“I truly am,” he says.
“That’s wonderful,” I say, and it’s like this weight I didn’t even know I’d been carrying for the last year is gone.
We don’t end up saying much more before ending our call—I’m not in a great place for small talk, and Roger’s never been much of a small talk person in general.
Then I hurry to find Blake, growing more upset with each step.
Blake is talking with Sarah Paltrow, nodding along to something she’s saying about the script, when he sees me. He quickly finishes the conversation and heads over.
“Kim, I’m sorry about before,” he starts, but I shake my head. Probably we need to talk about all of that, but right now I can only focus on one thing.
“Ivy called Roger,” I say.
Blake blinks. “What?”
I’m glad I’m not the only one with that reaction.
“I just got a call from him. Apparently, she told him I was ‘super unhappy’ with you, and that I was really in love with him, and he should try to win me back.”
Blake looks dumbfounded for the barest of seconds, then his mouth snaps shut. “She didnot,” he says, but he’s not actually denying what happened. Just pissed, like I am.
“Yep. I can’t—for her to do that, I just—” I’m at a total loss for words.
Blake grabs my hand. “Let’s talk to her, now.”
We get into the trailer, and there’s Ivy, sitting at her computer, working on her reading assignments, looking for all the world like the same girl who only months ago I would have trusted completely.
What has happened? Is this just growing up? Or did we—did I—mess this up somehow?
“Ivy.” Blake’s sharp tone immediately makes her spin around in her chair. “What is it going to take to make you stop disobeying us like this?”
“What do you mean? I’m just doing my homework.” But she looks down, picking at her nails.
“Roger,” I say. “You called Roger, and you told him I was still in love with him. And that I was unhappy with your father.”
She presses her lips tightly together but doesn’t deny it.
“Setting aside how you broke a rule to use a phone at all, how could you do that? Didn’t you even think about how that might affect him? Did you think that would actually work?”
She glares at me, then at Blake, and then back at me again. God, this girl can glare. “Maybe I thought it would. I don’t know, maybe youarestill in love with Roger. I don’t know, because you don’t tell me anything.”
I gape. “I—what on earth are you talking about? You know I’m not in love with Roger. I told you that when we broke up. What . . .”
“Dad says there’s some reason you got divorced, and it’s important, and it’s what made you unhappy, but you don’t want to tell me.”
My knees feel weak all of a sudden.
“Ivy—” Blake’s face pales, and he looks back at me. “That’s not what I said.”
I swallow, sitting down on the couch, my hands shaking.
The stress of everything collapses in on me like a dying star.
“I should get to know what’s really going on. It’s my life, too.” Ivy folds her arms.
She’s right, I should tell her. I should have told her a long time ago, but I can’t. I just can’t.
I can’t breathe around the thoughts racing through my brain unchecked, the ones that say that it’ll all be broken, all of it, irreparably. And when she knows, when everyone knows, when they see that I’m not fit to be their mother, to be Kim Watterson, film actress, to be Blake’s wife—
