By the end of her first fort­night at Star­dust The­ater, Jude had firm­ly pegged Kennedy Sanders as the epit­o­me of Broad­way aspiration—a blend of celebri­ty and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, embody­ing themes of iden­ti­ty and belong­ing. Kennedy’s pres­ence was unde­ni­able; she com­mand­ed atten­tion wher­ev­er she went, her every action radi­at­ing star pow­er, from the way she chal­lenged direc­tors to the sto­ries she wove about her life. The tales she told about her­self, often exag­ger­at­ed or mys­ti­fied, paint­ed a pic­ture of some­one liv­ing both in and out of real­i­ty, an actress yearn­ing for recog­ni­tion but, per­haps, unsure of her own worth. Her prized red sports car, care­ful­ly guard­ed and pam­pered, became a sym­bol of her self-per­ceived stature, its safe­ty being a nar­ra­tive tied to an inci­dent with a rival.

In stark con­trast, Jude found her­self immersed in a qui­et, behind-the-scenes exis­tence at the the­ater. Her role as an ush­er was menial, but it pro­vid­ed a foothold—a chance to be close to the world she want­ed, with the added ben­e­fit of being able to observe the the­ater’s inner work­ings. Jude told oth­ers she had recent­ly grad­u­at­ed and was sim­ply look­ing for extra income, but beneath that sur­face expla­na­tion lay a deep­er, more per­son­al moti­va­tion tied to Kennedy her­self. Jude’s unspo­ken desire was not just to be a part of the the­ater world, but to under­stand Kennedy, to unrav­el some­thing of her own past through Kennedy’s expe­ri­ence.

Reese, Jude’s sig­nif­i­cant oth­er, grew sus­pi­cious of her attach­ment to the job, sens­ing that it was more than just finan­cial neces­si­ty. His con­cern was­n’t unwar­rant­ed; Jude’s focus on Kennedy seemed to blur the lines between pro­fes­sion­al intrigue and per­son­al fix­a­tion. Kennedy’s larg­er-than-life per­sona drew Jude in, but it was the per­son­al glimpses that Kennedy let slip—about her strug­gles, her career ambi­tions, and her dif­fi­cult rela­tion­ship with her mother—that res­onat­ed with Jude on a deep­er lev­el.

Kennedy’s open­ness about her past, includ­ing her con­tentious rela­tion­ship with her moth­er, cre­at­ed unex­pect­ed moments of empa­thy between the two women. Through Kennedy’s sto­ries, Jude saw echoes of her own unre­solved feel­ings about Stel­la, her estranged moth­er. Kennedy spoke of a moth­er who nev­er sup­port­ed her, who seemed to hold her back, and who had no under­stand­ing of her dreams or ambi­tions. For Jude, this nar­ra­tive struck a chord, draw­ing par­al­lels to her own expe­ri­ence with Stel­la, whose own rein­ven­tion and aban­don­ment of the past had left Jude search­ing for some­thing more.

Kennedy’s tales, whether about the uncer­tain tra­jec­to­ry of her act­ing career or her dif­fi­cult fam­i­ly dynam­ics, paint­ed her as both a dream­er and a misfit—someone try­ing to nav­i­gate the world’s expec­ta­tions while grap­pling with her own sense of iden­ti­ty. She wasn’t just the glam­orous actress; she was a vul­ner­a­ble woman, at times unsure of her path, mak­ing her strug­gles all the more human. In some ways, Jude’s sym­pa­thy for Kennedy was born not only from their shared expe­ri­ences with dif­fi­cult moth­ers but from the real­iza­tion that both were search­ing for a form of belonging—Kennedy in her career and Jude in her frac­tured fam­i­ly his­to­ry.

Their after-the­ater exchanges, often occur­ring in a dim­ly lit neigh­bor­hood bar, offered an awk­ward cama­raderie. Nei­ther woman ful­ly under­stood the oth­er, yet there was an unspo­ken connection—Jude, in her qui­et pur­suit of famil­ial truth, and Kennedy, inad­ver­tent­ly car­ry­ing the weight of a past that wasn’t entire­ly her own. The con­ver­sa­tions, full of moments of laugh­ter, con­fu­sion, and shared vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, high­light­ed the ten­sion between their worlds. They weren’t quite friends, but some­thing deep­er linked them, a shared long­ing for accep­tance and under­stand­ing that tran­scend­ed their dif­fer­ences.

This chap­ter del­i­cate­ly weaves togeth­er the themes of iden­ti­ty, ambi­tion, and the quest for con­nec­tion. Jude’s pur­suit of her family’s truth inter­sects with Kennedy’s search for recog­ni­tion, cre­at­ing a bond that is both ten­u­ous and sig­nif­i­cant. As the fad­ing the­ater serves as the back­drop for their per­son­al jour­neys, both women are forced to con­front the larg­er ques­tions of who they are and where they belong—within their careers, their fam­i­lies, and the ever-shift­ing world around them.