I’d just finished talking to Maddie and Mom. Mom had been awake and feeling much better, although a little tired from the events of the day. The good news was that her scan came back free of any signs of stroke or concussion, and the doctors didn’t think her fainting was an allergic reaction to anything. They diagnosed the event as a vagal response to some pelvic pain she’d been having and had been trying to grit her way throughwithout bothering any of us about it. She would be released from the hospital tomorrow and see her gynecologist later in the week to investigate the source of her pain, although she insisted it was normal for her and that this was a big fuss over nothing.
“Mom, passing out in the Michaels parking lot is not nothing!” I’d protested.
“Well, it’s not a good look, I’ll admit that,” Mom had said. “But they’re just going to tell me to take some ibuprofen and to eat more fiber or something. Joke’s on them—I have a Metamucil smoothie every morning. I excrete like a champ.”
“Ew, Mom,” I’d heard Maddie say in the background.
I’d told everyone to call me tomorrow and also reminded them that I would be on the first flight home if anything changed, and then hung up, trying to pep talk myself into staying here. Trying to convince myself to stay and do my job when it felt like I was still needed back home, even though everything was sort of fine now.
But what if it didn’t stay fine?
Or what if Maddie’s right and you’re micromanaging your own family?
And that was when I’d decided I needed some dusty bourbon.
My newly arrived manager found me in the dark sort-of bar with my head in my hands and the uncapped bourbon next to my elbow.
“That bottle might be older than you are,” Steph said by way of greeting.
I didn’t bother looking up as she mounted the stool next to me, but I did gesture to the bottle, since I was nothing ifnot a gracious host, and she grabbed it by the neck and took a long swig.
“You just got here,” I said. “It can’t be that bad.”
“Oh yes, it can,” Steph said, setting the bottle down with athunk. “I just came from the production office, where I had a long meeting with Teddy and Gretchen. Teddy, by the way? A total fucking disaster. That’s my professional diagnosis; he doesn’t even have to pay me a consulting fee for that.”
“Is that why you came to Christmas Notch? To meet with Gretchen about me?”
Steph tapped maroon-painted nails on the bar. “No, I came because I wanted to make sure things weren’t a shit show here. This is Teddy’s first movie for the Hope Channel and your costar is brand new. It’s more variables than I’d like.”
And that wasn’t even including me, the biggest variable of them all.
“What did Gretchen say?” I asked. “Was it about this afternoon?”
“Yes, and about every other day that you’re running some kind of PTO phone tree instead of being a duke. You’re on thin fucking ice with her, Nolan, and I think we’ve established that I will make my grandmother’s traditional Christmas gravy from your neckbone if you screw this up. Being vetted by the Hope Channel and its viewers is the first step to the new Nolan Shaw. Without this we have nothing. Zero. So I hope these phone calls have been worth the risk.”
It sounded so shallow when Steph put it like that. Like nothing could be worth the risk of messing up a fresh start.
“It was my mom,” I said after a minute. My voice was soft against the strains of Nat King Cole drifting in through the open double doors. “She had to go to the emergency room today.”
When I looked up at Steph, she was leaning forward to put her hand on my face. Her trademark pearls glinted from underneath the lapels of her tailored pantsuit.
“I’m sorry, Nolan,” she said, not unkindly. “I’m sorry your mother had a thing. And I know why you’re doing all of this, I really do. But directors don’t have time to care about your personal shit. Producers especially don’t.”
Producers.That reminded me that she still didn’t know about Teddy being Uncle Ray-Ray, or Bee being Bianca. And for Bee’s sake, I was a little relieved that it was only my own messes that needed to be cleaned up at the moment.
And I could do that; I could fix my mess. I could apologize to Gretchen and—and well, I didn’t know what else yet. Maybe find someone I trusted to hang on to my phone while I was on camera and hope that my run of bad phone luck was over.
Maybe even tell her the truth.
Steph was right that directors and producers didn’t have the bandwidth to care about what each individual cast member was going through, but my family stuff was such a big part of my life right now...
Steph correctly interpreted my pause. “I don’t like lying, even though it’s part of my job,” she said. “Normally, I might even advocate for telling Gretchen the truth. But if the word gets out that your home life is complicated—the kind of complicated that causes problems on set and ultimately costs timeand money—you’ll develop a reputation in this business that even I can’t fix.”
“Gretchen’s not like that, though,” I protested. “She wouldn’t see it like that.”
“I agree,” said Steph. “But can you promise that Pearl wouldn’t? Or Teddy Fletcher? Can you promise that Gretchen wouldn’t need to tell someone else because she thinks they should also be aware? A PA? A Hope Channel exec worried about delays? There are no secrets on a movie set, Nolan. None. And there are even less in Hollywood. If people know you have divided attention for a semipermanent reason here in Christmas Notch, they will know it everywhere. And if that happens I can’t promise that you’ll be able to get another job with the Hope Channel. And I definitely can’t promise you any kind of prime-time gig where they’ll need you to be dependable above all else.”
The truth in her words felt like bottom-shelf whiskey. A deep-chest burn I needed, but not one I particularly liked.
