Twice in a Blue Moon

by Christina Lauren

  “Nick and Tate, you guys are killing it. That was exactly what I want to see. We’re losing light, so let’s break it down for the tight shots and we’ll start again in—” She checks her watch. “Fifteen.”

  Devon follows suit with the extras, and the crew scatters. Nick stands and motions over his shoulder. “I’m gonna grab something to eat. Join me?”

  The offer is tempting—I’ve barely had anything today and should probably eat—but I can’t shake this odd sense of déjà vu.

  I pass on food and head toward Charlie’s trailer. Aside from being our backdrop, it seems to be business as usual throughout the majority of the farm. Fields of organic vegetable gardens and small orchards, a sprawling meadow tucked low in the valley feeds grazing sheep and cows—

  I stop, my mind replaying the scene we shot today.

  These fools run all over the county on Friday nights tipping cows, for God’s sake . . .

  “Tipping cows,” Sam had told me, talking about his life in Eden. “Drinking beer in the middle of nowhere. Weird races and games in cornfields. Trying to build an airplane. It’s easy to be crazy on a farm.”

  It’s right there, the memory of everything he told me. About growing up on the farm. About Roberta.

  And then it slams into me, an echo from fourteen years ago.

  “She didn’t care one iota,” Luther said. “Even when they set the barn on fire.”

  For just a moment the fields disappear. The chirps of birds and the tick tick tick of irrigation sprinklers in the distance are replaced by the muffled sound of traffic and the chime of Big Ben. How did I miss it before?

  Rosebushes line a stone wall and there’s nothing but a bright sky overhead and damp grass at my back.

  nineteen

  I DON’T EVEN BOTHER to knock. Sam, sitting at the small table in his cabin, jumps when the door flies open and slams behind me.

  “Tate?”

  “What’s going on?”

  He pushes himself to stand, confused. “What’s going on with what?”

  I throw a copy of the script down on the table. “The barn burning down? This. Milkweed. It’s not just some random love story, is it? It’s Luther and Roberta.”

  He frowns, waiting for me to continue, like he’s not at all surprised. He’s still waiting for me to get to the part where I explain why I’m mad.

  He thought I knew.

  “Oh my God.” I sit down in one of the chairs, mouth open. “I’m Roberta.”

  He drops slowly onto his seat. “It’s still just a love story, Tate.”

  “But the irony here is that I’m Roberta, in love with Luther, the man who helped you con me in London.”

  “Con?” He leans forward, intense now. “Wait. No. That’s not true.”

  Shattering, I look up at him. “What isn’t true? That I fell in love with a script about the couple that helped swindle me?”

  I’m thirty-two now. Fourteen years have passed, but I don’t feel a day wiser than I did when Nana and I asked the hotel to ring the Brandis room and heard the words, They checked out yesterday.

  With a sigh, Sam runs a hand through his hair and leans back against the counter. “You didn’t want to talk about it when we first got here. You didn’t want me to tell you what happened.”

  “Tell me now.”

  He looks to the side; jaw tight, like he doesn’t know where to start. “Do you remember when I told you I thought Luther was sick?”

  Arms folded protectively across my chest, I give him only a curt nod.

  “He was,” Sam tells me. “Very sick.”

  “It’s good to know that some of it wasn’t a lie.”

  He takes a step forward but seems to think better of coming any closer. “None of it was a lie.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I know I hurt you, I realize that, and—”

  I stand and burst forward to get right up in his face. “You know you hurt me? Is that how you think of it? Like a broken leg or a sad couple of weeks over a high school crush? I had never let anyone in the way I did with you. You took my virginity, Sam.”

  His eyes soften and he must see how close I am to tears. “The last night we were together,” he begins, wiping at his brow.

  I feel my lip curl. “The night you said you were falling in love with me.”

  A tiny pause and then, “Right.”

  “The last night we were together before you called the Guardian.”

