Page 20 of Nantucket Gala

Now, she’d dragged them back up.

“Walk me through it,” Greta asked, her voice tentative. “You wrote a script. When? What year? It must have beenA CataclysmbeforeA Sacred Fig. But back then, you were working as an actress.”

Sophia could picture herself as a young, slender, penniless actress who’d always been told she was beautiful enough to make it in Hollywood.

“I always wrote on the side,” Sophia offered.

“And you never told anyone?”

Sophia chuckled nervously. “I had a boyfriend when I first got out to LA. He was a writer, too. He told me my initial screenplays were garbage. And it’s true they weren’t great, but I was experimenting. But he made me understand what it was like to be judged so harshly for whatever I came up with.”

Sophia hadn’t thought about that particular ex-boyfriend in years. His name had been Steve, and he’d gone on to write sitcoms before dying in an auto accident in the early nineties. Sophia knew that because she had hours, weeks, months, andyears to kill all by herself in this mansion in Beverly Hills. She’d googled just about everything there was to google.

“He sounds like a great guy,” Greta said sarcastically.

“Just another Hollywood wannabe,” Sophia offered. “But after that, I was really careful about who I shared my writing with. And I got a few acting gigs here and there, which helped me to introduce myself as an actress, first and foremost.”

“And that’s how you met Francis.”

“That’s how I met Francis,” Sophia said, hating how wistful she sounded. “You know, my biggest downfall was just how in love with that man I was. He made me feel as though I was in cahoots with him. He made me feel as though we were working on the scripts together. In fact, afterA Cataclysmcame out, I was genuinely shocked he hadn’t credited me as a co-writer or something like that. But I was listed only as an extra.”

“What a monster!”

Sophia chortled and hung her head.

“Did you ask him what was up?” Greta asked.

“I did,” Sophia remembered. “He said that the studios didn’t want to list me as a co-writer. He said he’d fought tooth and nail for it, but they wanted the Francis Bianchi name. That was that. I figured I had to hide behind him forever. And he told me I should be grateful for what I had. I was going to write scripts for the rest of his life. I was going to make things alongside him. And at least in private he called me his partner. I knew I was. I knew he couldn’t write anything like that without me.” Sophia laughed darkly. “I thought that would save our marriage.”

“Well, you never got divorced,” Greta reminded her.

Sophia cackled. “Maybe that means I really did save our marriage!”

“It was the eighties,” Greta whispered. “It was a time when women were finally making their mark.”

“I know. I should have talked to the studios myself. I should have shamed him,” Sophia said. “But I was in love with him, Greta. I would have done anything for him. Don’t you remember?”

Greta took a breath. Sophia could see the vision of herself in Greta’s mind’s eye. She could imagine drinking wine on that glowing Nantucket beach, hand in hand with the iconic director Francis Bianchi.

“Sophia,” Greta said. “I must have told you how much I hated his movies beforeA Cataclysm! I must have told you hundreds of times.”

“I never wanted anyone to hate his work,” Sophia said. “I still don’t want them to.”

“Are you going to come forward?” Greta asked.

Sophia sighed. “It pains me to speak ill of the dead.”

“Don’t you think he deserves it?”

Sophia flared her nostrils. She knew what Greta was referring to, but she didn’t want to look at it too harshly or engage with the parts of her past that she didn’t really like.

She wanted to rewrite history. Was that allowed?

Sophia changed the subject back to Henry Crawford, back to his fledgling career and to stories that hadn’t finished so many years ago.

But Greta strained to take her back. “You have to claim your space in history, Sophia,” she whispered. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”

Much later, long after Greta and Sophia had said painful goodbyes, Sophia lay in the darkness with the blankets up around her chin. Now that Greta and Henry had her secrets, she felt as though she’d betrayed herself.

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