L: Hi.
E: Hi ... Lilla, was it?
W: Lilla. It’s our nickname. Her real name is Ellie—Elyse.
E: Oh.
W: Yeah. We thought—we thought it was the least we could do to honor you.
E: And “we,” this mysterious and omnipresent “we” is—
W: Go back to bed, Lilla, okay?Äiti tulee pian kotiin. Voitko levätä?
L: Okei, okei.Hyvästi, Ellie-täti.
W: It’s her new favorite phrase.Okei, okei,like she’s all exasperated. I don’t know where she picked it up from—probably our neighbor. They get along like a house on fire.
E: Wilder.
W: Yes.[A pause.]It’s Ryan, okay? I’m sure you figured that out before you came here, and if not, seeing Lilla ... that should have sealed it.
E: She looks like both of you.
W: I think she’s Ryan, through and through.
E: So when—?
W: We ... we secretly got back together after theWaterfalltour. Sort of. It was messy. We’d broken up, but, you know ... it was hard to make a clean split. We were working together, practically living alongside each other still. I kept telling her every time we met up that it was the last time. She kept telling me the same thing. We were angry with each other, angry with the whole situation, and when“Hear Me Now” started filming, I swore I’d leave when it wrapped. I told her as much. I even told Skip and Jas in order to hold myself to it. But then ...
E: Then?
W: Ryan told me she was pregnant.
E: Convenient.
W: Don’t take that tone, Ellie. I was ecstatic. Terrified but ecstatic. So was Ryan.
E: Yeah, so overcome with that motherly glow that she decided to essentially fake both your deaths—
W: Don’t you understand? No, you don’t, because you were always bitter toward her. But imagine, just for a moment, the kind of scrutiny under which she lived her life. The hordes of fans and critics who watched her every move. This level of invasiveness that had becomenormalfor her.
E: Ryan said she could never be a mom, exactly because of that. What changed?
W: How do you know that?
E: I ... I read it somewhere.
W: She never spoke about that publicly. I know she didn’t. She was very private about the prospect of parenthood.
E: Then you must have told me. My question stands.
W: It’s not that she didn’twantkids. She thought shecouldn’thave them. That there would never be an opportunity, or a supportive enough relationship—or even if there was, that she wouldn’t be able to handle the extra attention. The criticism. She really sympathized with Britney Spears, people who had broken down in public like that. She once said, “That could be me. I’ve almost had public meltdowns as it is, and if they came for my child, I don’t know what I’d do.” And then ... when she did get pregnant ...
E: She changed her mind?
W: Not changed. Just ... relented. She’s worked very hard to control herself and her emotions and relationships, but this was one thing shedidn’t want to control. Ryan wanted to give in. And when she told me, stubborn as I was being toward her ... I wanted to give in too.
E: So you let her talk you into disappearing.