  I’ve never had actual confirmation of this, but it was the only explanation that made sense. Still, his quiet “Yes” makes the floor tilt beneath me. “Roberta called around three in the morning, after I left you at your door.” He inhales deeply. “Apparently Luther had a necklace made for her, nothing too extravagant, but more than they could normally afford. On the day it was delivered out of the blue—that last day we—”

  My stomach dissolves just at the moment he closes his eyes, stopping just short of saying made love in the garden.

  “She got an inkling what was going on,” he says, voice rough. “She called their doctor. Found out Luther’s prognosis was shit. Taking me to England and getting Roberta a gift like that was his way of saying goodbye. He didn’t want… they didn’t have much. Not enough for a lengthy treatment. They would have lost the farm, literally.”

  Richard is Luther. Ellen is Roberta. The truth feels so obvious, it slots into place with a quiet, unobtrusive click. I think about the script I fell in love with; I think about Ellen’s strength and their bottomless devotion. It didn’t convince me that love like that was waiting for me, but it gave me hope that it could exist. After feeling nothing for years, it was enough.

  “So you sold me to save him,” I say numbly.

  Sam opens his eyes, and I can tell from his expression that he hates the way I’ve put it. But he gives another quiet “Yes” anyway.

  “Would you do it again?” I ask. “Knowing that it hurt me, knowing how much my life would change?”

  Sam tilts his face to the ceiling, and I watch as he blinks quickly, his cheeks growing red with emotion. “I don’t know how to answer that.”

  “You answer with a yes,” I say, “or a no.”

  “We got another ten years with him.” He looks me squarely in the eye. His are red-rimmed. “So, yes. I would do it again.”

  I don’t know where we can go from here. I turn to leave, but he stops me with a hand around my arm. “Tate. Don’t walk out after that.”

  “We have to get back on set.”

  “Devon will come get us. Just—” He gestures to the chair again. “Sit, please?”

  I lower myself back in the chair, still feeling shell-shocked. We sit in tense silence for several long moments.

  “I didn’t lie about anything I felt in London,” he says, and a painful spasm turns something over in me. “Leaving you the way I did really wrecked me, and it’s okay if you don’t believe it. But I loved Luther and Roberta with everything I have. They’d given me everything.” He pauses, and in the silence I can practically feel his turmoil. “I tried to give them back all the love that they gave me. I had to choose between you and my family, and at that point it wasn’t even a question: I owed them everything. But when they died, I could say that I did everything I could to make their lives better, and when I love someone, that matters to me. I want you to know that.”

  The truth is, I do know that. It’s evident in every word of his screenplay, in every nuance of the dialogue. Their voices come through so authentically; it could only have been written by someone who loved them beyond measure.

  It makes it really hard to hate him, but anger isn’t so quick to diffuse in my blood. The relief that it hadn’t been planned from the moment I spilled my secret expands, taking up space before I’ve really made room for it. It makes it hard to breathe, like the air in my lungs is under pressure.

  “Is there anything else you need to know?” he asks.

  Through the chaos of my thoughts, the only questions that press forward wi
th any clarity are ones that sound so young and selfish. Did you ever think of trying to find me? Was it easy for you to just disappear?

  But I’m also wrestling with feeling obtuse for not seeing the truth from the second I knew Sam wrote the script. Even if it’s set in Iowa not Vermont, the story is so clearly Sam’s. I’m fighting the fear that I’m no more than a stepping-stone to every man who has ever meant anything to me. I feel small, and silly, and strangled by the realization that the longer I stay angry, the pettier I seem.

  “I’m just trying to figure out how to feel,” I admit.

  “I’m sure.” He clasps his hands, pins them between his knees. “I guess I assumed you figured it out—about Roberta and Luther—once you saw me on set.”

  “I probably should have.”

  “Maybe not,” he reasons. “You never met Roberta.”

  Our attention turns as we hear Nick yelling something down the trail. I have a fondness for Nick—especially for Nick as Richard—that is starting to feel the way I might for an old lover, for someone I want to forever keep in my life. I think about Nick’s eyes when he’s staring at me, as Ellen. His hand when it engulfs mine. It feels so real, so intense. Was this what it felt like for Sam to grow up around Luther and Roberta? Witnessing a love like this all the time?

