Her mother was on her second cup, standing at the counter with her coat still on, the way she always stood when she was making clear she wasn’t staying. She’d driven over at nine. She’d drive home after dinner. That’s what she’d done for the last five days, after returning from Acapulco after reading the news that her daughter was getting married to an international movie star.
Rose would never hear the end of the fact that she’d not managed to get to her mom before the tabloids did. The clip of her mom in her bathing suit at the beach bar in Mexico, being asked how she liked her new daughter-in-law had been playedover and over. Fortunately, she’d quickly recovered herself and said ‘I wish both my children nothing but happiness’ – right before rushing back to the hotel and then yelling at Rose for twenty minutes.
“Three vans now,” her mother said. “I counted on my way in. Two men on the footpath with the long cameras, just standing there.”
“I know.”
“How long do they just stand there?”
“Until something happens.”
Her mother’s mouth pressed into a line. She refilled her cup from the pot on the counter. Lizanne’s pot, Lizanne’s coffee, Lizanne’s kitchen visible through the pool house window, Lizanne’s gardeners moving across the far lawn in a slow, unhurried line. Rose’s mother had opinions about all of this and had been expressing them daily, in rotating order.
“I’m supportive of you,” she said.
“I know you are.”
“I think you’re handling it better than most people would.” She paused. “It’s still complete and utter madness.”
“Also noted.”
Quinn came back in, wiping his hands on his jeans. He picked up his phone and checked it before looking up.
“The trailer numbers are in,” he said. After it had been revealed to the network that the plan was going ahead, they’d sent a crew to do a few candid shots of Lizanne and Rose to create a new trailer for the new show.
“I don’t want to know.”
“Rose—”
“I don’t want to know, Quinn.”
He held his hands up.
A golf cart with two production assistants rolled past the pool house window. Rose tracked it without meaning to.
“From Wedding Planner to Bride,” Quinn said, with the reverence of a man reading scripture.
“I know what it’s called.”
“As a title it really—”
“I signed the contract. I have no vote on the title.” She picked up her coffee. It had gone cold while she was watching the pool. She drank it anyway. “Anyway, where’s Daisy?”
“Playroom. Been there since breakfast. There’s a life-size mini pony now.”
“I saw it.”
Rose had stopped trying to work out the logic of Lizanne’s approach to Daisy. While Rose, Quinn, and Daisy would live in the pool house, Daisy had a playroom/bedroom in the main house for show. She would not be on the show, but they would shoot in the rooms to give the impression a child actually lived there.
Lizanne had spent what looked like a considerable amount of money on a child she’d spoken to six times. Not only to redecorate a room into a kid’s bedroom, but to fill another empty room with an assortment of toys.
Daisy had arrived here ten days ago without any of her mother’s reservations and had immediately started treating the place as her permanent residence. She was thriving in a way that Rose found both genuinely relieving and quietly inconvenient to her position that this whole situation was a disaster.
Kayla’s car pulled up outside; Rose saw it on the surveillance camera. She got out, spotted the camera crew setting up near the rose garden, and put her phone up instead of checking her reflection in the window. Three weeks ago she’d have done it the other way around. She was learning the geography of this fast — which angles the cameras covered, which conversations happened in the gaps, how to look like herself while knowing she was being watched. Rose had hired her as her assistant and the show had taken her and made her the loyal best friend, the voice of reason.
Apparently, with Katrina out, a number of supporting cast members had also vanished and therefore the inclusion of Quinn and Kayla – as well as their mom on occasion – had been welcome. In addition, Craig, Lizanne’s agent, would be featured every now and then, along with Pat and some of Lizanne’s acquaintances.
“She’s a natural,” Quinn said.
