Chapter 10: Eight Hundred Seats

Salt Line premiered in a mountain theater in Park City, in snow up to my knees, to eight hundred people in expensive coats.

I sat in row H with my coat on my lap.

Beck sat on my left.

On my right was the head of drama at Lumen, cracking almonds quietly in the dark.

Behind us were my roommate and the old assistant, who had borrowed a fur hat and would not discuss it.

My family filled the front row.

My father was in the middle, in a charcoal overcoat.

Beside him sat my mother with her hands folded.

Roman had flown in from a set, and Coralie wore a silver dress with Landon on her arm.

Griffin was backstage, getting ready to be adored.

The lights went down.

It was my story.

Every beat I had written in a pool house at twenty-one was on the screen, in somebody else's rhythm.

The woman came home to the salt flats.

The brother lied to her about the mill.

Coralie played her.

She was lovely.

She said my lines in a soft, breathy voice.

It made no sense for a woman who had buried her father alone and shot a trespasser.

In row C, a few people stopped crying at the second scene and started checking their phones.

By the end of act two, Beck had taken my hand in the dark.

I didn't pull it back.

The third act arrived.

I knew exactly what Griffin had, because I'd watched him not read it.

He had only the first two thirds of the notebook and a guess.

The heroine stands on the edge of the flat at dusk, alone.

A boat comes across the salt water.

Her brother, the one who lied, steps out of it and offers her his hand.

She takes it, and the music swells.

The audience stirred.

Someone near me whispered, "Wait, what?"

That was not my ending.

The credits rolled.

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