  I know my love for this script has always been fierce, even for someone who’s been looking her whole adult life for the perfect role, but I get now that it’s not only about being Ellen. It’s about wanting to know, for certain, that this kind of love exists.

  But then it occurs to me… where is Sam in this film?

  “You never come live with them,” I say. “There’s no character that’s your dad, either, when Ellen is younger. The script ends when they’re in their sixties, but you’re not in it.”

  “The story is about how they fell in love in the middle of one of the most tumultuous times in our country’s history. They didn’t need me or Michael for that.”

  I study him, trying to puzzle it out. Finally, he shrugs, and his smile is boyish. “It didn’t make them any more heroic at that point to have her be a single mom or bring in a three-year-old kid when they were empty nesters.”

  Despite everything, this makes me laugh. “Artistic license means you cut yourself out of the story?”

  He nods, and his shoulders seem to ease at the sight of my smile. “Can you believe me, though?” he asks quietly. “That the worst thing I ever did was for the best reason I ever had?”

  His words spear through me, stabbing into a tender spot. Only for Sam Brandis have I felt such a complicated ache—devotion, desire, hurt, and envy of the wife who gets to puzzle out the man who, if what he says is true, would sacrifice his own heart to save someone he loves. Who could see true love so clearly in front of him and translate it into words on a page.

  She gets to curl up against this man and be his best friend, his lover.

  I push to stand, needing a few minutes alone to clear my head before Devon comes for me. At the door, I turn back. He’s watching me go with a tight expression I find unreadable.

  “Actually,” I tell him quietly, “I think Milkweed is the best thing you ever did. And if that’s the best thing you ever did, I’m okay being the worst.”

  twenty

  MY CABIN’S SCREEN DOOR slams behind me, and the sound seems to hang in the fog of the early morning air. The farm has turned cold so fast. Indian summer left and abandoned us in the chilly vacuum of Northern California fall.

  I don’t ever want to leave Ruby Farm. It’s more than just a quiet retreat; it’s like a warming of my bones, some settling of the frenetic beat that seems to always course through me. My house in LA feels sterile and uninhabited, doing little to calm me down between projects. But I’m so seldom there that it’s never felt worth the effort to make it into a homey place. And then when I am there, I regret not making the effort. The prospect just feels so overwhelming.

  Here, each morning, I wake up in my cabin and try to pretend this is where I live now. I’ve put my clothes in the dresser and closet, stocked the small kitchen with a few staples. I go for long runs. I keep flowers on the table and had Mom ship me a few blankets. Up here, I can pretend the chaos and exhaust and clatter of LA not only isn’t my home anymore, but doesn’t even exist.

  The birds in the tree beside my door let out a cacophony of sound when I emerge, squawking and rustling overhead. Down the hill, in the pasture, the cows yell to be milked and fed. But there’s no human sound. Everyone is taking this day off to sleep in. I hope I’m not the only one up early, unable to turn off my brain.

  I stretch before heading down the trail in an easy jog. Leaves crunch beneath my shoes, and the sound must echo down the path because Sam is already looking up as I pass his cabin. He’s sitting outside, clearly more accustomed to the cold than I am, because he’s only wearing a thick cream sweater, jeans, and socks.

  “Tate.” He puts a notebook down on the small table, picks up a steaming mug of coffee. “You’re up early.”

  “So are you.”

  He takes in my leggings, long-sleeved layers, and gloves. “Going for a run?” When I nod, he motions to the abandoned journal. “Was just writing some things down.”

  “For another screenplay?” I hike up the small incline, stopping at the foot of the stairs leading to his porch. It’s the first time we’ve spoken since our blowup yesterday, and the part of me that will always be eighteen and infatuated with him wants to climb the steps and curl up on his lap.

  “Maybe,” he says. “Don’t know yet.” Sam studies me over the lip of his mug as he takes a sip.

