Over Her Dead Body(14)

“I never expected my parents to support me after college!” she replied, somewhat pridefully. “I was allowed to live rent-free at home for two weeks after I graduated. After that, I was on my own.”

After raising two children who had all but demanded I subsidize new cars and homes, her pronouncement was music to my ears.

“And how is your acting career going?” Not well, I hoped.

“I miss a lot of auditions because of my day job.”

“Oh! You have a day job!” Right again.

“A few of them, actually.” And that was all I needed to hear. I made a snap decision. It was possible I could persuade this young innocent to be my coconspirator, but I had a much more reliable method at my disposal: I could trick her.

“I may have an acting job for you,” I said, suddenly glad that Nathan wasn’t here so I could get right down to business. “But you’ll have to audition.”

“Oh! Of course I would audition,” she assured me. “What kind of acting job?”

I had to think on my feet here. “A crime procedural,” I said. “Not the most prestigious offering, I know. But it pays well.” And that part was true.

“I’m up for anything!”

I tried not to wince at her eagerness. I was eager like that once. In the beginning, it’s all striving and possibility. And then—by your hard work, a stroke of good luck, or confluence of both—you “arrive,” and find yourself standing on the platform with nothing but empty space around you and nowhere to go but down. And you cling to the things you toiled to accumulate because you know they could be ripped away at any time—by a botched performance, an unhappy client, a debilitating illness. A life on top is a life of fear; the people who invested and believed in you now expect you, need you, depend on you, to stay on top. But what they don’t know is that staying on top is even more difficult than getting there. And while the perks of success are lovely—big house, luxury car, fancy vacations—once you taste the “good life,” the fear of losing it all becomes your constant companion. I envied my new friend that she was still in the chase. At her age, my quaint hopes and dreams had been long replaced by relentless, stifling fear.

“The auditions were last week,” I improvised, “but I don’t think they found what they were looking for. I’d like to put you on tape, say tomorrow?”

Her face exploded with joy. “I can do tomorrow!” In her deluded optimism, she didn’t even question how an old, retired CD like me might know about an active casting—which of course I didn’t. But we hear what we want to hear, and her hopefulness served me well.

“I can’t believe my good luck,” she marveled. “And here I thought tonight was a disaster!”

“Your trespass was quite unexpected,” I said, recalling how agitated I had been to see her creeping around my backyard. “But that doesn’t mean we should waste it.” I wasn’t superstitious; quite the contrary. I simply recognized that a disturbance is an opportunity. And I was not one to let opportunity pass me by.

I had never aspired to start a casting agency. “Right place at the right time,” my husband used to say when I told the story of how my tooth broke and I landed in my dentist’s waiting room with the president of Warner Bros. on the same day his assistant quit. My husband called it “serendipity” when the head of casting OD’d with five greenlit TV pilots still needing leads and my boss asked me to “help.” People called it a “lucky break” when the $10,000 unlawful termination settlement came in on the same day the deposit on my new office space was due. But I never used the words “lucky” or “coincidence.” I didn’t believe in fate. Upheaval was a fact of life. You could either be defeated by it or take advantage. Walking into one’s so-called “destiny” was the ability to see disruptions not as obstacles, but as road signs, then follow them where they led.

“I believe everything happens for a reason,” Ashley said brightly. “I guess we have that in common.”

“Yes,” I said simply. There was no point in correcting her that I was not, in fact, a fatalist. Her arrival on my doorstep was fortuitous; opportunity literally knocked, so I let it in, simple as that. I suppose you could say I’d been waiting for her, though I hadn’t known it until she appeared. Whether she arrived at the perfect time, or I decided the time was perfect, didn’t really matter. She was here now, which meant—like her father and my husband—I would get my too-early death.





PART 2



* * *



BEFORE

NATHAN & JORDAN





CHAPTER 11




* * *



NATHAN


“You didn’t have to make me dinner,” I told my aunt as she pulled two pieces of herb-encrusted baked trout out of the oven. The woman was a pill, but a great cook, probably because she had to be to get anyone to come over. I know that’s an unkind thing to say, but I don’t imagine she would deny it. Being “nice” was not her MO, never was.

“If I didn’t, who would?” I knew that was a dig, but I didn’t take the bait. Louisa was constantly up in my grill about getting a girlfriend. It came from a good place—she didn’t want me to be alone. I couldn’t explain to her why I wasn’t dating, not if I wanted to stay in her good graces.