“Didn’t you get my letter?” Kitty asked. “I’m not coming back.”
“You don’t have to. I’ve moved here. And I wanted to tell you—I owe you an apology for lying about not getting into Central.”
“You don’t. I understand why you did.”
“I couldn’t tell you, not when you had all these dreams about moving and me going to medical school. I couldn’t stay in Winston anymore, especially after getting your last letter.” He reached for her hand to pull her to sit on the couch with him. She resisted. “It took me some time to get things together to leave, but I’m here.”
Kitty’s stomach dropped with dread. “You really moved here?”
“I rented a room. Now I can find a job and enroll in school. Mary, I’m going to be a doctor. Soon, I can take care of you the way I promised to.”
“It’s not about that, Richard.”
“It is for me. I can’t lose you.” His voice quivered as he pulled her hand again to sit.
She shook him off. “Richard, I’m not going back.”
He threw his hands around. “I said I’ve moved here.”
“No—I’m not going back to being Colored. My name is Kitty now. Kitty Lane Karr. I have a job, a life. I’m happy.”
“But you told me you’d marry me.”
It had been agony to mail him her regrets; she couldn’t look at him now.
“Is there someone else?”
“No.” She saw he didn’t believe her. But it was true, although her desire for Nathan far surpassed anything she’d ever felt for Richard.
“What’s so great about being White?”
“I’m an assistant at one of the biggest film studios in the world.”
He smirked. “You mean a secretary.”
“An assistant to the head of the studio.”
“That’s a fancy word for ‘secretary.’ You don’t need a college degree to do that.”
“And yet, it pays more than being a Negro school teacher.”
“Once I’m a doctor, you’ll see. I can make you happy.” But Kitty knew better. The nasty reality was that Kitty could take better care of herself being a White woman than Richard could as her Negro husband.
He stood to kiss her. Letting him would have been the kind thing to do, but she turned her head. “I won’t marry you. And I never want to see you again.”
Her rejection made him mean. “You broke your mother’s heart, running out the way you did.”
Her instincts were to defend herself. My momma broke mine. She wanted to tell him Hazel had sent her, but she knew her mother didn’t want all of Cottonwood in her business. As with everything in her life at this point, the fewer people who knew the details, the better. “Now, please go,” she said. His eyes started to cloud over, dimming the last of his light, so she gave it one last push. “Please, Richard—leave me alone.”
His pride sent him out of the door.
Kitty watched him from behind the blinds. He didn’t stand as straight as he had only months ago. He pushed his large hands into his pockets, kept his head down. Maybe he’d been that way all along and she hadn’t noticed, not having someone to compare him to. And just to think: in another life, he would have already been her husband.
She would, in the years to come, think of Richard, then brush the memory off as soon as it came. Breaking his heart would be her one regret; hers ached every time he came to mind. It would be decades before the pain stopped, before she told herself: they’d been too young to marry, and it wouldn’t have worked anyway. And then the only lie: her passing had had nothing to do with it.
* * *
Emma’s ring caught the sunlight coming through the living-room window; it cast a blue-hued sparkle against the wall every time she moved her hand. She detailed Rick’s New Year’s Eve proposal from Kitty’s bed. “We went outside to set off fireworks. He dropped down on one knee and asked me to be his wife.” With his whole family there, Emma finally received the acceptance she’d been craving.
“We’ll marry in a few weeks.” She had to be married before Judy’s wedding so she could apply for her passport under her married name, Emma Denman, instead of her sister’s true name.
There was always something to consider. Kitty was grateful for Emma, who reminded her of such things. The Lakes name carried similar weight.
“Did you write to your momma?” Kitty asked.
Emma’s face dropped. “Why do you have to bring that up?”
“Don’t you think she’d like to know?” Kitty hoped Emma’s marriage would bring news about her own mother.
“Why? She can’t be here, and the last thing I need is you reminding me.” Emma stormed out and slammed Kitty’s door and then, a second later, her own.
For all the lectures Emma gave about letting go of the past, she was the one who couldn’t. She was battling regret—something no one could fix, especially when she denied its existence.
* * *
Kitty entered an engagement of her own with Nathan after he read her version of The Misfits. She’d combined characters, deleted entire scenes, and changed the ending. He was offended; maybe a sentence from his draft had made it through intact. “All you had to do was read it.”
There was no point in lying. “You can get better.”
He flipped to a page. “How is it that you can just do this?”
“I think in pictures.”
“Did you even read my dad’s version?”
“No.” That was a lie. Abner’s version was the ramblings of a man with a failing memory, but the bones were there. Nathan had boiled them until the marrow dissipated and they were whistle clean and ashy.
“You should read some of his old scripts; he really used to be good.”
So should you.
He put his hand on the script. “I’ll show it to Charles. Get his opinion.”
The next time she saw her script, it had a cover page listing Nathan Tate as its author. For a week, he kept forgetting to give her a copy or tell her the rehearsal times. Finally, Kitty got the rehearsal schedule from Lucy and showed up. When the script landed in her hands, he froze like an animal caught speaking by a human. He avoided her on set and left early. The next morning, there was a check on her desk for an exorbitant amount of money. It gave her some satisfaction, but she couldn’t ignore the reality of his first inclination. She pulled Lucy and Cora aside after a Blair House meeting.
“You’re lucky he paid you.” Cora looked at Lucy, surprised by Kitty’s naivety. “You should forgive him.”
“He wasn’t going to. He was hoping I’d never know. I don’t know if I can work for someone like that.”
“Your name will never go on the script, Kitty,” Laurie said. Kitty turned around. Laurie always appeared out of nowhere, as if she’d been listening around every corner, and carried an all-knowing, omnipresent air. “They won’t let you be Telescope’s creative successor—not in name anyway.” Kitty had forgotten her Whiteness couldn’t save her from the plans, wants, and needs of her greater male counterpart.
“What if he accepts my resignation?”
Cora and Laurie spoke in unison. “He won’t.”
“Kitty, he needs you.” Lucy touched her arm. “He took credit for your script, and now he’ll have to produce another of the same caliber. He’ll beg you to stay, and the longer he begs, the more grateful he’ll be when you forgive him.”
“But I’m angry; I can’t believe he did that.” Kitty held out her plate for a slice of lemon meringue pie.
Lucy shrugged. “Get even.”
Cora explained what she meant. “If you marry him, it’ll all benefit you in the end.”
Kitty deposited his check and put her original copy of the script in a safety-deposit box. The next morning, she handed Nathan her resignation letter. He was near to tears having to address it.
“I knew it was wrong, and my way of apologizing was to do what I should have done in the beginning.”
“Pay me?”
“Yes. Was it not enough?”
“I don’t know the rate for stolen work.”
This he didn’t apologize for. “My father’s script couldn’t have been rewritten by ‘Kitty Karr’—”
“But it was.”
“You said yourself it would be good for the studio if I were to write something.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I did, and you trashed it.”