Chapter 4: Green Ink

Mason's card had a phone number and nothing else.

I called it from Roz's kitchen at noon.

He answered on the first ring.

"Kerr."

"It's Willa Mercer," I said. "Show me the pages."

He gave me an address in Silver Lake and said he would be there all afternoon.

Roz put the freezer bag in her tote, put on her sunglasses and said, "I'm driving."

"You don't have to come."

"I read the first draft before anyone else did. I'm a witness. I'm also bringing a sandwich."

His editing suite was a long room behind a plain door, full of monitors and cold coffee.

Mason stood when we came in.

He had changed out of the tuxedo into a gray sweater with the sleeves pushed up, and he looked like he hadn't slept.

"Mrs. Holloway."

"Mercer," I said. "Use my name."

He nodded once.

"Ms. Mercer."

On the table between us lay a thick script with a black cover, soft at the corners, held with two brass brads.

"The director's copy," Mason said. "It came to my desk two and a half years ago from Draper Pictures."

He opened it to the middle.

The typed lines ran down the center of the page, and in the margins, in green ink, a hand had written small notes.

Cut this. She would never say that out loud.

Slower here. He doesn't hear her yet.

I stopped breathing.

It was my handwriting.

It was my sentence, written in my kitchen at one in the morning with a cup of tea going cold at my elbow.

"That's my first draft," I said. "I printed it, and I wrote those notes on it myself."

"She told me W.M. was an assistant."

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