An Elm Creek Quilts Sampler (104 page)

“It was a rehearsal; Samantha needed one. But to answer your next question, yes, we will be filming that scene with her in the role of Sadie.”

Julia forced air through her constricted throat. “I see.” Another breath. “Then let me shoot the scene, too. You choose the superior performance. That’s fair, don’t you think?”

“No.”

Julia stared at him. “What do you mean, no? Just no? You’re not even—”

“Julia, why are you doing this to yourself?” He seemed genuinely puzzled. “Why make this more difficult than it has to be?”

Her thoughts in a whirl, Julia couldn’t respond. When Deneford opened the door, she blinked in the bright sunlight and stepped outside. “We’ll talk on Monday,” he called after her, but she didn’t acknowledge him. The door fell heavily shut behind her, and she walked to her car, numb.

She heard the door open and shut again, and then footsteps on the pavement. “Miss Merchaud,” Ellen called out. Julia stopped and turned around, her movements mechanical. “What did he say? Did he change his mind?”

“He’s going to use Samantha.”

“That ignorant hack!”

“He’s no hack.” Julia’s voice sounded wooden to her ears. “He has an Oscar and four Emmys. Or is it five? I don’t remember—”

Ellen seized her shoulders. “Miss Merchaud, we can’t let him ruin our movie.”

“It isn’t our movie,” Julia said, Ellen’s touch drawing her back to awareness. “You sold him your script. He owns it now. Whatever he wants to do, he can do.”

Ellen looked close to tears. “I wish I’d never sent him a single page.”

“At least you’ll still receive credit for the screenplay.”

“I don’t know if I want it.”

Suddenly Julia’s own voice echoed in her thoughts:
A film is a collaborative effort
, she had told Ellen,
but the director’s vision has priority. We all have to adapt for the greater good of the final project.
The memory taunted her, and she thought she might be ill.

She closed her eyes to still her churning stomach.
Breathe
, she ordered herself. When she opened her eyes again, Ellen was staring at her, worried. “Are you all right?”

Instead of answering, Julia said, “He’ll know someone tipped me off. You better get back in there or he’ll figure out it was you.”

Ellen laughed bitterly. “He barely even notices when I’m there. I don’t think he’ll notice that I’m gone.”

“I’m serious, Ellen. He could have you barred from the set.”

Ellen looked taken aback. “He can’t. It’s my movie.”

“It isn’t your movie,” Julia said, each word clear and emphatic. “It’s his movie. Accept that, and make the best of it.”

Ellen stared at her for a moment, then swallowed and nodded. She turned and hurried back into the building. Only after she was gone did Julia realize she had forgotten to thank Ellen for the warning.

As she drove home, her thoughts gradually became more clear. She would fight. It was a slim chance, but there might be something in her contract prohibiting this. The first thing she would do was call Ares and get him searching for a loophole.

But when she called, his assistant said he would be in meetings all day and wouldn’t be available until tomorrow. “He has to check in sometime,” she snapped, thinking of how Maury would interrupt a meeting, any meeting, to take her emergency calls. “Have him call me then.” She slammed down the phone without waiting for a reply, and then, since Deneford and Ares were out of range, she kicked over a copper vase full of dried decorative grasses and sent it clattering across the gleaming hardwood floor. Now what was she supposed to do?

Suddenly inspiration struck. “Lucy, there’s a mess in the parlor,” she called out as she raced to her study. Samantha had replaced Julia because she was a better quilter. Well, that was a situation Julia could remedy. She yanked open her desk drawer and took out her folder of quilt camp notes. Near the bottom was the sheet of paper with Donna Jorgenson’s address and phone number.

Julia sat down and rested her hands on her desk to compose herself. Very well. None of the Cross-Country Quilters had seen fit to contact her, and her injured pride had prevented her from reaching out to them. But now she needed Donna’s help and could wait no longer.

The phone rang twice before a girl’s voice answered, “Hello?”

