Holly pushed Ted’s shoulders. “Why didn’t you tell me all this before?” she asked, backing away. Her chest filled with furious potential. Like a child’s windup toy, she was all wound up and ready to run. Ted’s eyebrows knit together. “You didn’t think this was important information for me to have? They’re going to crucify us.”

His lips moved but no words came out. His surprise in that moment was the worst part.

“All because you didn’t think enough of me to tell me the truth.”

Now, sitting on the bench at the pier, Holly felt exactly like a windup toy that had zipped, flown, zoomed, and crashed into a wall.

The truth, or some version of it, would come out eventually. She knew enough to know that. Ted clearly still thought of her as a child, but she wasn’t the one keeping secrets big enough to drive a cruise ship through. People would believe the version of the truth they were given, which was why she and Ted needed to work together. But he was no use, too stunned to provide a straight answer to any of her questions.

Why on earth had Phoebe agreed to meet Jerry at his bungalow? Everyone knew what went down there. You never saw his wife at the Chateau Marmont. You never saw Sabine Silver anywhere anymore; she’d taken their daughter and gone home to France, practically in hiding. Ted had said something about the way Phoebe had been dressed. Not that what any woman wore was an excuse for assault, but Phoebe liked to be looked at, obviously. Just look at the gown she’d worn to the party. Most of the directors Holly knew were scruffy egomaniacs who preferred to make a statement with their films, not their clothes. Phoebe was screaming for attention in that giant pink dress, but Holly wasn’t sure the gamble was worth it. Maybe she’d wanted to make a statement with Jerry, too, but if you gave mixed signals to a predator, you were playing with fire.

Holly had wasted so much time over the years obsessing about perfect Phoebe, telling herself stories about how brilliant she was and how game she was in bed, how disappointed Ted must have been with the wife who replaced her, when the reality of it was so much more sordid. If only Ted had told her the truth years ago. When would he stop treating Holly like the twenty-year-old girl she was when they met?