Page 122 of Close Match
Turing away from my mirror, I bow my head. Maybe I’m just coming to realize that not everyone is strong enough to be saved.
It’s three months to the day that Monty entered rehab. I haven’t heard another word from him since I received his letter and sent the painting to him in response. I don’t know if my heart’s suffering for a man I never really knew at all.
My phone flashes with an incoming call. Recognizing the number, I pick it up despite my overwhelming desire not to. “John Thomas,” I murmur. After all, this man could make or break the future of every man and woman beyond my door.
“Evangeline, I hope this isn’t a bad time. Can your understudy take your place for the next few days? I want you in my studio to try out a few songs I’ve been working on forStars. I think you’ll like them.”
And despite the bleeding in my heart for a faceless man, I answer the way I must.
“Absolutely.”
John Thomas hangs up on me without a goodbye. At any other time, I’d be shouting for joy. Despite our long-standing business relationship, John Thomas didn’t promise me anything. Nothing more than a chance. But that chance might save what’s left of my soul after feeling nothing but empty for so long. Right now, I want the peace in knowing that trying was enough. With Monty, I may never have that answer, but for the cast and crew ofStars, I may have just pulled it off.
Pushing myself to stand, I know at the end of today, I’ll keep breathing. I’ll go on. Even if it’s alone.
Quickly changing, I leave my costume and text Simon the news. The amount of bug-eyed emojis I get in response should make me laugh out loud at his over-the-top reaction. It doesn’t. But it does make my lips curve up slightly as I wait for my Uber to come to pick me up from behind the stage door.
Seventy-Seven
Evangeline
July
“No!” I scream at Pasquale a few weeks later when he showed up at where the cast ofStarsis rehearsing the revised script with John Thomas’s musical score added. We’re due to debut on Broadway in six weeks. Choreography is scheduled to come in starting tomorrow. “You’re lying.” My eyes flick over to Simon, who’s standing alongside him. “Tell me it isn’t true,” I beg him.
“I’m sorry, love,” my brother-in-law says as he approaches me. And it’s a good thing he does because my knees give out as I start sobbing, crying harder than I remember doing since my mother died.
Veronica was found dead last night. The smell of her decomposing body alerted neighbors. When the police busted in the door with no response and authorization from her landlord, they found she pulled a bookcase down on top of herself. She died, and no one knew about it for days. Slapping a hand across my mouth, I lurch from Simon’s arms over to stage left to let go of what’s in my stomach.
“She was all alone,” I weep. “She had no one there.”
“Linnie,” Pas says brokenly, but I hear it. The same guilt I’m feeling. She was shunned from the community she loved because of her behavior.Because of me,I think bitterly.
“She made her choices, Linnie,” Simon reminds me. I whirl on him in a rage.
“I let her go because she was toxic, Simon. I hated what she did, but I loved her my whole life. That’s why it hurt so bad that she lied to me.” I curl into myself, sobbing. We’re all three silent for a few moments, each remembering Veronica in our ways. Finally, I ask without lifting my head, “Does Bristol know yet?”
“No. I thought you should know first,” Pasquale whispers.
“Okay…okay.” I begin rocking myself back and forth. Bleary-eyed, I lift my head. “Call Sepi. Tell her to do what she can. Please? This is going to be…I don’t even know how bad this is going to get. She didn’t deserve this. No matter what happened between us, she didn’t deserve this.”
“She didn’t deserve you,” Simon mutters before he turns away to call our agent. I can hear him murmuring as Pasquale lowers himself to sit beside me.
“I don’t even know if she had a will,” I say with a bewildered air. “The only thing I can think of is maybe Mom browbeat her into it at some point.”
“You won’t be able to get in until after the police…” Pasquale’s voice trails off.
“But you said…?” I’m so confused.
“Because her death wasn’t by natural causes, they still have to perform an autopsy, Linnie. Until then, her home is considered a crime scene.” Pas swallows hard. “There’s time.”
Tears fill my eyes again. “There’s never enough time.” There’s no time to go back and tell Veronica I forgive her for the secrets. There’s no time to save Monty. There’s no time to find my heart from the hell it’s just been sunk into. History can’t be rewritten no matter how much we want it to be. With that in the forefront of my mind, I lean my head down on Pasquale’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.
He drops his on top of mine. “You have nothing to be sorry for, sweetheart. You never did. I should be apologizing to you. And Veronica should have as well.”
I’m holding back the comment that wants to leap forth from my mouth about the dead not speaking when Simon ends his call with Sepi. “The news already reached her. She reached out to Courtney Jackson from The Fallen Curtain already for damage control. You’re going to have to give her an exclusive,” he warns me.
I nod, knowing there’s no other way. “Hand me my phone?”
