Shy? Dad mouths at me, one eyebrow raised as Hall pats his back.

“Bettie! Sweetheart!” Grandpa shoulders through and catches me in one of his famous hugs (Grandpa, like Hall, is of the belief that the harder you squeeze, the more love you convey), snapping several of my bones. “It’s been so long! You need to visit more often. Here, don’t spend this all in one place.” He presses twenty dollars into my left hand. “Got your favorite ice cream in the freezer.” He winks, then notices Hall. “Who’s this?”

“This is Hall, Grandpa. He’s my—”

An imperious figure presses a hand to Mom’s shoulder and Dad’s face, pushing each of them to the side. Grandpa backs away hastily. A gust of frigid air wafts, and if this were a cartoon, the woman who appears would have crows perched up and down her arms. She’s in a floor-length black velvet cloak with fuzzy cuffs, a multilayered necklace swinging, thirty-seven glass spheres containing the ashes of thirty-seven fans. I’m five seven, so I’m not exactly short, but with her heels and a jet-black, complicated high pony that used to be Barbara Eden’s signature style, the woman soars. (Grandma demanded the exclusive legal rights to that hairstyle in an MGM contract.) Her lipstick is steal-your-husband-red, eyebrows impeccably arched. She smacks her lips together, dividing a gleaming, catlike look between Hall and me. “Interesting. Ohh, that’s interesting, isn’t it?” She crooks a finger at Hall. “You. Come here.”

Hall releases a thin cry, chokes out the words, “I’ve seen every movie you’ve ever been in, also your soap operas, will you please sign my everything,” and passes out at her feet.

*

Chapter Five

THERE’S SOMETHING STRANGE about this one,” Grandma tells us all, watching shrewdly as Dad and I help Hall into the sitting room. Grandpa announces he’s going to go find a raw steak for Hall’s eye, because in Grandpa’s opinion there are no ills a good old raw steak to the face can’t cure. Poor Hall slumps onto a sofa between my parents, shoulders tucked inward, eyes cast down.

“No, there isn’t,” I reply quickly.

Grandma ignores me, crouching until he’s forced to meet her gaze. “You’re a pretty young man, aren’t you? What’s your name?”

He cuts me a furtive glance, eyes widening when she snaps her long-nailed fingers in front of his nose. “Ah-ah. Don’t look to her for an answer. Don’t you know your own name?”

He clears his throat. “Hall?”

“Hall? Is that a question? What, do you go by your last name?” She stands upright again, annoyed. “I hate it when people do that. It’s obnoxious.”

“My last name is . . . Day.” He slides me another anxious glance.

“Hall Day,” she repeats dully.

He brightens, having a lightbulb moment. “My middle initial is E.”

She stares at him so fiercely that it’s astonishing he doesn’t melt. “What’s your favorite film of mine, Mr. Day?”

“Grandma, don’t,” I interrupt, but she holds out a hand, not sparing me a look.