“Right,” I say, having imagined as much. “When you moved here from LA, you stopped working as an actress altogether. Was that always the plan?”

She nods woodenly. “My work was taking up too much of my attention, and the paparazzi were always following us, to restaurants and family outings. We never had any privacy. I thought being up here would be better for all of us. Cameron would get a normal life, and I could finally devote most of my time to her.” I watch her face crumple as she wrestles with the cruel irony of the situation, the guilt and remorse. “What if Cameron has been crying out for help and I just couldn’t see it?”

The pain in her eyes is terrible. I have the urge to comfort her, and also to wake her up. There’s work to do now.

“What-ifs will take you down a very dark hole, Emily. Cameron needs you to be strong. Will you help me?”

“I’ll try.”

“Emily, is your husband having an affair? Is that what you’ve been fighting about?”

Her face is glacier-still and poised, but I can feel fear coming off her body in stiff, solid waves. Inside, she’s at war with herself over how much to reveal. “There’s a woman in LA,” she answers finally. “His assistant at Paramount. She’s not the first.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll need her name.”

“Why? You don’t think she has something to do with this?”

“We have to follow up on everything at this point.”

“It’s just.” She shakes her head. “Troy’s going through a challenging time.”

“Emily.”

“Yes?”

“Enough of that. Enough of making excuses for him.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t even know I’m doing it.”

“I know.”

—

On Cameron’s desk there’s a red spiral class notebook with star-shaped doodles all over the cover. Emily opens it and tears out a blank page. Once she’s written out the name, she folds the page twice and hands it to me.

“It might be hard, some of the things we’re going to learn. Ugly, too,” I tell her, “but I believe even the toughest kinds of truths are better than not knowing.”

She looks fragile, full of doubt. “I hope you’re right.”

Tucking the page into my notebook, I cross to the large rectangular window that runs half the length of the north-facing wall. It looks out on the driveway and security gate to the left, the lawn bleeding into thick trees to the right. The blinds are made of sheer ecru-colored rice paper, pleated on a pulley system. When I gently push the dangling cords to one side, something catches my eye. Along the bottom of the screen there are tiny scratches, subtle enough to miss if you were looking for something else.

“Did Cameron ever sneak out of the house this way?”