I start where I never have to start: the kitchen table, not the vanity mirror.
The light over Laurel Canyon is barely awake, a pale gray-gold that makes the city look distant and unreal through the glass walls. My kitchen smells like coffee and toast and the faint citrus of the cleaner I swiped across the counters last night. No makeup bag in sight, no stylist, no publicist on the phone. Just me, in an old T-shirt and sweatpants, hair in a crooked knot, bare feet pressed against the cool tile.
In the middle of the table, between a chipped mug and a plate with two untouched triangles of toast, I place the recorder.
It isn’t anything fancy, not studio gear, just a small black rectangle with a single red button. I bought it at a drugstore last week with a pack of gum and travel-sized Advil. The plastic feels slightly cheap under my thumb, which … works. My public-facing life has been recorded on lenses that cost more than my first apartment; this gets to be humble.
I clear my throat, listen to the low hum of the refrigerator and the soft rush of the air conditioning. In the silence beyond the glass, a bird trills over the canyon, thin and piercing.
“You’re stalling,” I tell myself.
My voice sounds rough, morning-thick. I’m used to hearing it through headphones, brightened, compressed, backed by a host’s laughter or a studio audience’s reaction. Here, in this wide, quiet kitchen, it lands flat and real.
I wrap both hands around the coffee mug, let the heat seep into my fingers, and lean forward.
“Okay,” I say. “No script. No take two.”
I press the red button.
A tiny light clicks on. The recorder answers with a soft beep and then nothing—no countdown, no theme music, just the tiny rush of ambient air.
“Hey,” I say, because that’s how Quinn always starts, but I shake my head and try again. “No. Start over.”
My thumb jerks toward the button, then stops midair. I leave it there, hovering, feeling the muscles tighten in my hand.
“Leave it,” I tell the recorder. “I’m not editing you.”
I take a breath that smells like coffee and the slightest hint of burnt toast.
“This is Nora,” I say, slower. “Talking to myself. Not to an audience. Not to a jury. Not to fans. Just to the part of me that keeps rewriting the past when it feels too sharp.”
My tongue catches on the next words; I let the silence stretch.
“I pushed Lila,” I say.
The sentence lands on the wood between us. My shoulders pull inward, then settle. I stare at the small knot in the table’s grain right under the recorder, like it’s the focal point of a lens.
“I shoved her on that staircase in the mill,” I continue. “Sixteen, angry, high on attention and terrified of losing it. I knew the railing was slick. I knew we were alone except for a PA too far away to stop anything. I didn’t think she would fall that far, but I moved my body in a way that put hers at risk, and I didn’t tell the whole truth when people asked later.”
My thumb scratches an invisible circle on the table.
“You watched them frame it as an accident,” I say to myself. “You signed papers. You let her carry the story as a clumsy liability instead of as a worker hurt doing her job.”
The recorder’s little light blinks, steady and indifferent.
“I helped bury her career,” I say. “And that doesn’t get undone because I cried on camera once.”
Heat pricks at the back of my eyes, but I keep my gaze pinned to the recorder.
“I agreed to Rhea’s stunt,” I go on. “I liked the way it read in the script, the comments about how brave and committed I was. I told myself the safety team had it, that the schedule compression wasn’t my call. I watched the harness go on and didn’t walk off set when my stomach dropped. When she hit the ground, I walked behind the rolling gurney, but I didn’t pull the emergency brake on the machine that demanded we keep shooting.”
My hand curls around the mug until my knuckles ache.
“I let the first extra take a payout and an NDA when the sandbag hit her,” I say. “I didn’t slide the paper back to the lawyer. I didn’t suggest they add language about systemic negligence or future accountability. I just signed where they told me and called it mercy.”
The refrigerator kicks off, leaving the room even quieter. The only sounds now are my own breathing and a car far down on the canyon road, tires hissing on asphalt.
“I helped Marcus build a story about me,” I tell the recorder. “The scrappy girl who made it out, who made a mistake once but really was a victim of the system. Parts of that are true. Parts of that left blood pooled on somebody else’s floor. I let him carry secrets and I rewarded him with my loyalty until it killed him.”
My throat tightens around his name. I lick dry lips and press on.
“He died trying to control the story,” I say. “Trying to wrench evidence out of Lila’s hands instead of letting the truth breathe. And he also saved her life in that fire. Both things live in the same body. He doesn’t get absolved, and he doesn’t get flattened into pure villain either.”
I let my eyes close for a second, tasting lukewarm coffee on my tongue. When I open them, the city outside has brightened—the sky shifting toward blue, the outline of the downtown towers clearer beyond the glass.
“So,” I say softly. “What am I doing besides talking into a gadget at my kitchen table?”
I exhale, long and slow.
“I confessed,” I say. “On live cameras that weren’t under my control. I used my name, and Lila’s, and Marcus’s, and the studio’s. I didn’t dodge responsibility, and when the hearings called, I showed up again. I answered questions. I didn’t ask my lawyer to object every time something made me look bad.”
My fingers tap a quiet rhythm on the table: one, two, three, four.
“I paid into the safety fund in Rhea’s name,” I continue. “Not as hush money, not as branding, but into a structure co-designed by stunt workers and unions and people who knew her. I stop by trainings when they ask and sit in the back, listening to twenty-year-olds talk about hazard pay and run-of-show protections. I write checks when the fund needs them. I answer when Rhea’s partner emails with questions, even when my stomach knots.”
My voice steadies, low and matter-of-fact.
