Chapter thirteen

The flight landed at 6:44 in the morning, and by 6:55 there were cameras.

I had expected them. Maya had managed the announcement carefully, enough information to generate coverage, not enough to invite questions she couldn't deflect, and the result was exactly what it was supposed to be: the arrival of Sloane Vale, fresh off a major international film deal, returning to a country that had never known her under that name.

I walked through the arrivals hall in a camel coat and dark glasses, unhurried, and when I pushed through the doors into the press scrum I took the glasses off rather than keeping them on, because people who have something to hide keep the glasses on, and Sloane Vale had nothing to hide.

"Sloane, welcome back! How does it feel to be here?"

"Wonderful," I said warmly, and I meant it to sound like I meant it, which was not the same as meaning it. "I've been looking forward to this project for months. The script is extraordinary."

"Are you excited to be working with Director Callum Reid?"

"He's the reason I said yes. I'll follow good direction anywhere."

A ripple of appreciative laughter. I had learned early that the press liked being made to feel they were getting something genuine, and the easiest way to give them that feeling was to be slightly more candid than they expected, to offer a detail that seemed unguarded. It cost nothing and bought everything.

"Sloane, any plans to explore the social scene while you're here? Anyone you're hoping to connect with?"

I smiled the easy smile. "I'm here to work, mostly. Although if someone takes me to a good restaurant I won't say no."

More laughter. The energy was warm, and I stood in it comfortably, and then a voice from the left side of the crowd, a journalist I didn't recognize, called out over the others.

"Sloane, what do you think about Darius Whitmore's recent comments about the industry? He said some fairly pointed things about American productions last month."

I turned toward the voice.

I let a beat pass, just one, just long enough to be natural, and then I tilted my head slightly to one side, the way a person does when they're genuinely searching their memory, and I let a small, puzzled smile settle on my face.

"I'm sorry," I said pleasantly. "Should I know that name?"

The crowd shifted. Someone laughed, uncertain. The journalist who had asked the question blinked.

"Darius Whitmore," he repeated. "He's one of the most prominent figures in the industry here. Property, media, philanthropy—"

"Of course, of course." I nodded as though it was coming back to me slowly, the way you nod at a name you've heard once at a party and don't quite have a face for. "I'm sure I'll encounter everyone eventually. It's my first morning, give me a week."

The laughter this time was real and full, and I smiled into it and let Maya steer me toward the waiting car, and that was the end of the press conference.

The clip was forty-seven seconds long.

Someone had caught the exchange on a phone and uploaded it before the car had reached the hotel, and by the time I was checked in and standing at the window of my room looking out at the grey morning skyline, Patricia had texted me a link and beneath it just three words: already going viral.

I watched it once, the way I watched my own performances, clinically and with attention to what was working, and then I put the phone face-down on the bed and went to check on the twins, who were two rooms down with Nina and who had been, according to Nina's messages, arguing companionably about what to order for breakfast since seven a.m.

Julie wanted waffles. Jake wanted eggs. This had apparently been going on for twenty minutes.

I settled it by ordering both, and sat on the end of Jake's bed while they ate, and let the noise and the ordinary bickering of it wash over me like something clean.

That evening, I went back to the twins' room after dinner and sat between their beds the way I did at home, one hand on Jake's mattress and one on Julie's, and I read them the same story I had been reading them since they were old enough to follow it, the one about the girl who walked into an impossible forest and found her way out by remembering who she was.

Jake was asleep before the third page. Julie lasted until the seventh, fighting it with the particular stubbornness she had brought into the world with her, and when she finally went under I sat for a while longer in the dark, listening to them both breathe.

The clip was viral. Darius was asking questions. The first move had landed exactly where I'd aimed it.

I looked at Jake's face in the low light, soft and unguarded and trusting, and I thought: good. Let him look. Let him wonder. Let him spend his energy trying to place something he can't quite name, because while he's doing that, I'll be getting closer, and when I'm close enough, he won't have the option of saying no.

I was not the woman who left. I had spent five years making sure of it.

Now it was time for Darius Whitmore to find out who I had become instead.