“Yes. May I speak with Mrs. Donna Jorgenson?”

“Hold on, please.” There was a hollow sound, as if the mouthpiece had been covered, and then a muffled, “Mom, it’s for you.”

A moment later, a familiar voice said pleasantly, “Hello?”

“Donna?”

“Yes?”

“It’s me. Julia.” For a panicky moment she wondered if Donna would remember her. “From quilt camp.”

“Julia?” Donna cried, delighted. “I can’t believe it. It’s so nice to hear from you. Where have you been? We all thought you fell off the face of the earth.”

Was that so? “You could have written,” Julia said, petulant.

“Are you kidding? We did! I wrote twice, Grace and Megan each wrote once, and Vinnie—well, gosh, she must be on her eighth or ninth letter by now. All we get back are these form letters and autographed pictures. Don’t get me wrong; we’re glad to get them, but honestly, how many identical photos do we need?” She laughed.

For the second time that day, Julia felt as if she had tumbled into a separate reality from the one she usually inhabited. “You wrote to me? At my home?”

“Well, I’m not sure. It’s the address you gave us at camp. I assumed it was your home.” Donna read off the address for Julia’s home, not a digit out of place.

“I don’t understand this.”

“Neither did we, especially since that’s not the address on the envelopes you sent us.”

Donna recited a second address, but Julia only needed to hear the first word to realize what had happened. “That bastard.”

“What? Who?”

“My agent.” Somehow he’d arranged to have her mail routed to his office, and suddenly she understood who his accomplice must have been. “And my assistant. She gave him my personal mail.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out, and then I’m going to fire her.”

“Fire her?” Donna sounded horrified. “I’m sure there must be a logical explanation—”

“For stealing my mail?” Didn’t Donna understand? All those weeks of feeling neglected and forgotten, and Lucy—with specific instructions to notify her the minute a letter from the Cross-Country Quilters arrived—“I have to fire her.”

“Can’t you just tell her not to do it again?” Donna begged. “Give her another chance. You’re too nice a person to fire someone this close to the holidays.”

Donna was wrong. Julia was not a nice person, and she was feeling especially not nice at the moment. But something in Donna’s voice nagged at her, until, against her better judgment, she reluctantly said, “I’ll get her side of the story first. I’m not promising anything, but I’ll give her a chance to explain.” And if Julia didn’t like what Lucy had to say,
then
she’d fire her.

“I’m sure you’ll be glad you did.”

Julia doubted it, but she had bigger problems on her mind. “Donna, the reason I’m calling—”

“Yes?”

Donna’s voice sounded so warm, so full of concern, that Julia’s pride evaporated. “I need your help.”

Eight

M
egan had been too busy to check her email all day, so it wasn’t until she was about to go home that she finally had a chance to download her messages. Several were waiting, including an exchange between Grace and Donna that had begun the day before, when Donna had written to announce that Julia was alive but facing problems with her agent and her director, not the least of which was having her personal mail misdirected. Today Grace responded:

TO:[email protected], [email protected]

FROM: Grace Daniels

DATE: 8:14 AM PT 9 Nov

SUBJECT: Re: News from Julia

I’m glad she didn’t forget us. Someone should tell Vinnie before she buries southern California beneath an avalanche of mail. We really have to get those two online.

Any thoughts on how we can help Julia with the movie problems?

Donna had written back:

We could fly down there and give her director a few good pokes with our needles.

Within minutes, Grace had answered:

I wish we could. I’d love to get out of town. You aren’t going to believe this, but I agreed to let Gabriel come to Thanksgiving dinner. My sisters think I’m crazy, but Joshua dotes on his grandfather, and I didn’t want to ruin the holiday for him.

Donna answered that she didn’t envy Grace, but she didn’t expect her own holiday to be much better. Lindsay and Brandon were coming for Thanksgiving dinner, which meant that Donna intended to put on a production worthy of Martha Stewart. “I have to make up for all these months of pretending the engagement would just go away if I ignored it,” she wrote. “Lindsay sounds so stressed out lately, and I’m sure it’s my fault. I have to stop acting like an evil mother-in-law before Brandon runs screaming for the hills.”