“I visit Lila,” I say. “Through glass and metal detectors, fluorescent lights buzzing on the ceiling. I don’t go to absolve myself. I go to hear what she wants me to do next—what she doesn’t want me to do. Sometimes all I can do is listen to her talk about back pain and the way the river town still smells like damp metal when she dreams.”
I let my hand flatten near the recorder, palm down, grounding.
“I walked away from a documentary that would have given me awards chatter,” I remind myself. “I told them I wouldn’t participate unless Lila was a full partner and worker organizations had editorial teeth. They blinked. They said they’d get back to me. Maybe they’ll make it without me and turn me into a more convenient monster. That’s their script to live with.”
The toaster clicks softly as it finally cools down. I glance at the untouched triangles of toast, edges drying.
“You started saying no,” I tell the recorder. “No to talk-show redemption arcs. No to the late-night jokes. No to any project that wants you without wanting change.”
I think of the smaller indie set from a few months ago, the folding chairs with names taped on, the director who opened every day with a safety check-in. The way the craft-service donuts tasted like real sugar and not obligation, the way the AC hum blended with quiet conversations about call times and childcare instead of gossip about awards.
“And you’re still working,” I add. “Not headlining billboards, not fronting a streaming banner, but showing up on an ensemble call sheet where your name is three lines down and that feels right.”
I lean in slightly.
“This isn’t over,” I say. “Lawsuits are still in motion. There are people who will never forgive me, and people whose forgiveness I don’t want because they had to step over someone else’s pain to offer it. There are safety meetings I still need to attend on sets where I’m the only one asking questions. There are younger actors watching what I do next and deciding what they’ll tolerate.”
The words stack up against each other, heavy but not crushing.
“So here’s the promise,” I tell myself. “When I start rewriting, when I hear that PR voice in my head smoothing over the shove on the staircase or the look I gave the extra before she signed, I come back to this. I sit at this table, or whatever table I have, and I record what actually happened, and what I’m actually doing about it, whether anyone else ever hears it or not.”
I let a small laugh escape, short and dry.
“You can have sequels,” I say to the recorder. “Unedited Two, Three, however many it takes. No one downloads them. No one retweets. They just remind you who you are when the cameras aren’t rolling.”
My thumb hovers over the button again. This time, I press.
The light goes dark. The kitchen exhales.
The quiet feels different now—not like a held breath, but like a pause between takes where nobody’s scrambling to reset props. I wipe my palm on my sweatpants, stand up, and carry the recorder to my office.
The glass walls along the hallway reflect me in fragments: a shoulder here, a shadowed cheek there, city behind me in every pane. No red carpets, no flashbulbs, just a woman in yesterday’s T-shirt walking toward a desk cluttered with real work.
At the computer, I plug in the recorder and wait for my laptop to ping. The whir of the fan rises over the softer rush of the house AC. A window pops up with a single new file: VOICE001.WAV.
“Not exactly a catchy title,” I mutter.
I click once, change the name to: 01_morning_kitchen.wav.
Then I open my documents and create a new folder. UNEDITED, I type, all caps. I drag the file into it. For a second I hover over the folder name, tempted to add a password, a lock, another layer of secrecy.
I leave it alone.
“You’re allowed to have private truth,” I tell the monitor. “That’s not the same as a cover-up.”
On the desk, today’s sides sit clipped together: four scenes from the new show. The script is quiet and specific—no mills, no fires, no prestige sermonizing. My character is a nurse who appears in three episodes, steady hands and dark jokes in a hospital hallway, part of the fabric instead of the focus.
I skim the first scene. One line. Two. A background bit of business involving a vending machine that swallows a dollar and a tired intern who needs to cry between rounds. There’s no monologue about redemption, no wink at the audience.
“Good,” I say.
I tuck the pages into my bag, grab my keys, and head back down the hall. The house smells different now that the coffee’s cooled—less sharp, more like plain air and wood. My bare feet whisper on the floor.
At the front door, I pause with my hand on the handle.
The glass panel beside it holds my reflection again, full-body for once. No stylist, no ring light, no camera operator asking me to cheat my chin toward them. Just me looking back, a faint line between my brows, hair fuzzing at the edges, a set of shoulders carrying exactly what they can.
“You’re not the center of this show,” I tell the reflection. “You’re part of it. Don’t forget to look sideways.”
I unlock the door and pull it open.
Morning spills in—a drift of warm air that tastes like car exhaust and bougainvillea, the distant grind of a garbage truck, somebody’s early lawn mower buzzing down the hill. A dog barks somewhere out of sight. The sky is bright but not yet punishing, the kind of LA morning that tricks you into thinking the whole city is fresh-start new.
I step onto the front stoop and stand there for a breath, letting the sunlight hit my bare face. No cameras catch it, no boom operator leans in. A hummingbird zips past the edge of the deck, a flicker of green and red, gone again.
“Call sheet, Nora,” I remind myself. “You’re going to be late for your very ordinary day at work.”
I smile, small and real, and lock the door behind me.
The car waiting at the curb is a regular sedan from the production shuttle, not a black SUV. The driver nods when I climb in, checking my name on a clipboard. No one takes a photo. No one asks for a quote. We pull away from the glass house, heading down the winding road toward a modest soundstage across town where the AC hums, the fake smoke will be carefully measured, and the craft-service donuts will be sticky and real.
I rest my head against the window, watching the city slide by in reflections and glass, and breathe in the ordinary.
Off in a folder on my laptop, a single file waits, unedited. Out in the world, stories about me keep moving without my hands on the keyboard. Between those two truths, I ride toward set, ready to hit my mark, listen more than I speak, and keep telling the hardest parts to the one person who can still catch me when I start to rewrite: the woman holding the recorder at her own kitchen table.