That just goes back to building relationships. We’re always looking for someone who will feel comfortable in our homes, not bow and curtsy and call us mister and missus. And somebody who can bring a little extra something to our lives! My daughter and I have been trying to learn to knit, but we’re terrible at it, or I am anyway. My mom used to knit but she died before my children were born. It’s obviously not necessary that our chief of staff be able to knit, but that kind of comforting reassurance—well, who wouldn’t want that? I’d love someone who could plop on the couch next to me and help me figure out when to knit and when to purl.

Well, I hope you find them.

Thanks. Me too.

31

Zanne and Phoebe

“Unbelievable,” Zanne said when she finished reading. It wasn’t the interview itself that surprised her, or the fact that even a website like InsideScoop, which prided itself on its acerbic takes, could be bribed into joining the Stabler propaganda machine. It was just the speed of the rollout. One minute Zanne was sitting on the tailgate of her truck, reading the comments on her anonymous confession—starting to get a little teary actually at how many different kinds of people understood the bind she was in and were caught in one, too, not just personal assistants but teachers and nurses and project managers, and not just in Hollywood but in Phoenix and Dallas and Baltimore—and the next, Holly’s thoughts were piping through Zanne’s brain like it was her own stream of consciousness. It would take more than one defiant moment to break Zanne’s habit of seeing the world through the Stablers’ eyes.

It was too depressing watching the wave of support roll in for Holly, from mothers mostly, but also from starwatchers who seemed relieved not to have to cancel the Hollywood Couple, whoever they thought they were. Zanne looked up the Mar Vista house one last time instead. She studied the staged photographs for details she’d missed before. The thumbnail photo of the broker—she wouldn’t have wanted to go through this blond woman who looked like her sisters to get to her dream house. The weeds in the lawn. Had the grass always been this patchy? California was in a drought. Watering grass would be expensive, irresponsible. Zanne knew she would have had to rip it all out anyway. She deleted the page from her bookmarks.