Page 66 of The Manor of Dreams

DAY 5 IN THE HOUSE

LUCILLEpulled into the parking lot of Reid’s office. It was late enough that the sky was darkening. When she went inside, the lights clicked on. No one was at the reception desk, so she headed straight to Reid’s office.

He stood to greet her. “Am I your last appointment?” Lucille looked around. “What’s keeping you here?”

Reid ran his fingers through his rumpled hair. “This really complicated will for a producer. I’m currently following up on eight NDAs. It’s like pulling teeth.”

“I assume you won’t tell me who it is.”

Reid gave her a cryptic smile. “You can probably google it.”

“It’s warm in here.”

“Yeah. They turn the AC off after seven.” He rolled up his sleeves.

“Can’t you pass this one off to an associate?”

“I told her to go home. I wanted to handle this. I know the producer’s family.”

Of course he would. Reid was Eugene Lyman’s son, after all. He had Eugene’s height and his smooth voice that could captivate the attention of a room. He could have been an actor, but instead he chose to parse out their legacies in fine print.I want to be a writer, he’d told her at that party. And yet he was here. What had happened? “Can I sit?”

He started. “Right. Come in.” As he guided Lucille toward thechair, his hand slipped to the small of her back and she glanced at him again. He sat back down on the other side of the desk. “So, what came up?”

Lucille sank into the chair. “This isn’t really related to the will… I just wanted to talk.” She exhaled. “To someone.”

“Lucy, are you okay? You seem shaken.”

That question. To be asked if she was okay was a sign of weakness. It meant that she must be visibly unraveling. To be fair, maybe she was. She was seeing flowers in books, seeing her sister in the mirrors, seeing walls filled with dirt, rippling as if it were alive. “I’m okay. I’m trying to make sense of what happened between my parents.” She reached into her tote and laid it all out in front of her: The screenplay. The divorce documents. The slip of paper. “I went through my mother’s things.” She lowered her voice. “They’d been fighting that summer. About money. And their careers. But I didn’t know how bad it was. And I didn’t know—” She swallowed. “Ma had tried to file for divorce that summer. And Dad recommended her to a psychiatric facility.”

She saw Reid’s eyes widen. She said slowly, “I know… they were happy sometimes. They took trips together. They went to film festivals together. They went to Cannes that summer. Dad brought home flowers for her all the time…” She flung her hand at the papers. “And yet all this still happened. I don’t know what to make of it.”

There was an unnerving silence. Reid reached across the desk and laid his hand on her arm. “I don’t mean to pry. So please stop me if I am. But was something going on with your mother that spring?”

Lucille looked up. “What do you mean?”

That spring. Lucille said, “I think she was… frustrated? She didn’t like Dad’s production company. And she wasn’t… getting many roles. I thought that was all it was.”

“I remember that, actually,” Reid said. “My dad talked about it. He’d been all set to cast your mother in a movie.”

“Right, I remember that. But at the last minute he picked someone else.”

“Because your dad talked him out of it.”

Lucille stiffened. “He did?”

Reid nodded. “He told my dad to reconsider. That she wouldn’t be a good fit for the role. Because her condition was… fragile.”

“What do you mean,fragile?” Lucille asked sharply.

“I don’t know. Mentally unwell, it sounded like. I just remember overhearing at dinner.” Reid sounded almost apologetic. He didn’t quite meet her eyes.

“What else were your parents saying?”

“Well.” A shadow crossed his expression. “You know. My parents loved to speculate. My mom especially. They couldn’t face the fact that their own family was a mess. So they projected outward at other families.”

“And?”

“They said that something wasn’t quite right between your parents. My mom guessed some kind of jealousy, infidelity, maybe—” He met her eyes. “I don’t know. It was just my mom.”

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