Playing the Part

by Darcy Daniel

He nodded, swallowed over the lump and turned his face toward the passenger window. “When I think about her, I can’t…breathe.”

  “That’s because you’re in love.”

  He blinked, swallowed again. “It’s just as wonderful as I thought it would be…and just as painful.”

  Karin’s hand gently patted his. “Exactly.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Anthea closed her eyes as she sat in the studio’s waiting room with the next to last hopeful actress auditioning for the lead role in The Farmer’s Wife. She’d been one of the first to arrive, but it was closing in on five o’clock, and she still hadn’t been called.

  Three weeks ago, she would have kicked up a fuss and demanded to know what the holdup was, but now, she didn’t have to ask. She knew. They didn’t really want her. She was only here because she’d badgered Jason Trent into letting her audition. Her own behavior embarrassed her.

  How could she have changed so much in such a short time? It seemed that it wasn’t until returning to Mayfield that she finally became her true self. She’d spent her life playing the part of an actress, or how she thought an actress should behave when she wasn’t in front of the camera. And somewhere along the way, she’d lost herself and become a shallow shell, a woman who buried her emotions deep and lived on the surface.

  “Emily Luscombe?” a voice called, startling Anthea out of her thoughts.

  She opened her eyes and watched the last actress stand on four-inch heels and follow the assistant into the audition room.

  On a large sigh, Anthea glanced at her clothes. While the other actresses auditioning had worn expensive designer clothing, perfect hair and flawless makeup, she’d been the only one to arrive in a pair of beat-up hiking boots she’d found in Ethan’s wardrobe, old jeans and a well-worn T-shirt.

  Although this wouldn’t have been the choice of the novel’s heroine, which was set over fifty years ago, the film version had been adapted to take place in the present. While she’d brushed her hair once in the morning, she’d resisted the urge throughout the day to give it a quick going over. And most importantly, she’d come along bare-faced, exposing all her flaws and imperfections for the world to see. What amazed her most was the fact that she didn’t give a damn what anyone thought.

  “Anthea Cane,” the assistant called as she poked her head around the door to the audition room.

  Anthea rose, fished in her purse and retrieved her copy of the novel. She opened the front cover and touched her mother’s handwriting before following the assistant.

  Much like a high-school auditorium, the audition room had high ceilings and polished floorboards. Against a wall at the far end of the room, Jason Trent sat in the middle of a long table, flanked by six other executives involved in the project.

  As Anthea placed her purse on the floor inside the doorway, she was sure she heard one of them say, “That’s not her, is it?”

  When she straightened and walked toward the group, she saw that they had her headshots in front of them. Headshots taken when she’d been a blonde Alex Stark.

  “Nice to see you, Miss Cane,” Jason said. “We’re happy for you to do any scene you like. Do you require an actor?”

  She nodded. Jason indicated for one of the men at the end of the long table to join her. He grabbed a script and introduced himself as Sam.

  “Okay,” Jason said, “Let’s get this over with. We’ve all had a long day. Where’s your script, Miss Cane?”

  “I’m fine. Scene eighty-nine, page one hundred and three.”

  She waited as Sam and the others all flicked to the appropriate page in their scripts.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Jason said.

  Sam scanned the scene, then looked up and nodded. She returned the nod and waited.

  He moved forward, reached for her. Her face a mask of stone, she shied away, but he managed to snag her wrist, pull her in close and wrap his arms around her. Unmoved, she let her hands hang limply by her sides as she fought off the memories of being in Cole’s arms.

  “Please, Sarah,” Sam said. “Come back to me.”

  Anthea raised her head and met his eyes with a cold stare. “Sarah’s gone, Jack. She’s not in here anymore.” She realized it sounded like she was talking about herself.

  “No. You’re in there somewhere.”

  She struggled against his grip, but he held on tighter.

  “All that’s in here is dread.” It struck her then that she had unconsciously chosen this scene for a reason. “Every time I wake up, that’s what I feel. That’s all I feel.” When it came to never seeing Cole again, that’s exactly what she’d been experiencing. She shook off her memories and concentrated.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Sarah.”

  Anthea wrenched out of his grasp, her spine ramrod straight.

  “He was two years old. Do you think it was his fault?” she asked with a calmness that belied the river of emotion beneath the surface.

  “It was an accident,” he insisted. “Sarah…I can’t lose you too.”

  “I’m poison, Jack. Every fiber…rotting.”

  She spun away from him.

  “Sarah…”

  “Just leave. For God’s sake! Go!”

  The intense force of holding her emotions in check seemed palpable. As she listened to his footsteps retreat, she slowly let her face crumple with despair. A single tear escaped her eye. With fierce determination, she regained her composure, swiped the stray tear from her cheek and plastered on a stony stare devoid of any emotion. A stare, she hoped, that showed just how hollow her character felt. Not just her character—her real self.

  When she ended the moment and shifted her attention to the executives, she thought she saw Jason Trent look at the man to his right with hope.

