She laughed for the first time all day. “And see, that’s how I’d like to seem. Now that you know my secret, it’ll all change, unless you promise not to hold my title against me and clam up.”

Helena eyed her suspiciously.

“You don’t believe me?”

“No, Miss. It’s just with you being all down to earth and answering questions about filming makes me think you enjoy this sort of thing, and you obviously have some power to make things happen around here, but then you say there’s not going to be any more movies in the area.”

She frowned. She’d asked for them to converse freely, but she hadn’t been prepared for them to accept her offer quite so easily. “This movie was a one-time offer to a friend who’s written the source material and had another friend in a position to connect her to producers and a studio. The estate brokered very little of the specifics. I wouldn’t have known where to begin on such matters.”

“But you learned some things from the experience, right? You’re in here talking about filming schedules and scripts and angles and Steadicams,” one of the boys jumped in.

“And you probably know a lot of businesspeople and government people, and I don’t even know who else,” Helena said, then caught herself. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to overstep.”

“No, go on,” Vic urged, both honestly interested in what she had to say and eager to continue any conversation with people who treated her like a normal person.

“It’s just you have money and power, and if it’s not going to be you to make the leap around here, probably nobody ever will.”

She nodded slowly, and her voice caught in her throat as she tried to answer.

“Miss?” Oliver asked. “Are you okay?”

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate how many young people would love for this to become a Hollywood destination, but I’m not the person people seem to believe I am. I’m not actually powerful. I’m, well, I fear I don’t have the skills or the knowledge, or maybe the backbone, too . . .” She bit back a sob as she repeated the same thing that she’d told Sophia mere hours earlier. “I’m not a film producer.”

She wasn’t sure if she swayed or her if voice cracked, but several of the students stepped forward as if afraid they might have to catch her or prop her up.

“No worries,” the leader said gently. “We won’t fault you for that. None of us are movie moguls either.”

A couple of the others laughed nervously. Then one of them added, “Yet.”

“Right,” Helena said. “Don’t mind us, we don’t know what we’re talking about. We’re just learning as we go. That’s what we’re here for. Should we tell her our secret?”