”
“You’re about seventy years too late on that one.”
She blinked. “What?”
“MGM released the movie back in 1941.”
“Just in time for the war...”
“Exactly.”
How could Elijah Lamb have overlooked a movie release in Olivia’s biography?
Then again, he’d mentioned a spike in book sales during the forties. Perhaps the film catapulted the rest of her work.
“I loved the story,” she said.
“So did thousands of readers, but they didn’t rush out to watch it. Ticket sales were somewhere between mediocre and dismal.”
“Did the studio do the story justice?”
“Sadly, the film was lost with time so I don’t know for sure, but reviewers said the director butchered the ending.”
“A good ending is essential!” And Via had written a beautiful one. Boy got the girl. Girl got her dream. Silver lined their summer and their future.
He shrugged. “Not everything ends well.”
“It should in a movie.” At least, that was her philosophy.
“Unfortunately, neither one of us makes those rules.”
“So we’ll remake the film,” she said. “With a happy ending.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I only want to pitch one of Via’s books to an interested director in LA. Any book you’d like. I’ll adapt it into a screenplay.”
“I don’t want another one of her books on the screen. Hollywood would wreck her story and her legacy.”
