Invisible(65)

It took the producers another six months to get everything organized and in shape. They had a shooting schedule over the summer, and they’d be shooting it in New York, which was easy for her.

They had attached some very big actors to the project. She was excited to be working with them, and had additional suggestions herself.

When they started, she was on set directing the entire time. Everything she had learned from watching Hamish was useful, and she got some magnificent performances out of the cast.

When the film finally came out, it got great reviews, and Antonia was working on another one by then. She knew she had finally found her niche, she was where she was meant to be. She had always known that she was meant to write, and she was doing it now, in just the way she wanted.

    She went with Fred to the premiere of her first movie that she’d directed, and then went home to Connecticut and got back to work.

He sold her next movie even faster than the first. She was on a roll after that, doing one movie after another. And when she wasn’t directing a movie, she was at home in Connecticut, writing, and spending time with her kids.

By the time she turned thirty, she’d had three successful movies, and been nominated for a Golden Globe. She still missed Hamish terribly, but she was doing okay on her own. She never regretted giving up acting. It was a moment in her life, something she had done to make Hamish proud of her, but it had never felt like she was doing the right thing. Acting had never been her path, no matter how much Hamish wanted it to be. Writing and directing were what she did best and were her passions.



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Antonia was shocked by how fast her kids grew up. By the time Dash was fourteen and Olympia thirteen, she’d been writing screenplays and directing for a dozen years. The time had flown. She had sold Hamish’s house by then. She had no reason to go to London and never used it. It gave her a pang of sadness when she sold it, but keeping it didn’t make sense. She hardly ever left her Connecticut farm, except when she was shooting a movie. Fred and Jake both accused her of becoming a recluse. But she was happy and fulfilled with her children. They loved the farm too, especially Dash, who loved the outdoors and rode every day after school.

Jake had been in and out of a marriage by then, and had two kids. He had moved back to San Francisco and was sorry he had. He had given up acting once he had children, and was working for an insurance company. Like her children, he had grown up. And so had she. She was thirty-eight now, and Hamish had been gone for thirteen years, which was even harder to believe.

    Her father had just turned seventy-one. He had retired and moved to Palm Beach. Antonia saw him sparingly, about once a year so he could see his grandchildren, and that was enough for both of them. Jake had been right, she didn’t need a father, she needed herself.

She had come into her own when writing and directing movies. Lara was still living and working in New York, and came to the farm to visit a few times a year.

Hamish would have been sixty-one that year. There was no man in her life, just tender memories of him, her work, and her kids.

Dash had stayed as sweet and easy as he was as a baby. Olympia had stayed true to form too. Something was always out of line for her. She always had a complaint, a problem, something to argue about, and at thirteen, she was constantly crossing swords with her mother. She looked like Antonia, but Antonia always worried that her grandmother’s genes were in there somewhere. Olympia wanted to be an actress, said she didn’t care about college, and she wanted Fred to be her agent too when she grew up. Antonia wouldn’t let her audition for anything until she graduated from high school. But she had the sinking feeling that when the time came, she wouldn’t be able to hold her back. Dash had no interest whatsoever in the movie world. He loved animals and wanted to be a vet, which was fine with his mother.

The children went to the exclusive private school nearby, and had grown up on the farm. It was a healthy life, and had been the right decision for all of them. Antonia never regretted it for an instant, although it was a reclusive life for her, which suited her.



* * *



—

    When Olympia was fourteen and Dash sixteen, she took them on a photographic safari to Africa. It was life-changing for Dash. He fell in love with the animals in the wild. Olympia complained about every moment of the trip. The bathrooms, the tents, the heat, the guides, she thought the food was disgusting. She was terrified of the bugs and snakes, her hair went limp in the heat, and she ran out of her favorite shampoo and conditioner, a catastrophic event. She made everyone’s, and particularly her mother’s, life a living hell on the trip.

She went to drama camp when they got back, which suited her much better. And Dash told his mother after their trip that he knew what he wanted to do with his future. He wanted to be a vet on a game preserve in Africa, and specialize in endangered species in veterinary school. She could see that he meant it. He was a dreamer, but he was determined and persevering, and she told him that everyone should have a dream and follow it. He took her advice to heart, and wrote a paper about their trip and what his dream was when he got back to school.

Olympia came back from drama camp more difficult than ever, heading like a heat-seeking missile for the stage.

Faithful to his goals, two years later, Dash left to attend UC Davis in California, headed for veterinary school as a graduate student. It had one of the best veterinary schools in the country. And Olympia was the star of her high school drama club senior year. She was refusing to apply to college and wanted to go straight into acting at eighteen.