  “Thank you, Miss Cane,” Jason said. “We’ll contact you in a few days and let you know if we need you for a screen test.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Trent. Whatever your decision, I just want you to know that I appreciate the opportunity to audition. It means a lot to me.”

  She saw surprise flash in his eyes as he nodded and smiled.

  After a nerve-racking week of waiting, Anthea received a call from Jason Trent requesting her presence on location for a screen test. She should have been elated by the news—it meant she was very close to landing the role. But how could she be happy about anything when her heart was bleeding?

  Her dream, her idea of what success was, might have shifted to something with more meaning, but she still had a life to live, whether or not it included Cole.

  When she arrived at a large farm an hour outside Sydney, she could see the crew positioning the cameras and lighting on the edge of a dam wall.

  The moment she opened the car door, an assistant pounced and led her straight to a trailer for makeup and wardrobe. When she met the director, he apologized to her for making her come all this way, but explained that they wanted to shoot this screen test on location so they could get a feel for how it would all come across on screen, in effect killing two birds with one stone. She almost burst into tears when he said that, remembering how Cole had used that expression when he asked her for his first kiss. But she managed to keep it together. Just. She was going to need that emotion soon enough.

  As a makeup artist worked on her face, another assistant went over the dangers involved in the scene and presented a waiver for her to sign. Ethan would have a fit if he knew she was signing something without his approval, but she really didn’t care. Nothing much seemed to matter anymore. She just had to go through the motions of pretending to live her life.

  Dressed in old riding boots and a tattered T-shirt beneath dirty overalls, she followed another assistant across a paddock toward the dam. The land was quite different from Cole’s fertile patch of earth. This farm undulated with hills
and gumtrees, which were renowned for leaching the soil of precious minerals, leaving the ground sandy and covered with jutting rocks. Yet it still made her heartsick, made her want to flee this desolate location which seemed to reflect what she felt on the inside, and return to the warmth and promise of Cole’s land, and into the security of his arms.

  The director had explained that they’d like her to perform the final scene of the film to see how well she embodied the protagonist’s total despair. Every time she read the book she imagined herself in that last scene, but had never been quite sure if she could live up to the emotional demands. All she could do was try.

  Moments before the director called action, Anthea took a deep breath, closed her eyes and tried to immerse herself into Sarah’s body and mind. Although she could feel the character emerging, she was still aware of herself, of her own thoughts and emotions. Apparently she was no longer capable of making herself disappear completely.

  “Action!” came the director’s voice from the other side of the dam wall.

  Well, it was too late to panic about her abilities. She just had to bring everything at her disposal to the role, including herself.

  Anthea scrambled up the outside of the dam wall. As she came to the crest, she stared at the dam’s muddy bottom, at the sun glinting off the few remaining puddles of water. She stared at what had taken Timmy’s life. The place her toddler had run to when she’d turned her back on him for a few minutes to attend to something as unimportant as hanging out a load of laundry. Tears spilled from her eyes, streaking through the dust and dirt the makeup artist had applied to her face.

  Letting go, she descended the embankment, slipping and stumbling over the loose stones and sand with a careless abandon only someone in the depths of grief could carry off. And even though Anthea Cane was still present, she could clearly imagine that complete desolation. If losing Cole hurt this much, then losing a child…

  When she reached the bottom of the dam wall, she let the momentum pull her into the puddles of water, the mud. A few hurried steps in, she slowed as her boots became laden with sludge. A few more steps and she stopped completely, her feet sinking so deep she was no longer able to lift them from the sucking muck. This had been the beginning of the end of Sarah’s little boy’s life. As she sank deeper, she raised her face to the sky and released a cry of utter despair. A scream that told the world how unfair life could be, a scream that told the world she was through, done with it all.

  Sobbing, her knees buckled. In a fit of rage, she lashed out at the mud with her fists as she sank ever deeper. When the sludge reached her waist, she suddenly became silent, still, accepting. Thoroughly spent, she flopped onto her back and gazed at the sky, the muscles in her face relaxing as the mud drew her down into its cool depths.

  Above her, the camera swooped lower on its crane, homing in on her face for the final close-up. In her peripheral vision she could see the crew, as promised, waiting for their cue. But she ignored all that, ignored everything except the way she felt, the way Sarah must have felt. Literally sinking in her own misery.

  “Sarah! Sarah!” Jack called in the distance.

  This was it. Sarah had to do it now, before Jack crested the dam wall, before there was a chance he might save her.

  She let her vision blur as she looked into a place within herself, and whispered, “I’m coming, Timmy. I’m coming.”

  Drawing in one last breath, she let it all rush out as the mud seeped over her face and engulfed her.

  Within seconds, hands grabbed Anthea beneath her armpits and hauled her from the sucking mud. Keeping her mouth and eyes firmly clamped shut as they led her over the wooden boards they’d placed across the mud, she found herself in Cole’s dark world. She felt the disorientation and the suffocating presence of strangers scrambling about her. The difference was, she knew in a few moments she would open her eyes and see.

