Chapter 3

Ivy arrived first the next evening.

Daniel opened the door before she could ring the bell, took her coat, and greeted her with the ease of a routine they had already established.

She wore a dark green dress and carried my mother’s fountain pen.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “Daniel thought I might need to sign something tonight.”

“I do mind.”

She looked at him. He was arranging place cards and didn’t ask her to return it.

At seven, Mark, the film’s director, arrived with Helen, our distribution partner. Daniel introduced me without using the title printed on his seating chart.

“This is my wife, Claire. She’s helped Evelyn with research for years.”

Helped.

Twelve years, ten novels, and nearly a million words reduced to a task that required no credit.

Helen shook my hand. “Daniel says you know the background of every book. Please correct us if we miss anything.”

“Claire’s here to enjoy dinner,” Daniel said for me.

Ivy walked to my usual chair. It faced the fireplace with the kitchen behind it—the place I had sat whenever we entertained during twenty years of marriage.

She pulled it out and sat down.

Daniel placed me at the far end of the table.

I didn’t argue over the chair. Instead, I removed the wineglass in front of Ivy and replaced it with an ordinary tumbler.

“This belonged to my mother.”

Ivy glanced at the empty space. “I didn’t know.”

Yesterday she had known what happened in my mother’s kitchen after her death. Tonight she didn’t know she was drinking from her glass.

I locked it in the cabinet.

During dinner, Mark turned the conversation to the screenplay.

He said the most difficult scene came at the end of the first novel, when the heroine left her husband and burned her wedding dress.

“It’s visually powerful,” he told Ivy. “What did you want readers to understand?”

Ivy set down her fork.

“She burns the past so she can believe in love again. The dress represents her anger toward her ex-husband.”

I looked at Daniel. He lifted his wine without meeting my eyes.

The heroine never returned to a man. She sold her house, moved to another state with her daughter, and signed her first lease alone.

“It wasn’t about anger,” I said.

Daniel’s glass stopped near his mouth.

Mark turned to me. “How did you read it?”

“She burned the dress because she no longer needed proof that her husband had once chosen her. She kept the ring because she could sell it. The dress only took up space.”

Mark laughed. “That’s more practical than our interpretation.”

“Claire organized the early notes,” Daniel said. “She remembers details.”

“I remember because I wrote that scene.”

Ivy’s knife struck the edge of her plate.

Helen looked from Ivy to Daniel. “Are you saying—”

“Claire calls them her books sometimes,” Daniel cut in. His voice remained patient. “She was deeply involved. After twenty years of marriage, creative work can feel shared.”

He made me sound like a wife who had mistaken proximity for authorship.

Ivy picked up her knife.

“This is why Evelyn avoided publicity,” she said. “People close to a successful writer can start feeling ownership over the work.”

By people, she meant me.

I stopped discussing the scene. Daniel would turn every additional word into evidence that I was emotional.

“I need three things understood,” I told Ivy. “You will not use my mother, my daughter, or my marriage in another interview. You will not enter my office. And before you leave, you will return that pen.”

Mark set down his wine. Helen stopped flipping through the script.

Ivy’s fingers closed around the pen.

“I understand your attachment,” she said. “But the campaign has an established image now. Changing it would confuse readers.”

“It isn’t a prop.”

“To the audience, it is.”

Daniel finally spoke. “Ivy keeps it through the first publicity cycle. I’ll deal with it afterward.”

“You already dealt with it once.”

His jaw tightened. “Not in front of our guests.”

Dinner ended early.

Mark left with the script under his arm. Helen shook my hand longer than she had when she arrived, but said nothing.

Ivy slipped the gold pen into her purse.

At the door, she turned back.

“The revised character proposal arrives tomorrow,” she said. “The heroine won’t be forty-four in the movie.”

“She’s forty-four in the book.”

“Movie audiences don’t want to watch a middle-aged woman start over.” Ivy linked her arm through Daniel’s. “We’re making her twenty-eight.”

Her smile widened.

“That way, I can play her myself.”