“She moved out, so I think so, yeah.”

“She came in this morning, and someone had this. She saw it and took off. Debra went off after her, talked to her for a bit, and brought her back. They’re still in the john.”

For a moment I was bemused: both my exes together, probably bad-mouthing my selfish ways. But mostly I felt uncomfortable. “Well, what do you want me to do, Carl?” I didn’t ask it spitefully; I just didn’t know what he was expecting of me. I wasn’t her keeper.

“You gonna be able to work with her, stay professional?”

I rolled my eyes. “Carl, come on, I’ve gone through breakups with people on the show before and it hasn’t affected the way I work. If there are problems, they won’t be from my side of the fence.”

Carl chewed on that for a minute, then nodded. “All right, well, that’s what she said too, and we’ve lost enough time, so let’s go.” I stood and followed him out to where the rest of the cast milled around talking and reading scripts. I saw Debra and Dianne standing together near the door to the rehearsal room. Dianne’s arms were folded protectively across her chest, and she looked like death warmed over. I did my best to shove aside all the crap from the past week and get into a work mind-set.

We put in a full day, but it felt like two by the time it was over. All I wanted was to get out of there and go home. I was exhausted from forcing myself to focus on the script and not allow my mind to wander to Dianne’s predicament. I kept reminding myself that it was her decision, but eventually I realized that wasn’t exactly true: it hadn’t been her decision to overdose and then face the world over it. She’d been hoping to escape the whole thing altogether and leave the rest of us to deal with it. But I figured I’d rather have found her and stopped her than to have her death on my hands.

I cringe. “That’s a lot to go through!’