That, of all things, starts to make my chest tighten, the panic setting in—like my brain can’t handle the bigger issues, so it’s decided to worry at this.
All these people working this movie—the crew, the cast, hundreds of people—need us to do our jobs.To do everything we can to make this movie work, to make it successful. And all I can bring them is delays and PR nightmares, and what if the movie tanks because of us, what if people lose their jobs and—
I force myself to focus on what’s important right now—Ivy. We find her near the catering vans, just as Sarah had said. She’s got Costanza on his leash, snuffling around for scraps, while she peers over the shoulders of some crew members with a tablet out.
“Ivy,” Blake says. His voice is sharp, and Ivy wheels on us, her expression hard.
Is it guilt? Or just anger that this is out there?
Oh, god, the things we talked about. If she knows, if she already knows, and I wasn’t the one to tell her—
The crew members look between us and Ivy and quickly switch off the video they were watching, but not before I hear my own voice on it, though I couldn’t make out the exact words.
“Come with us,” Blake says in a low voice. Ivy follows behind us with Costanza, who happily bobs along, completely oblivious.
We get to Blake’s trailer and go inside. Costanza smells another of his rawhide chews and leaps forward, knocking into the coffee table instead. A mostly empty Starbucks cup topples over.
I close the door behind us, but before either of us can say anything, Ivy beats us to the punch.
“How could youdothat?” she asks. “You said all those things aboutTanner!”
Tanner?I simultaneously want to laugh at the absurdity and shake some sense into my daughter. Of course our twelve-year-old would care most about the cute older boy involved.
“That’s not the biggest issue here,” I say.
Ivy’s eyes are dark. “You think I did that, don’t you? You think I put that video out.”
Blake’s voice is as deceptively calm as mine. “Did you?”
“Does it matter? You’re not going to believe me anyway!”
“Try us,” Blake says.
Ivy’s lips purse as she glares at us, and my heart pounds.
“No,” she finally says. “Why would I want everyone to see you guys being allgrosslike that? You don’t tell me anything, ever, and you make my computer spy on me and then you blame me when it spies on you instead!”
“We’re just trying to figure out the truth, Ive,” Blake says. “If you say you didn’t do it . . .”
She stares us down. “I. Didn’t.”
There’s a long beat where both of us stare at our daughter, trying to read the truth from her beautiful, furious face.
I want to trust her. I do.
“Okay,” Blake says, his voice softer. “Thank you. We’ll talk more, okay? But you need to stay here while we go talk to security and figure out who did this.”
Ivy’s eyes cut back and forth between us, like she’s waiting for more, but then she just lets out a sigh and drops down onto the couch. “Fine,” she says.
We leave the trailer, and when the door closes behind us, I look over at Blake. “Do you think she’s telling us the truth?”
He squeezes my hand, his eyes sad. “I don’t know. I just don’t know anymore.”
Twenty-seven
Blake
Icarry Ivy’s computer between trailers to the security office. Camilla was right; I need to talk to them immediately and see if there’s anyone who can take a look and figure out whether it was my daughter who did this.
