A moment later, her secretary was back on the line. “Ms. Ryan says you need to pick up the phone and find out for yourself.”

“Tell her to go fuck herself.” Tully wished she could take the words back as soon as she’d said them, but she didn’t know how to bend now. During their long estrangement, she’d had to stay angry just to get by. Otherwise the loneliness would have been unbearable.

“Ms. Ryan says, and I quote: ‘Tell that bitch to get her designer-clad ass out of her ridiculously expensive leather chair and come to the phone.’ She also says that if you ignore her on this of all days she’s selling those pictures of you with a bad perm to the tabloids.”

Tully almost smiled. How could two sentences peel back so many years and blast through the sediment of so many bad choices?

She picked up the phone. “You’re the bitch, and I’m pissed at you.”

“Of course you are, you narcissist, and I’m not apologizing, but that doesn’t matter anymore.”

“It matters. You should have called long before—”

“I’m in the hospital, Tully. Sacred Heart. Fourth floor,” Kate said. Then she hung up.

“Hurry up,” Tully said to her driver for at least the fifth time in as many blocks.

When the car pulled up in front of the hospital, she got out and ran for the glass doors, pausing for a moment while the sensors engaged. The second she stepped inside, people swarmed around her. Usually she factored what she called fan maintenance into her schedule—thirty minutes at every location to meet and greet—but now she didn’t have time. She pushed through the crowd and went to the front desk. “I’m here to see Kathleen Ryan.”

The receptionist stared up at her in awe. “You’re Tallulah Hart.”

“Yes, I am. Kathleen Ryan’s room, please.”

The receptionist nodded. “Oh. Right.” She glanced at her computer screen, entered a few keys, and said, “Four-ten East.”

“Thanks.” Tully headed for the elevators, but noticed that she was being followed. Her fans would nonchalantly enter the elevator with her. The brave ones would initiate conversation between floors. The weirdos might follow her out.

She took the stairs instead, thankful by the third flight that she attended daily aerobics classes and worked with a personal trainer. Still, she was out of breath when she reached the fourth floor.

Just down the hall, she found a small waiting area. The television was turned on to her show—a rerun from two years ago.

She knew the moment she stepped into the small room that it was Bad, this thing with Kate.

Johnny sat there, in an ugly blue love seat, with Lucas curled up beside him. With one son’s head in his lap, Johnny was reading to the other.