Megan smiled and wrote:

Donna, honey, you are not an evil anything. But tell the truth, would you really mind if Brandon ran away?

She waited a few minutes just in case Donna was online and would respond quickly. When she checked her email, a message downloaded:

TO:[email protected]

FROM:[email protected]

DATE: 5:43 PM 9 Nov

SUBJECT: Checking in

So, how did the meeting go?

Megan felt a stirring of pleasure at the sight of the familiar address. Since Halloween, she and Adam had begun corresponding by email, and she usually heard from him several times a week. They exchanged small talk, mostly, details about their work and their plans for the weekends. Megan had discovered that Adam’s quirky sense of humor was just as amusing via email, although she found herself thinking she would have preferred to hear his voice. Especially now, since the meeting he referred to had felt more like an ambush than a parent-teacher conference.

When Megan had entered the classroom, she was surprised to see the teacher was not alone. The man with her introduced himself as the school counselor. “I’m glad we’re finally able to meet,” he said, shaking her hand.

“Finally?” Megan said. The teacher and counselor exchanged a look, and then it came out: In the past few months, they had sent Robby home with three requests for a teacher-parent conference.

“Why didn’t you mail them?” Megan managed to ask. “Why didn’t you phone me at work or at home?”

They explained that they would have, eventually, but unfortunately three postponements weren’t unusual in these situations.

“And what kind of situation is that, exactly?” Megan asked.

Minor disciplinary problems, of course. If it had been something egregious, they hastened to assure her, she would have been contacted immediately.

Megan sat numbly as they explained. Robby was a bright and imaginative boy, but quieter than the others and somewhat withdrawn. Usually. Other times, he would tell wild, outlandish tales, and when the other students teased him, he lashed out. He had trouble controlling his anger, and sometimes he would have outbursts with no apparent provocation. That was why they suspected some trouble at home.

They paused then, waiting for her to speak, and their scrutiny made Megan feel powerless and fearful. The look in their eyes suggested they had already decided she must be an unfit mother and were only looking for the evidence to support their conclusion. “Robby doesn’t do anything like this at home,” she stammered, just as she remembered Gina’s cookies. “I mean, the usual childhood disobedience, testing authority and such, but nothing like what you’ve described.”

“That’s not unusual,” the counselor said. “What about Robby’s father? He couldn’t come today?”

“He lives in Oregon. We’re divorced.”

“I see.” The counselor nodded and made some notes on a pad. “Does Robby have much contact with his father?”

“Very little since he moved away at the beginning of the summer. Before then, they saw each other maybe once a month.” Megan inhaled deeply to still the pounding of her heart. “My former husband wasn’t very good about keeping to the scheduled visitation agreement.”

“Robby often tells stories about his father,” the teacher said. “One week he’s a secret service agent, the next he’s a fighter pilot—”

“It seems likely his behavior problems are related to his father’s absence,” the counselor broke in. “Don’t you agree, Mrs. Donohue?”

“I … yes, that seems likely.” Megan could have told them that years ago. She counted to three silently before asking if they had any suggestions for how to help Robby. They recommended professional counseling to help him deal with his emotions, especially his anger at his father.

The teacher and counselor had seemed satisfied as she left, as if they had discharged their duties appropriately and now were free to turn their thoughts to other matters. They probably had no idea they had tapped into the deep spring of anxiety that welled up in the heart of every mother, that despite all her love and her best efforts she had failed her child. If she wanted to absolve herself of responsibility, she could shift the blame to Keith, but that would neither ease her conscience nor help her son. She was the custodial parent; she should have done more, somehow, to compensate for Keith’s neglect.

Even now, after the initial shock of Robby’s deceptions had dulled, just thinking of it threatened to bring on tears of frustration, so she kept her reply to Adam vague: