The hostess recognizes me, but she does a good job pretending she doesn’t.
She just gives that tiny flicker of extra warmth on my name, a softer “this way, Ms. Hayes,” before she leads me through the restaurant. The place smells like butter and charred lemon and something earthy I peg as truffle oil. Glass pendants float over each table, glowing low and flattering. Murmured conversations blend into the steady clink of cutlery and the faint hiss of something searing in the open kitchen.
Marcus picked the spot, obviously. It’s the kind of place where studio heads come to apologize without anyone hearing the word “sorry,” where NDAs pair nicely with the wine list.
He stands when I reach the corner booth, smoothing an invisible wrinkle from his navy jacket. “There she is,” he says, voice just loud enough for me and no one else. “Television’s new patron saint of redemption.”
I roll my eyes and slide into the leather banquette. It creaks softly under my weight. “You practiced that in the car,” I say.
“I updated it in the car,” he says. “The original line had ‘awards magnet’ in it, but I didn’t want to jinx it.”
A waiter appears with a bottle already in hand. Marcus doesn’t bother to look at the label; he already ordered. The champagne foams softly into our glasses, bubbles racing for the surface. I catch the citrusy, yeasty smell and my shoulders loosen a notch.
“To early chatter,” Marcus says, lifting his glass toward mine. “To the phrase ‘career-best performance’ appearing in three separate blogs that do not hate-watch prestige TV. To every casting director who passed on you for being ‘too specific’ now pretending they always believed.”
I tap my glass against his. The crystal rings, bright and sharp. “To you sneaking ‘too specific’ into every story for the next six months,” I say, and take a sip. The champagne bites and then melts on my tongue, sugar and acid.
Marcus watches me over the rim of his glass, eyes crinkling. “And,” he adds, lowering his voice, “to certain questions never making it anywhere near a microphone.”
The bubble of warmth inside me flutters. “We’re already toasting questions that don’t exist yet?” I ask, aiming for light.
“Awards chatter brings profiles,” he says. “Profiles bring ‘real talk.’ ‘Real talk’ brings, ‘So, Nora, you’ve alluded to having a wild streak as a teenager.’” He mimics an interviewer’s bright tone without raising his volume. “We just want to make sure they stay in the shallow end of the pool.”
The hostess drops menus and disappears again. The table is suddenly crowded: heavy cutlery, folded linen, a tiny vase holding one perfect white flower.
“You think people still care about that?” I ask. “We scrubbed the search results years ago. Nobody under thirty remembers River’s Edge.”
“The internet remembers everything,” he says. He slips a hand into his leather briefcase, sets something on the seat beside him, and pats it once. “But we’re not scared of memory. We’re just better organized.”
I glance down and catch a flash of white and plastic: a binder, thick, edge bristling with color-coded tabs. It sits there like another place setting.
My stomach pinches.
Marcus notices my glance and smiles. “Relax,” he says. “This is dessert.”
We order food, trading minimal opinions—the sea bass for him, the pasta for me, salad to share. He steers the conversation through safe topics while the waiter hovers: scheduling, brand partnerships, a charity gala my publicist wants me at. Talk of green juice cleanses and sustainable jewelry flickers past like a montage.
When the waiter leaves with our menus, Marcus finally pulls the binder onto the table and nudges it toward me.
“Your new bedtime reading,” he says. “Talking points, Q&A grids, a few sample anecdotes we like. You know the drill.”
The binder is heavier than it looks. The plastic cover is matte, no logo on the front, only a discreet label on the spine: HAYES – SECOND CHANCES – MASTER DOC. My name and the show’s title, fused.
“We’re really doing this,” I say, running my fingertips over the cover. “I have a master doc again. I haven’t had one of these since—”
I stop before the word “River’s” can slide out.
Marcus hears it anyway. “Since the rom-com years,” he supplies smoothly. “We didn’t need more than a couple of pages back then. You smile, you trip adorably, you talk about how playing clumsy women helped you embrace your own imperfections. Easy.”
I open the binder. A faint cardboard-and-toner smell rises from the pages, whispering copy room and conference tables. Inside, everything is organized within an inch of its life: sections divided by plastic tabs, each one with a label in his assistant’s neat handwriting. PERSONAL NARRATIVE. CRAFT & PROCESS. SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY. AWARDS POSITIONING.
“You make me sound like a nonprofit,” I say, flipping through bullet points about trauma-informed storytelling and the importance of portraying healing on screen.
“You’re a philanthropic corporation wrapped in cheekbones,” he says. “Read the first tab.”
PERSONAL NARRATIVE gives me the usual beats: small-town girl, single mom working nights, random miracle casting in River’s Edge High at sixteen. There’s a bolded line about “youthful intensity” instead of “rage,” a softer phrasing for the same reality. A note in the margin reminds me to shout out my dialect coach, my therapist, and my female showrunner whenever possible.
The next tab, CRAFT & PROCESS, has phrases like “I wanted to explore what a genuine second chance costs” highlighted in yellow. I can feel the talk show spiels clicking into place already.
My fingers stall halfway through a flip. Among the pastel tabs, one stands out: a darker shade of red, narrower than the others. LEGACY NARRATIVES, the label reads.
I don’t remember seeing that in any previous binders.
“What’s this?” I ask.
Marcus takes a sip of champagne, eyes following the motion of my thumb. “Housekeeping,” he says. “We baked a couple of guardrails into your language. Just in case someone gets enterprising and decides to do a ‘From Wild Child to Worthy’ montage.”
“They already did that blend,” I say. “Buzzline, 2018. They put a mugshot from some other actress’s DUI next to my prom photo.”
“Which we got pulled,” he reminds me. “We cannot keep babysitting sloppy editors forever, though. So. Legacy narratives.” He nods at the tab. “For your awareness.”
I slip a finger under the plastic and flip.
The paper quality changes in my hands. The earlier sections are printed on bright white, smooth pages. These sheets are older, slightly off-color, the black ink a touch faded. The header on the first page reads:
INTERNAL ONLY – HAYES IMAGE MANAGEMENT PLAN – CONFIDENTIAL
Beneath that, smaller:
Prepared by: Hale Management / Silverline Studios Legal & Communications
My name appears three times in the first paragraph alone. So does River’s Edge High.
Several lines are blocked out, thick black rectangles of redaction. The visual punches me in the chest. I drag my fingernail lightly across one of the bars. The ink is glossy, newer than the text under it.
“You kept this?” I ask, voice low.
“I keep everything,” Marcus says.
The plates arrive then, saving him from more questions. The waiter grates cheese over my pasta; steam curls up, carrying the smell of garlic and white wine. I murmur thanks and wait until he steps away before I look back down at the page.
The words I can see are bad enough.
“…following on-set altercation at abandoned riverside facility…”
My fork clatters against the plate. A smear of sauce jumps onto the binder’s clear sleeve.
Marcus’s gaze flicks to the stain, then to my face. “Careful,” he says lightly. “Legal poured a lot of billable hours into that paper.”
“Why is this in here?” I ask.
“Because people have long memories and hard drives,” he says. “Some junior journalist will eventually dig around in old trade rumors, connect ‘riverside mill incident’ with a grainy still, and decide they invented the wheel. When they do, you will not be caught improvising.”
My tongue tastes like metal under the wine. “We talked about this,” I say. “We agreed that… that was sealed. Juvenile records. Closed sets. Paid settlements. Your words.”
“And all of that remains true,” he says. “The public record is clean. But the internal record exists. Studio legal. Insurance. My files. You cannot pretend the paper never lived, Nora. You can only decide whether you know what’s on it.”
For a moment, the restaurant noise fades. I hear water instead, crashing against concrete pillars under a Pennsylvania mill. The air in my chest turns damp and cold.
I close the binder. The thunk reverberates through the tableware.
“I’m not reading that over pasta,” I say. “I came here to celebrate.”
Marcus studies me for a beat. His expression softens around the eyes, though his jaw stays firm. “Then celebrate,” he says. “Eat. Breathe. Let me worry about the binder.”
He steers us back into safer conversation, asking about a scene from today, an improvisation he heard about from the director. I answer automatically, fork moving from plate to mouth without much involvement from my brain. The pasta tastes excellent—lemon, butter, a hint of heat—but it lands heavy.
Halfway through his bass, he leans back. “You okay?” he asks. “You’ve gone quiet.”
“I just need the restroom,” I say, already sliding out of the booth. “Give me two minutes.”
I pick up the binder without thinking and tuck it under my arm.
The restroom is down a short hallway lined with framed black-and-white photos of old Hollywood: actresses blowing out birthday candles, directors squinting through lenses. It smells faintly of jasmine soap and industrial cleaner. Inside, everything is cool and glossy—stone sinks, chrome fixtures, mirrors framed in gold. Soft music hums from invisible speakers.
I lock myself in the farthest stall and rest the binder on the closed lid.
For a few seconds, I just breathe. The tile wall against my back feels cold through my blouse. My hands smell like garlic and printer ink.
Then I open to the red tab.
The memo sits where I left it. The paper crackles under my fingers, thinner than the rest, older. I skim, eyes snagging on phrases.
“…narrative: youthful conflict exacerbated by fatigue and poor supervision…”
“…partner with mental health professionals to reframe as growth opportunity…”
“…on-set altercation resulting in injury to co-star L.P., minor…”
My chest tightens. They didn’t even give her a full name in the header. Just initials.
“…goal: avoid criminal trial, secure sealed juvenile adjudication, maintain series viability…”
The words swim. Juvenile. Injury. Adjudication. Each one is a stone tossed into the river in my head, ripples colliding.
I flip the page with shaking fingers. The next sheet is worse: bullet points detailing strategy.
Talking Point Option A: “We were kids; the adults should have known better.”
Talking Point Option B: “I leaned into that anger in my work and then outgrew it.”
Underneath, in red pen, someone has written, Use sparingly. Only if forced.
I don’t remember seeing any of this before. I remember conference rooms, yes, and Marcus’s hand on my shoulder, and a woman from legal explaining what “sealed” meant. I remember signing things. I do not remember this memo.
My pulse thuds in my ears. I tear my gaze away from the text and stare at the redaction bars instead, thick and final. Someone decided which words I’m still allowed to see.
I slide my thumb under the bottom corner of the page.
It rips easier than I expect. The sound is quick and violent in the small stall. I tear the sheet into two uneven halves, then again, and again, until I hold confetti-sized bits of paper, sentences fractured into nonsense.
The trash can by the sink yawns open through the stall gap—swing top, chrome. I kneel, drop the pieces inside, and shove them down under a handful of used paper towels. My knees press into the cool tile; my stockings snag on a grout line.
The memo no longer reads clean, but the binder still holds other pages. Legal still has its copy. Marcus has his. The studio’s servers have backups in climate-controlled rooms with keypad locks. I haven’t killed anything; I’ve just maimed the one version that wandered into my hands at dinner.
My breathing comes in sharp bursts. I stand, run cold water in the sink until it roars, and splash my face. The restaurant’s mirror throws my reflection back at me: damp lashes, flushed cheeks, lipstick blurred at the edges. Behind my reflection, the stall door stands ajar, the binder slumped against the wall like a stunned animal.
Glass over porcelain, LA over Pennsylvania. The mill lives somewhere under both.
I pat my face dry and reapply lipstick with steadying hands. On the way out, I pick up the binder, careful to keep the LEGACY NARRATIVES tab closed.
Back at the table, Marcus looks up from his phone. His gaze flicks to the binder, checking for visible damage.
“You took homework to the bathroom,” he says lightly. “That feels significant.”
“I skimmed,” I say, dropping it on the seat beside me instead of the table. “We don’t need that level of detail in my head right now. It just clutters the story.”
He studies me for a heartbeat. “The story we’re telling now,” he says, “is that Nora Hayes did the work, learned the lessons, and is ready to lead a show about second chances. Everything else is a footnote in somebody’s filing cabinet.”
“Then let it stay there,” I say, reaching for my champagne. The bubbles have gone a little flat, but I drain the glass anyway. “We did what we had to do. I am not throwing away the life that came out of that because someone in legal likes memos.”
He nods once. Approval softens his features again. “That’s my girl,” he says.
We move on. Dessert appears—a single chocolate torte we pretend we’re going to split evenly. He talks about a director who wants to meet, a streaming platform whispering about for-your-consideration campaigns. I laugh in the right places, feel my body slide back into the familiar groove of forward momentum.
On the way out, I catch our reflection in the restaurant’s front window: me in my tailored jacket, Marcus at my shoulder, the city’s neon bleeding through us. Behind the glass, candlelit tables glow like tiny stages. Somewhere in a different town, under a different kind of light, a mill still rusts beside a river that never got to forget.
I turn away before the picture can resolve and step into the warm LA night, binder tucked under my arm, telling myself that as long as I don’t read the rest, it can’t rewrite the story I’m already in.