“You have no idea what I can do when I have to do it. But I can’t do a damn thing if I don’t know. I’m responsible for you, my girl. I don’t give a single cold damn if you’re eighteen or a hundred and eight. I’m responsible. And the first thing we do is report this to the police.”

Panic wanted to rear back. “Would you wait a minute, please?” The fury flying off Lily burned so hot it took genuine effort for Cate to step to her. “What happens then? I got rid of the phone. I can admit that was stupid, but it’s done. I tell them what I remember about the calls. Then what?”

“I’m not the damn police, so I don’t know then what.”

“I can figure out part of it. I file a report, and the report gets out. That’s a little feast for the tabloids. Then it’s public, and how many other calls do you think I’ll get once it is?”

“Son of a bitch!” Robe flapping, Lily stalked to the terrace doors, threw them open. Stalked out.

“Happy now?” Cate tossed at Noah.

“It’s not about happy, don’t be an idiot. She’s pissed because she loves you. So am I. So do I.”

“That doesn’t help right now.” Though it did, more than a little. Gearing up, she walked outside.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t tell anyone the first time because I knew Dad wouldn’t let me do the movie, and I wanted it. I needed it. He wouldn’t have let me.”

“Probably not,” Lily muttered.

“I didn’t say anything at first about this time because, G-Lil, you’ve got opening night.”

Lily whirled around. “Do you think a play’s more important to me than you? That anything in this world is more important to me than you?”

“No. It’s the same for me. There was press about my mother getting out, about me, about the new project when the first one happened. And there’s been a little about me going to NYU just recently, and all the interviews she’s doing about her wedding. Somebody took a shot.”

“She could have done it herself. I wouldn’t put it past her.”

“She could hire better.”

The sun, as fiery as Lily’s hair, shot light over the river, bounced it off steel and glass.

“They’re recordings, G-Lil. I know a recording when I hear it. The overdubbing, the really crappy splicing. She has plenty of money now to pay for quality, and this isn’t.”

“That doesn’t make it better.”

“But I can’t stop living my life because of it. I hate the way it makes me feel when it’s happening, but I can’t stop living my life.”

Lily walked back into the shade, sat, drummed her fingers. “No one wants that, Catey. You have a point about the police. This time. If it happens again, we do this differently. You keep the phone, call the police, give them the phone, and let them do what they do.”

“All right.”

“For now, you’ll write down whatever you remember from both calls so we have a record, if we need it. You’re going to call your father and tell him.”

“But—”

“No.” Eyes glittering, Lily shot up a finger. “That’s absolute. What we’ll call unhealthy communications happen to people in our line of work—and you were in our line of work. But he needs to know. Then you’ll make up with your boyfriend, because he did the right thing, and he did it out of love and concern.”

“I don’t like the way he did it.”

Lily arched those eyebrows. “Enough to kick him to the curb over it?”

“No.”

“Then go make up—get that done. Then have him get me—and himself—a nice cold Coke. We’ll sit out here while you deal with your daddy. I’ll back you up there,” Lily decided. “Bring me the phone after you’ve gotten things started.”

With no way out, she went back inside where Noah waited. “I don’t like the way you did this.”

“I got that.”

“I need to be able to handle my own life, make my own decisions.”

“This is different. You know it’s different, but you’re still too twisted up about it to admit it.” He walked to her before she could snap back, put his hands on her face. “I can’t stand seeing you twisted up. I can’t not do anything when you are.”

He brushed his lips over hers. “You’re going to be less twisted up now that she knows.”

“Maybe, but now I have to tell my father, and that’s going to be a mess. She said to get some Cokes and go out and sit with her while I call my dad.”

It was messy, and upsetting, and ultimately took that dose of Lily to close it off. But the worst Cate feared didn’t happen. She wasn’t ordered to come back to L.A.—an order she would have refused. And she had yet another chance to live her life.

Before opening night came final dress and a theater filled with the energy of family and friends. Cate had her first experience watching it all full out—lights, music, sets, costumes—in a theater jammed with people who wanted nothing more than the success of their loved one on the stage.

She met Noah’s family, and that felt like another major step in her life.

On the preview night, the one critics attended, she stayed backstage. Critics and press meshed together. She didn’t want to chance taking the spotlight off her grandmother, her boyfriend.

Still, she agonized with the cast in the wait for the early reviews, celebrated with the raves.

With Monday’s dark theater, she took an early dance class with Noah, and he went with her to tour the campus she’d attend at NYU.

“It’s so big,” she said as they walked to the subway. “And that’s just part of it. It feels overwhelming.”

“You’ll do fine. Better than fine.”

Together they walked down the steps to take the train uptown.

“Private school, tutors.”

“Poor rich white girl,” he said, which made her laugh and give him an elbow jab.

“It’s the vastness, I guess.” They moved through the revolving gate. “And so many people. Even summer courses are going to have a lot of students. The advantage to that,” she added, pulling out her Metro-Card, “is being able to more or less disappear. Change of Scene’s coming out in a couple weeks. The rest of the cast is already starting the circuit.”

“We’re going to see it.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She hunched, wiggled her shoulders as if shaking off an itch.

“No way out.”

They waited on the platform with two women, one with a round-cheeked baby in a stroller. They spoke rapid Spanish while the baby gnawed ferociously on an orange teething ring. Nearby a man in a business suit used his thumb to scroll on his phone. Beside him, a short, squat man in baggy basketball shorts polished off a slice while bopping his head to whatever played through his earbuds.

The air smelled of the pizza, baked-in sweat, and someone’s overdone onion rings.

“It ended up being a pretty crap part of my life.”

Noah just trailed a hand down her arm. “Another reason we’re going, so you can see how good you are even through the crap parts. We can catch a matinee.” He took her hand as the thunder of the approaching train swelled through the tunnel.