Page 41 of Nantucket Gala

“Do you think it’s likely that Sophia introduced Natalie and Francis?”

“Definitely,” Cindy said. “Sophia and Natalie were pulling for each other. There was a lot of love between them. After Sophia married Francis, she obviously wanted to use her power to boost Natalie’s career. As I understand it, Natalie had floundered for a few years.”

Henry nodded. “Do you think it’s likely that Natalie and Francis had an affair?”

Cindy’s face collapsed. “That’s the rumor, right? But it breaks my heart to think that. Why would Natalie betray Sophia like that? Then again, why would Sophia trust Francis? He was always a cheat, wasn’t he?”

“But do you think he could have killed Natalie?”

Cindy sighed. “I don’t think anyone knows what happened that night. That’s why Francis never went to prison, right?”

Henry’s thoughts ran in circles. Cindy Saucer had given him no new information. She’d only solidified his belief that Natalie and Sophia had been brilliant friends turned enemies.

“Do you know anything about Dean Chatterly?” Henry asked.

“Oh! That poor actor who died?”

“He was Natalie’s boyfriend at the time of his death,” Henry explained.

Cindy shook her head. “There were whispers of foul play. Some people said he was involved in one gang or another. But I don’t think they ever came up with any answers.”

Henry let out a sigh and looked down at the floppy disk. It rested easily on his lap. He didn’t have anything else to ask, and he struggled to know how long to stay. Did Cindy have a husband? He seemed to recall a male figure in some of the photographs he’d seen online, but there was no sign of him here at the house.

Suddenly, Henry was terrified that this woman was lonely.

“Do you want to keep the floppy disk?” he asked.

Cindy’s eyes widened. “Is that an option? Don’t you need it for your project?”

“No,” Henry assured her, passing over the disk.

Cindy held it as though it were a morsel of treasure. Her eyes filled with tears that she blinked away. “It’s strange to think about those days. It makes me wonder what could have been—for all of us. For me and Natalie and Sophia. At least I made it out of the film industry and into another field. But Natalie didn’t make it out with her life. And Sophia? She disappeared.”

Henry’s heart swelled. “I hope to shed some light on what happened to them both.” He swallowed, then added, “I have reason to believe that Sophia wrote several of Francis Bianchi’s scripts.”

Of all the people he could spill the beans to, Cindy Saucer felt like the most appropriate.

“He stole her work?” Cindy gasped, put her hand over her mouth, then let it drop. “I don’t know why I’m so surprised. That kind of thing happened all the time. Women were never appreciated. They still aren’t.”

Henry raised his chin. “I don’t know much about your political career, Cindy, but from what I gleaned, it seems you worked hard for girls and women. You tried to build a better world for them. And in that way, I think you did more for the betterment of humanity than you ever could have behind a camera.”

This time, a tear spilled from Cindy’s left eye. She pressed on it with the palm of her hand.

Henry wasn’t sure why he’d felt called to say that. But he felt a tenderness toward Cindy that he couldn’t fully fathom. Maybe it was because he wasn’t sure if his own film career would workout. Perhaps it was because he was frightened of what he would find at the end of his Untitled Bianchi Script research.

Maybe he was just jet-lagged.

For more than an hour after that, Henry and Cindy talked about everything. Cindy told him more about her filmmaking days, then swapped those stories out for politician ones. She talked about meeting Jimmy Carter and both George Bushes and Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. She talked about the current state of American politics. She talked about what it was like to be a woman in a man’s political sphere.

She said things that would stay with Henry for the rest of his life.

She said things that made him want to call both of his sisters and his mother and say, “I love you. I wish our world was a better one.”

When he left that evening, he hugged Cindy goodbye.

“Good luck on your project, Henry,” Cindy said, waving goodbye as the gate opened for him. “I can’t wait to read about you one day. You’re going to make it. This I know.”

But Cindy didn’t know if Henry would make it. Nobody did.

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