They Saved My Sister and Let Me Drown, So I Took Hollywood novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Pen
Addie dies in black water while her father swims to her adopted sister, then wakes at the family dinner with the pen in her hand, refuses to sign her script away and walks out, and her father swears no one in town will take her calls.
The water was black, and it was in my mouth.
I had hit my head on the hull when the tender flipped.
My left leg was tangled in the rope, and when I kicked, it did not come free.
Above me, the lights of our yacht shook on the waves.
Twenty feet away, my sister Coralie was screaming that she couldn't swim.
"Dad!" I yelled.
My father turned his head and looked straight at me.
"Addie can swim!" he shouted. "Get Cory!"
Then he turned his back and swam to her.
My brother went after him.
My boyfriend went after my brother.
He passed so close that I could have touched his heel.
"Please," I said, and the water filled the word.
He didn't look back.
A wave rolled over my head, and this time it did not let go.
Near the end, a man I had never seen broke the surface behind the others and swam toward me with one arm stretched out.
He was almost close enough.
A swell took him under.
"Adaline."
I coughed.
Nothing came up, and I was sitting at a long table under string lights with a pen in my hand.
"Adaline, sweetheart. Everyone's waiting."
My father stood at the head of the table with a champagne glass raised.
Forty guests sat down both sides of the table on the terrace of our house in Malibu.
I knew this night.
It was the Haverill Pictures summer showcase, and I was twenty-three again.
Under my hand lay a single sheet of paper.
It said that I assigned all rights in my screenplay, Salt Year, to my brother Griffin, for the family's benefit.
A year of my life had gone into those pages.
I had signed this paper once.
Then I had spent thirteen months being grateful for it, and then I had died in the dark.
"A toast," my father said warmly. "To the Haverills. We take care of our own."
Everyone laughed.
Down the table, Landon smiled at me.
His other hand rested on Coralie's shoulder, where it always went when she was upset.
I had never once asked why.
My mother looked at her plate.
Griffin leaned back in his chair and held out his hand for the paper.
"Take your time, kid," he said, and he was smiling.
"It's a great part. Dessert's getting warm, though."
I looked at the pen.
My fingers were shaking, and I let them.
Then I set the pen down on the paper, very gently, and I pushed back my chair.
"No," I said.
The terrace went quiet.
"Adaline." My father kept his smile on. "Don't make a scene."
"It's my script," I said. "I wrote every page. Griffin hasn't read past page thirty."
Griffin laughed once, short, and looked around the table.
Nobody laughed with him.
I picked up the pages I had brought with me in a folder and tucked them under my arm.
Then I looked at Landon.
"Take your hand off my sister's shoulder," I said. "Or put it somewhere I can see it."
His face changed.
Coralie put her fingers to her chest, and her eyes filled right on schedule.
"Addie, please," she whispered. "You're scaring me."
I took the house key from my pocket and walked to the silver ice bucket at the end of the table.
I dropped the key in with the champagne.
It made a small, clean sound.
"Landon, we're done," I said. "Roman, Griffin, I'm not your writer anymore. Dad, I'm not coming to dinner on Sundays."
"You're upset," my mother said. It was the first thing she had said all night.
"I'm not," I said. "I've never been less upset in my life."
At the back of the terrace, among the crew guests, a man was getting to his feet.
He was tall and gray-eyed, with a white scar through one eyebrow.
I had seen his face once before, upside down in black water, with his arm stretched out to me.
I turned away from him fast, because I could not look at him and walk at the same time.
My father had stopped smiling.
"If you leave this house tonight, you leave all of it," he said. "The car. The phone. The card."
I took the phone from my pocket and laid it by my plate.
I put the car fob beside it, and then my wallet, minus forty dollars in cash.
"Then keep them," I said.
I was halfway down the long drive when his voice came after me across the lawn.
It was calm and carrying, meant for all forty guests.
"Nobody in this town will take your calls."
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