‘Sorry!’ Lillian’s head whipped to the side as her smartphone chirped yet again. She lunged for her handbag. ‘Excuse me. I just have to see who’s trying to contact me – they seem rather insistent.’
‘OK,’ Olivia said. But she frowned as she saw Lillian race upstairs with full vampiric speed, obviously waiting to answer the phone until she was out of hearing range of everyone else. Why would she need that much privacy for her call, if she doesn’t even know who’s trying to talk to her?
‘Oh.’ Ivy sighed, emerging for the first time from her distraction. ‘That reminds me, I left my phone in my room. Brendan might need to call me. Maybe . . .’
‘I’ll get it for you,’ Olivia said. She gave a mock-serious face, pointing to the mangled mess on Ivy’s plate. ‘Just promise me you’ll put that poor food out of its misery!’
‘Will do.’ Ivy gave her a sad half-smile and a mock salute.
Olivia started up the stairs towards her sister’s room. As she walked past Charles and Lillian’s bedroom door, though, the sound of Lillian’s strained, unhappy voice stopped her in her tracks.
‘I’m really, really not sure about this,’ Lillian said softly.
‘Are you nuts?’ The crackly voice of Jacob Harker sounded through the phone so loudly that even Olivia could hear it in the hallway outside. ‘You would have to be, like, totally crazy to turn this down! It’ll give your career a massive boost.’
‘I know,’ Lillian said, ‘but –’
‘This director really wants you on the project. To prove it, he’s offered to produce your feature-length directorial debut after you wrap. He just wants you to help him out on this one shoot.’
There was a long, agonising pause. Olivia could almost feel her stepmom’s indecision vibrating through the air. She held her breath to keep from making any tell-tale noises.
But why is this such a hard decision? Olivia wondered. Why would she be so unsure about taking a new job on a movie? Yes, Lillian had moved to Franklin Grove, but she and Charles must have factored in that she would need to travel from time to time. After all, it was her movie career that had brought her to Franklin Grove in the first place, at the beginning of the year.
Finally, Lillian let out a heavy sigh. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she told Harker. ‘Now come in, please.’
What? Olivia’s eyebrows rose. Why would Lillian ask Jacob Harker – who was in another state – to come into the room?
. . . Oh, wait. She didn’t ask Harker. Oops!
Olivia winced. After all the times the vampires around her had been caught off-guard in this past week, why did tonight have to be the night Lillian started hearing like a vampire again?
Bracing herself, Olivia opened the door.
Inside the bedroom, Lillian stood by a plush, ornate double-coffin in the shape of a heart. As Olivia stepped inside, Lillian placed her smartphone on the glossy wooden lid of the coffin and turned to give her stepdaughter a stern look.
‘Eavesdropping is never nice, Olivia. You’re old enough to know that by now.’
‘I’m sorry!’ Olivia rushed forwards across the thick, dark carpet. ‘I really didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t help it. Please don’t think of it as a betrayal! I just . . .’ She bit her lip, faltering just as she reached her stepmom’s side. ‘I got it in my head that you were getting ready to run away from Franklin Grove or something.’
Lillian stared at her. ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’
Olivia twisted her hands together. ‘I saw you,’ she whispered, ‘in the supermarket, picking up a travel guide. And you’ve not been yourself lately – it’s like you’re trying too hard to prove that you like Franklin Grove and you fit in here.’
‘Olivia . . .’ Lillian began.
Olivia couldn’t stop herself. ‘You’re trying too hard,’ she said, looking from her stepmother’s elaborately upswept hair to her evening gown and rich garnet necklace. ‘You’ve been trying so hard to convince someone that everything’s OK, that it’s becoming so obvious everything’s not OK.’
Lillian looked at her for a long moment without speaking. Then, slowly, she smiled. ‘Gosh, I didn’t think it would take you such a short time to be able to read my moods so well,’ she said. ‘If I’m not careful, you and Ivy are going to be able to twist me round your little fingers!’
Olivia laughed and walked across the room to her stepmom, wrapping her in a hug. ‘I’m right here if you need to talk,’ she promised.
Lillian raised her eyebrows thoughtfully. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’d like that. But . . .’ She flipped open the coffin and climbed inside, carefully arranging the skirts of her silk evening gown against the rich crimson velvet of the coffin’s lining. ‘I’m going to need to be really relaxed for this conversation.’
Olivia blinked. ‘OK.’ I can deal with this, she told herself. After all, she’d finally gotten Lillian to start talking. She could totally handle talking to someone while they lay down inside a coffin!
As Lillian got comfortable, the lines of tension in her face eased away. For the first time all week, she actually looked genuinely peaceful. When she started to speak, her voice was quiet.
‘I wasn’t planning to leave,’ she said. ‘I was looking at travel guides because I was trying to find out how easy it would be to fly back and forth from the Wanderer location shoot to Franklin Grove.’