Chapter 15: The Trailer

Mara's POV

Vera stood in the doorway of the study in a silk robe with her hair wrapped in a towel.

"You two are up late," she said.

"Taxes," Keith said, without turning around.

"On a Thursday night?"

"They don't care what night it is."

She smiled at him, and I watched her look past his shoulder to the closed laptop.

Then she looked at me.

"Good night, Mara," she said, as if she had won something.

She went back down the hall, and I heard her door lock.

Keith didn't speak to me again until morning.

At seven my phone lit up on the nightstand, and it didn't stop.

I had forty messages, a dozen missed calls and a text from Pia that said only: "Don't look. Look."

I looked.

The show had put out its trailer overnight.

It ran ninety seconds, and I was in most of it.

There was my voice, small and cracked, saying, "Ashton, is there still a chance for us?"

There was my face at the welcome dinner, cut so that I seemed to be staring at him with a hunger I had never felt.

There was the guest room, the white plastic disc, and me on the bed with both hands over my mouth.

A voice-over said, "Some women don't know when it's over."

Then the title card: SHE WON'T LET GO.

Below it, a line from Ashton in a soft interview voice: "I just want her to be okay."

It had four million views by the time I put my feet on the floor.

By the time I got downstairs there were six photographers outside the gate.

Pia was in the kitchen with a hair dryer and no hair to dry.

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