  “You writing yourself into this one? Maybe it’s about the heart you broke in London.” The words are out before I’ve weighed whether or not they’re a good idea.

  Sam blinks a few times before smiling gently. “I don’t think that’s my story to tell.” An awkward pause. “This time, at least.”

  We face each other in strained silence.

  “Want some coffee?” he finally asks. “The stuff they brew in the Community House is awful.”

  I really need to keep moving, but he’s not wrong. “Sure.”

  “Come on up.” He stands and tilts his chin for me to follow him inside the cabin.

  Trudging up the stairs, I feel so anxious and excited that it makes me nauseous. It isn’t just the proximity of Sam, now it’s the proximity of Ellen’s, well, Roberta’s, grandson. He knew her. She raised him. I marinated in that reality all night, skipping dinner at the Community House, skipping the campfire I could hear all the way down the trail. I curled up in bed and reread the script with new eyes. His formidable, brave grandmother. His tenderhearted, fun-loving grandfather. Was it even a question that he would do anything he could do to save them?

  I didn’t take much time to look around yesterday, but it wouldn’t have taken much to absorb everything here. Sam’s cabin is one big room, almost like a loft, with a bed in the far corner, a little kitchen to the left of the door with the table and chairs, and a small sitting area in between. It’s cozy from the country decor, and he’s got a fire going in the fireplace. I make a beeline toward it, holding my hands out to get them moving again.

  “You’re such a Californian,” he says, laughing.

  “It’s cold!”

  “It’s probably fifty-five degrees out,” he says, opening a cabinet and reaching for a mug.

  “Exactly.”

  Sam laughs again as he sets a pot of water to boil and scoops some fresh grounds into a French press. Something has eased since he told me the truth yesterday; it feels like there’s so much more air in here.

  But with that space, it means I’m not working to ignore him, which in turn means I notice him again. As he goes about the business of brewing me a cup of coffee, I start to zone out a little on the shape of his broad back beneath his sweater, his enormous hand reaching for the whistling teakettle, his ass in soft, faded jeans.

  Wife.

  I’m not my father
. I’d never cheat, or be with a cheater. I blink away, back to the fire, letting the brilliant orange and red burn into my retinas and clear my mind. I can’t think of him like that.

  He crosses the room, hands me the mug, and gestures for me to sit wherever I want in the living room area. When I choose the sofa, he follows suit, folding himself into the corner at the opposite end.

  “You okay? After yesterday?” As always, Sam cuts to the chase.

  “I’m getting there. It helps,” I say, adding, “to know.”

  “It drove me crazy, wondering what you thought all those years.”

  “I thought about it a lot for the first few,” I tell him. “And then time passed and it stopped factoring into every decision I made. I stopped worrying about what Nana would think, what Dad would think, what Mom would think.” I pause, then add quietly, “What Sam would think. The last seven years or so have been really good, and all mine.”

  He’s quiet in response to this, but gives me a muted “I’m so sorry, Tate,” after a few deep breaths.

  Nodding, I blink down to the rug. “I don’t actually want to talk about us anymore.” A glance at him gives me a response I wasn’t expecting to see: disappointment. “But maybe you could tell me more about Roberta.”

  I wonder if this surprises him a little. His eyebrow twitches, and he reaches up to scratch it. “Oh. Yeah, I’d be happy to.” He pauses, waiting for me to ask more, I guess, to be more specific.

  “I’d like to know more about her,” I admit. “And about Richard. I mean—Luther.”

  Sam grins at me. “Roberta was something else. They both were.”

  I stretch my legs out, warming, and stop just short of pressing my feet against his thick thigh. He looks down and smiles a little, stretching his arms out along the back of the sofa. “We getting comfy?”

  “I’m defrosting.”

  He laughs, and his mossy eyes shine with understanding at the double meaning. “I see that.”

  Taking a sip of my coffee, I say, “We don’t get to see her as a mom. I mean, I get that it simplifies the story somewhat, but I imagine it would only make her more amazing. Juggling all that? How come you took your dad out of the story?”