  Then the cool wetness of a washer swept over her face and cleared the mud from her eyes, mouth and nose, followed by a dry towel. When she blinked her eyes open, she found the whole crew before her, including the director. They burst into applause. She swept her gaze over them, stopping when she found Jason Trent. He seemed to be clapping the hardest, shaking his head in awe, a huge smile on his face.

  * * *

  All the way home hope tried to surface, but her heavy heart kept it crushed in the pit of her stomach. If only she could get her mind off Cole—but thoughts of him were always with her. Even during her audition and screen test, he had been her inspiration, the emotion of losing him what she drew upon and brought to her performance.

  What was he doing now? Was he feeling the same way she was? She hoped so. He deserved to feel this pain. It was his fault, after all.

  But was it? Something deep inside told her that if she’d been in his shoes, she might have done the same thing.

  The idea startled her so much, she swung the car to the curb and stopped. If someone had picked on her as a child, would she have been able to pass up the opportunity to give them a hard time?

  Damn it. She would have done exactly the same thing.

  * * *

  After being examined by an ophthalmologist, Cole spent the first day at the clinic getting to know his room and preparing himself for the sessions ahead, for the prospect of exposing his deepest thoughts and emotions to a stranger.

  On the second day, a knock sounded at his door.

  “Yeah?”

  The door squeaked open and footsteps entered.

  “Mr. Daniel,” a male voice said. “I’m Dr. Frank Collins.”

  Cole rose, extended his hand. Dr. Collins’s grip was firm, confident. “Karin said you’re one of the best. And it’s Cole.”

  “Well, Cole, let’s just hope I can help you. Take a seat.”

  Cole sat on the edge of the bed and listened as Dr. Collins pulled out a desk chair.

  “As I’m sure you know, your case is quite unusual. Conversion disorder, rare as it is, usually only lasts hours, a few days at the most.”

  “Guess I’m just more stubborn than most,” Cole said.

  Dr. Collins chuckled. “I suppose you could look at it that way. Anyway, we won’t be doing any work today. I just wanted to prepare you for what’s to come. We want to make sure you’re ready for this.”

  “I’m ready,” he said with conviction.

  “Great. But I’d still like to go over a few things with you.”

  Cole nodded.

  “Firstly, I have the report from our ophthalmologist. All the test results proved positive, and the fact that you’ve been having flashes of sight indicates that your brain is still wired to see.”

  Cole sighed with relief. He’d often wondered if keeping himself in the dark had caused permanent damage to his eyes.

  “But since you haven’t had your vision for such an extended length of time,” Dr. Collins continued, “there are no guarantees that anything we do here will restore your sight completely.”

  His heart sank. “So this might be a total waste of time?”

  “That’s a risk you need to be aware of. But, on the other hand, if it does work, I want you to know that it could take anywhere from weeks to years before you’ll be able to function like any other sighted person.”

  “Why?”

  “Cole, you haven’t seen the world for twenty years. Your memories of how it should appear, and how it really is, may vary enormously. Your brain will need time to adjust to all the new stimuli, time to see what’s really in front of you, rather than what you imagine is. There’s a big difference. Do you understand?”

  He nodded. He wanted a quick solution, wanted to arrive at Anthea’s door, tell her that he loved her, that he was sorry and show her he could face the world and be a part of it again. Just as long as she was by his side.

  But if the process to
ok longer than he wanted, he’d just have to deal with that. Determination, he knew, could go a long way.

  “So, as you’re aware, the answer to regaining your sight is to work on the psychological problem. That means confronting the trauma you suffered as a child. Are you ready for that?”

  “You bet I am.”

  After the first week’s sessions with Dr. Collins, Cole still hadn’t made a breakthrough. As he sat on the couch in the doctor’s office and took a sip of hot coffee, he wondered if he was a lost cause. He needed to see again in order to find Anthea and win her back, but without her around, he hadn’t had another flash of sight. Was he stuck in an impossible situation?

  He could hear Dr. Collins shuffling through pages Cole presumed were the notes the doctor had taken throughout their sessions.

  The shuffling stopped, and after a long pause, Dr. Collins said, “Would you describe your father as a handsome man?”

  Cole put down his coffee and clasped his hands. Frustration at the stupidity of the question coursed through him. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “You don’t need to worry about why I’m asking. Just look into your memory and pull up a mental picture of your father. Describe him to me.”

  “I don’t remember.” His fingers tightened on each other, and he seemed unable to control the pressure even though it was becoming painful.

  “Yes, you do, Cole. You spent nine years of your life looking at him. So, when you’re ready…”

  Cole pulled his hands apart. They instantly curled into fists, and he became aware of his heart thudding hard in his chest. There was something there, something about the question that tore at him. He wanted nothing more than to leave. He wanted to tell Dr. Collins to go to hell. In all the time he’d spent with the doctor, he’d never felt that way toward the man.

  “Black hair,” he said, his throat tight. “Gray eyes, thin mouth, a hooked nose. Skinny.” Over the roar of blood thumping through his ears, he could hear Dr. Collins scribbling notes.

  “Now,” Dr. Collins said, “describe yourself.”