“But this is bigger than Dominic,” I said, swiping my screen to show the next image on the post. It was a screenshot of a headline from a major news site. “Former Child Star Hospitalized After Drug-Fueled Music Festival in Texas, Says Anonymous Source.” And then another screenshot, this time from anarticle published yesterday: “Troubled Actress Once Famed for Promoting Family Values Now Officially Divorced.” “Everyone thinks I’m off the rails now. That I just randomly got a divorce for no reason. Like a hypocrite. Like a—like a crazy person.”
“I don’t like that word,” Renata put in mildly.
“People on social media like it,” I mumbled. My ex-husband liked it too, even iflazywas his preferred insult of choice.If you weren’t so lazy, you’d have better work than Hope Channel movies. If you weren’t so lazy, you’d be healthier, and if you were healthier, you’d be pregnant by now.And so forth.Lazywas a word that cut twice: once, because I considered myself to be disciplined, diligent, in control at all times, and twice, because my narcolepsy meant there were times that discipline and control were beyond me no matter how hard I tried.
“I did everything right,” I said finally, telling her what had been running through my mind all day. “I thought I was a good daughter, a good wife, a good actor. But it didn’t matter, did it? Michael cheated on me anyway. My parents still sided with him. And theonetime I did do something for myself, something that was supposed to be fun, I ended up puking my guts out in a Texas desert, two hundred miles from a real airport. I missed the shoot for my next project, and the Hope Channel recast me, and now the entire world thinks I’m irresponsible. And I don’t have a job and I can’t repay the Hope Channel the money I owe them and everything is gone and I blew it all up myself—and it wasn’t even a regular music festival! It was UnFestival, which is an exclusive desert experience and so much more than a regular festival could ever be!”
I sucked in a breath after that surprise monologue, blinking back the burn behind my eyelids. I wanted to cry. But I’d been raised better than that; I’d learned better after fourteen years of marriage. Being out of control wasn’t welcome in my life, and had never been.
“You can cry if you’d like,” Renata said, almost as if she knew what I was thinking, but before I could respond, a tiny alarm beeped from her watch.
Our session was up.
She sighed at her wrist as she silenced the alarm. “Next time, I’m going to remind you earlier that there’s no need to hide your feelings here. But for now, I want you to remember what you told me during our second session, after I’d asked you to come up with a goal for our time together. Can you think of it?”
“Yes,” I said, eager to be a good therapy student. “My entire life, everyone else has defined Winnie Baker for me, but now, I want to define Winnie Baker for myself. I want to be a new Winnie.”
Renata nodded. “Maybe think about what that means in conjunction with what people are saying online right now, hmm? And what we can and can’t control?”
“Okay,” I said. With great confidence, because a new Winnie was not going to care about what people said online. Just like how a new Winnie was never, ever going to make the old Winnie’s mistakes.
And Old Winnie had made quite a few, indeed.
Coming out of Renata’s building always felt like coming out of a womb, and I had to blink in the bright California sunshinefor a few minutes until I could see again. And that waswithmy sunglasses on. In January.
“Finally,” a sharp voice said next to me, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
But when I turned to issue a panicked “no comment,” it wasn’t a paparazzo at all, but a tall woman wearing a knotted trench coat and a smile that was somehow bossy and reassuring at the same time.
“I’ve been waiting here for five minutes,” the woman said, makingfive minutessound liketwelve hours. She stuck out a manicured hand, which I took. She had a quick, hard handshake. Michael would have hated it.
It made me like her immediately.
“Steph D’Arezzo, talent manager,” she said briskly. “Nice to meet you.”
Steph. Steph. The name swam hazily to the surface of my memories. “You’re Nolan Shaw’s manager,” I said. Before I got sick at UnFestival and had to be recast, the former bad boy of pop Nolan Shaw was going to be my costar inDuke the Halls. I’d been nervous about working with him when I’d signed on—even after his years out of the spotlight, I couldn’t picture him as anything other than the beanie-wearing boy-Jezebel I’d known as a teenager—but my distrust had been misplaced. He’d been fiercely supportive of his girlfriend, Bee Hobbes, when she’d been exposed as an adult content creator, and he’d also been nothing but a consummate professional since then, even helming a reboot of the reality show that had once made his career,Band Camp.
“That’s right,” Steph said. “Do you know how I made my name in this business, Winnie?”
I shook my head. Family and faith-based content was a whole other entertainment world, and where all of my career had taken place. I only had the faintest handle on the goings-on of the industry at large.
“I spin straw into gold. I take washed-up, scandal-ridden frogs and I turn them back into princes. Et cetera. Do you see where I’m going with this?”
“You rehabilitate celebrity reputations,” I guessed.
“That’s right. I do fixer-uppers exclusively, but if that fixer can’t be uppered, I move on, because sometimes teamwork doesnotmake the dream work, especially if half the team is a goddamn mess.” Steph reached for her purse, stopped. Huffed at herself. I got the distinct vibe she was a former smoker. “But it turns out,” she continued, “that sometimes a little scandal is good for business. I thought Nolan Shaw falling in love with Bianca von Honey was the end of his comeback, but it turbocharged his career instead. If I’d had a hundred years and even more assistants grabbing me cold brews, I still couldn’t have masterminded the boost he got from living his cute, messy life the way he did last year. You see what I’m saying?”
I didn’t see. All I’d gotten for my brushes with scandal were broken contracts and estranged parents. And Dominic Diamond posts.
Steph seemed to know what I was thinking, because she crossed her arms and regarded me with an arched eyebrow. “They screwed you over pretty good, huh?”
“I—”
“Let me guess,” she went on. “That Michael guy cheated on you, and you wanted to keep it private, and then he rewardedyou by spinning the story to make it sound like you were the bad one. I’m guessing he was behind the leak last year about your hospital stay being for drugs instead of exhaustion?”
I flushed. That was exactly what had happened.
“‘Winnie Baker’s Fall from Grace,’” Steph said as if quoting a headline only she could see. “It’s a good story. Because saints love to hate sinners, and sinners love knowing that the saints are all secretly sinning too. Everyone clicks that headline. Everyone.”
