The House Across the Lake(8)

Not in my line of work. God knows I’ve tried.

“Good,” Marnie says. “That wouldn’t be a good look for you.”

“Really? I think it’s very on brand.”

Marnie’s voice drops an octave. Her concerned voice, which I’ve heard often in the past year. “Please don’t joke, Casey. Not about this. I’m worried about you. And not as your manager. As your friend and as family. I can’t begin to understand what you’re going through, but you don’t need to do it alone.”

“I’m trying,” I say as I eye the glass of bourbon I abandoned in order to rescue Katherine. I’m gripped by the urge to take a sip, but I know Marnie will hear it if I do. “I just need time.”

“So take it,” Marnie says. “You’re fine financially. And this madness will all die down eventually. Just spend the next few weeks focusing on you.”

“I will.”

“Good. And call me if you need anything. Anything at all.”

“I will,” I say again.

Like the first time, I don’t mean it. There’s nothing Marnie can do to change the situation. The only person who can get me out of the mess I’ve created is me.

Something I’m not inclined to do at the moment.

I get another call two minutes after hanging up with Marnie.

My mother making her daily four p.m. check-in.

Instead of my cell, she always calls the ancient rotary phone in the lake house’s den, knowing its annoying ring makes it more likely I’ll answer. She’s right. In the three days since my return, I’ve tried to ignore that insistent trilling but have always given in before five rings.

Today, I make it to seven before going inside and picking up. If I don’t answer now, I know she’ll keep calling until I do.

“I just want to know how you’re settling in,” my mother says, which is exactly what she told me yesterday.

And the day before that.

“Everything’s fine,” I say, which is exactly what I told her yesterday.

And the day before that.

“And the house?”

“Also fine. That’s why I used the word everything.”

She ignores my snark. If there’s one person on this earth unfazed by my sarcasm, it’s Lolly Fletcher. She’s had thirty-six years of practice.

“And have you been drinking?” she asks—the real purpose of her daily phone call.

“Of course not.”

I glance at the moose head, which gives me a glassy-eyed stare from its perch on the wall. Even though it’s been dead for almost a century, I can’t shake the feeling the moose is judging me for lying.

“I sincerely hope that’s true,” my mother says. “If it is, please keep it that way. If it’s not, well, I’ll have no other choice but to send you somewhere more effective.”

Rehab.

That’s what she means. Shipping me off to some Malibu facility with the word Promise or Serenity or Hope in its name. I’ve been to places like that before and hated them. Which is why my mother always hints at the idea when she wants me to behave. It’s the veiled threat she’s never willing to fully reveal.

“You know I don’t want that,” she adds. “It would just cause another round of bad publicity. And I can’t bear the thought of you being abused by those nasty gossip people more than you already are.”

That’s one of the few things my mother and I agree on. The gossip people are indeed nasty. And while calling what they do abuse is taking it a bit too far, they certainly are annoying. The reason I’m sequestered at Lake Greene and not my Upper West Side apartment is to escape the prying gaze of the paparazzi. They’ve been relentless. Waiting outside my building. Following me into Central Park. Covering my every move and trying to catch me with a drink in my hand.

I finally got so sick of the surveillance that I marched to the nearest bar, sat outside with a double old-fashioned, and gulped it down while a dozen cameras clicked away. The next morning, a picture of that moment appeared on the cover of the New York Post.

“Casey’s Booze Binge” was the headline.

That afternoon, my mother showed up at my door with her driver, Ricardo, in tow.

“I think you should go to the lake for a month, don’t you?”

Despite her phrasing it as a question, I had no say in the matter. Her tone made it clear I was going whether I wanted to or not, that Ricardo would drive me, and that I shouldn’t even think about stopping at a liquor store along the way.

So here I am, in solitary confinement. My mother swears it’s for my own good, but I know the score. I’m being punished. Because although half of what happened wasn’t my fault, the other half was entirely my doing.

A few weeks ago, an acquaintance who edits celebrity memoirs approached me about writing my own. “Most stars find it very cathartic,” she said.

I told her yes, but only if it I could call it How to Become Tabloid Fodder in Seven Easy Steps. She thought I was joking, and maybe I was, but I still stand by the title. I think people would understand me better if I laid out my life like Ikea instructions.

Step One, of course, is to be the only child of Beloved Lolly Fletcher, Broadway icon, and Gareth Greene, a rather milquetoast producer.

My mother made her Broadway debut at nineteen. She’s been working nonstop ever since. Mostly onstage, but also in movies and television. YouTube is chock-full of her appearances on The Lawrence Welk Show, The Mike Douglas Show, Match Game, several dozen awards shows. She’s petite, barely five feet in heels. Instead of smiling, she twinkles. A full-body sparkle that begins at her Cupid’s bow lips, spreads upward to her hazel eyes, and then radiates outward, into the audience, enveloping them in a hypnotic glow of talent.