Chap­ter 30

“You and Celia did­n’t have any con­tact at all?” I ask.

Eve­lyn shakes her head. She stands up and walks over to the win­dow and opens it a crack. The breeze that streams in is wel­come. When she sits back down, she looks at me, ready to move on to some­thing else. But I’m too baf­fled.

“How long were the two of you togeth­er by that point?”

“Three years?” Eve­lyn says. “Just about.”

“And she just left? With­out anoth­er word?”

Eve­lyn nods.

“Did you try to call her?”

She shakes her head. “I was … I didn’t yet know that it is OK to grov­el for some­thing you real­ly want. I thought that if she didn’t want me, if she didn’t under­stand why I did what I did, then I didn’t need her.”

“And you were OK?”

“No, I was mis­er­able. I was hung up on her for years. I mean, sure, I spent my time hav­ing fun. Don’t get me wrong. But Celia was nowhere in sight. In fact, I would read copies of Sub Rosa because Celia’s pic­ture was in them, ana­lyz­ing the oth­er peo­ple with her in the pho­tos, won­der­ing who they were to her, how she knew them. I know now that she was just as heart­bro­ken as I was. That some­where in her head, she was wait­ing for me to call her and apol­o­gize. But at the time, I just ached all alone.”

“Do you regret that you didn’t call her?” I ask her. “That you lost that time?”

Eve­lyn looks at me as if I am stu­pid. “She’s gone now,” Eve­lyn says. “The love of my life is gone, and I can’t just call her and say I’m sor­ry and have her come back. She’s gone for­ev­er. So yes, Monique, that is some­thing I do regret. I regret every sec­ond I didn’t spend with her. I regret every stu­pid thing I did that caused her an ounce of pain. I should have chased her down the street the day she left me. I should have begged her to stay. I should have apol­o­gized and sent ros­es and stood on top of the Hol­ly­wood sign and shout­ed, ‘I’m in love with Celia St. James!’ and let them cru­ci­fy me for it. That’s what I should have done. And now that I don’t have her, and I have more mon­ey than I could ever use in this life­time, and my name is cement­ed in Hol­ly­wood his­to­ry, and I know how hol­low it is, I am kick­ing myself for every sin­gle sec­ond I chose it over lov­ing her proud­ly. But that’s a lux­u­ry. You can do that when you’re rich and famous. You can decide that wealth and renown are worth­less when you have them. Back then, I still thought I had all the time I need­ed to do every­thing I want­ed. That if I just played my cards right, I could have it all.”

“You thought she’d come back to you,” I say.

“I knew she’d come back to me,” Eve­lyn says. “And she knew it, too. We both knew our time wasn’t over.”

I hear the dis­tinct sound of my phone. But it isn’t the famil­iar tone of a reg­u­lar text mes­sage. It is the beep I set just for David, last year when I got the phone, just after we were mar­ried, when it nev­er occurred to me that he’d ever stop tex­ting.

I look down briefly to see his name. And beneath it: I think we should talk. This is too huge, M. It’s hap­pen­ing too fast. We have to talk about it. I put it out of my mind instant­ly.

“So you knew she was com­ing back to you, but you mar­ried Rex North any­way?” I ask, refo­cused.

Eve­lyn low­ers her head for a moment, prepar­ing to explain her­self. “Anna Karen­i­na was way over bud­get. We were weeks behind sched­ule. Rex was Count Vron­sky. By the time the director’s cut came in, we knew the entire thing had to be reed­it­ed, and we need­ed to bring some­one else in to save it.”

“And you had a stake in the box office.”

“Both Har­ry and I did. It was his first movie after leav­ing Sun­set Stu­dios. If it flopped, he would have a hard time get­ting anoth­er meet­ing in town.”

“And you? What would have hap­pened to you if it flopped?”