“Hmm. Well, can’t you search for it?Googleit?” She said the last part like she was proud of herself for remembering the term. It made Olivia smile.
“I could, sure,” she said, and decided not to go into detail over their lack of internet access. As she had the thought, she realized she had something better than Google, and she felt foolish for never having thought of it before.
She decided to finish her conversation with her grandmother before looking into the option she should have considered ages ago.
“Grandma,” she said, moving on to a topic she was reluctant to broach but felt the article had granted a rare opportunity to speak openly about. She lifted her feet up out of the pool and turned to lie back on the warm concrete. She closed her eyes against the brilliant sun despite wearing her sunglasses. “When you saw the article in the magazine about me and Chuck, did it say anything about…my parents?” She held her breath and hoped her question wouldn’t upset her grandmother.
Ruby paused long enough that Olivia worried she’d hung up. “It did, yes,” she finally said. “I wish they’d let your mother rest in peace.”
Olivia’s heart ached at the sorrow in her voice. Whatever grief she felt over her mother, she knew her grandmother felt it a thousand times more. “I wish they would too. Actually, the producers of the show I’m on asked me to do an interview about it.” Against her closed eyelids, a vision of the famed photo of her and her parents danced.
Ruby stayed quiet for a long moment. “Are you considering it?”
“Of course not!” Olivia at first blurted, but then she realized her grandmother hadn’t asked to accuse her, but to simply ask her.
The memory of her conversation with Chuck came flooding back, how he’d told her that if she ever wanted to tell her parents’ story, she’d be good at it. He’d also said that she was scared, and he was right.
“Do you think I should?” she asked her grandmother, utterly vulnerable and afraid of what she might say.
Ruby let out a long, slow breath. “I always knew this day would come. I did everything I could to protect you back then. They were so hideously mean to your mother—and you. The things they said about you, an innocent baby, I couldn’t—” She cut off with an angry breath. “And thenshekept her mouth shut about everything and let the world believe my Rebecca was a monster.” Ruby had worked herself into a small fit, and Olivia was reeling.
“Grandma, what are you talking about?Shewho? Astrid Larsson?” She could hardly say the name aloud. She wasn’t even sure she’d ever spoken it to her grandmother before. It felt forbidden.
Ruby tutted. “Of course that’s who I mean. She’s not as innocent in this as everyone thinks. In fact, she’s complicit in your parents’ name being dragged through the mud.”
“Grandma, what—?”
“I’m sorry. You and I have never had the chance to talk about any of this because I wanted to keep you as far away from it as possible, but seeing it in print again has me riled up, and since you asked about it, I think it’s time I finally tell you the truth.”
Olivia thought perhaps she’d slipped and smacked her headon the concrete, and this whole conversation was a wild hallucination. “Tell me the truth aboutwhat, Grandma?”
Ruby paused for a long moment that had Olivia ready to leap out of her skin with anticipation. When her voice came back, it nearly hissed with the relief of a valve being opened. Decades of pressure let go on an exhale. “Darling, your parents did not have an affair. Well, they did in the sense that your fatherwasmarried to Astrid Larsson at the time, but what he had with your mother was more real than their marriage ever was.”
Olivia blinked several times, still staring up at the sky. “What does that mean?”
“It means that there is a lot more to the story than the tabloids ever reported. You see, your father’s marriage to Astrid was a business arrangement. She was a Swedish supermodel who they wanted to turn into an American movie star, so they had her marry an American man. I’m simplifying things, of course; there were immigration requirements and paperwork, but the primary reason they married was for appearances. A rising starlet and a successful Hollywood manager made for a wholesome pair, and having roots in this country helped her career take off. It was a lucrative partnership for them both, but that’s all it was: business.
“It worked well until your father fell in love with your mother. I’m simplifying again.” She paused with a warm, fond chuckle. “Their love was the kind movies are made of and songs are written about, but of course they couldn’t do anything about it. A divorce would have hurt Astrid’s career—things were a bit different back then than they are today—and in turn, Bradley’s, so they kept it secret from the public, butnotfrom Astrid.”
Olivia was reeling under waves of revelation, but she managed to speak. “She knew? That they were together?”
“Oh yes. Not only that, but shesanctionedit. It was another arrangement—between the three of them. Your father stayed publicly married to Astrid while he had a relationship with your mother out of the spotlight. Everyone got what they wanted. But when your mother became pregnant with you, she was already famous enough for the attention and interest to be unavoidable, which left it only a matter of time before the truth came out—well, what people thought was the truth.” She paused and harrumphed another breath. “And Astrid never corrected them. Not even after they—” She cut off, and Olivia filled in the heartbroken blank withdied.
As she listened, an odd thing was happening inside Olivia’s chest. Her heart seemed to be shattering and piecing back together at the same time. Holes that had been there her entire life were sealing shut while new shards were splintering off.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me this?” she asked.
“I should have. I really should have. I’m so sorry that I never did. It was all so ugly and cruel that I wanted to shield you from every bit of it,” Ruby said. “But I’ve done you no favors letting you grow up believing your parents are the villains of this story. They absolutely were not. Yes, they may have made some poor decisions, but they were guilty of nothing except loving each other.”
Olivia sat up and felt blood try to refill her spinning head. She’d always feared her parents were a toxic fling, and she the product of a regrettable, cheap tryst that ruined lives, but hearing her grandmother’s story made her brave enough to ask something she’d always been afraid to know. “So, they were…in love?”
“Oh yes, sweetheart. Tremendously.”
Her instant and affirmative response lifted Olivia’s heart asif she’d been scooped off the ground to float near the sun. “Really?” she asked, because the sense of relief spilling over her felt too good to be true.
A quiet, amused laugh bubbled from Ruby. “Yes. They were so smitten. He’d send her endless flowers and gifts. She’d tell me they were going away for the weekend, and then she would resurface a week later telling me they’d been to Paris and back. And theylovedyou, my darling. You were their absolute pride and joy. Your mother told me once—” She suddenly cut off with a tearful sniff. Her voice came back thick and strained though still filled with warmth. “She told me once that she was going to quit acting so you could have a normal life out of the spotlight. She wanted the world for you. That’s part of the reason I shielded you from the spotlight after her death.”
“She was going to quit? For me? But I thought she loved acting.” Olivia’s own voice had grown thick with emotion.