And at last, SondraBeth’s eyes widened in recognition. She took a deep breath. “Well, yourself,” she said. She took another cigarette from the pack. As she raised her hand to light it, Pandy saw her hand was shaking.
And suddenly, Pandy felt dizzy, too, as if she was about to swoon in fear, anger, and excitement. The history she and SondraBeth had between them could fill a novel—yet, at this point, they might as well have been bookends on the opposite ends of the longest bookshelf in the world.
She looked at SondraBeth, who was looking back at her as if she couldn’t comprehend what Pandy had become.
What she’d done.
“Why?” SondraBeth asked, her voice full of hurt. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you let me go on like a fool, acting like you were Hellenor?”
“I never said I was Hellenor,” Pandy said sharply. “It was everyone else—”
“Oh, please.” SondraBeth crossed her arms in disgust.
“I seem to recall that you were the one who invaded my space, ‘sista,’” Pandy continued. “If you remember, I was happily alone in Wallis, waiting for Henry to arrive so I could change my clothes, find a wig, and get back to being Pandy, when you showed up with your paparazzi circus.”
“So it’s my fault, huh? I interrupted your plans?”
“What plans?” Pandy shouted.
“Pretending to be Hellenor. How long were you planning to keep it up?”
“I wasn’t planning to keep it up at all!”
“You knew about the mob, and you were planning to kill Monica!”
“Of course I wasn’t,” Pandy replied. “Why would I want to kill Monica?”
“You tell me.”
When Pandy continued to shake her head, SondraBeth spoke to her like she was an idiot. Stating the obvious, she said, “You wanted to kill Monica to get even with Jonny.”
“Honestly,” Pandy said, “it never even crossed my mind.”
“Well, I suppose it’s not going to happen now,” SondraBeth said, frowning. “Now that I know you’re Pandy.”
Pandy lit up another cigarette. “You sound kind of disappointed.”
“I’m just shocked, that’s all.” SondraBeth took another cigarette and looked at Pandy assessingly. “I do understand why you did it. If I had a husband like Jonny—”
“Well, aren’t you lucky. You never have,” Pandy replied. Now it all made sense. This wasn’t about Jonny. It was about Monica. SondraBeth had believed she was Hellenor and, knowing that Hellenor had the rights to Monica, had obviously brought her here to convince her to make more Monica movies. Just like PP.
“Either way, what difference does it make? Because I’m alive.” Pandy took a mournful drag. “Why should you care about what happened between me and Jonny anyway?” she asked suddenly. “After all, you certainly didn’t care about me and Doug.”
SondraBeth took a step back and sniffed. Looking as if she was recalling that terrible moment on the island when they’d fought about Doug, she said, “Oh, I get it. You’re still mad.”
“About what?”
“Doug Stone?” SondraBeth said tauntingly.
Pandy laughed snidely in return. “Of course I’m still mad. It’s not the kind of thing I’d ever forget.”
“Of course it isn’t,” SondraBeth said.
Pandy laughed this off. “Why did you do it?”
“You really want to know?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.” Pandy crossed her arms.
“Oh, Peege,” SondraBeth said. “You always made these things bigger than they were. There was no conspiracy, nothing. I was just jealous. Don’t tell me you haven’t been jealous of me.” She tossed her head.
“When?” Pandy challenged.
“The mayor’s party? When I was invited and you weren’t?”
“I guess Doug told you,” Pandy said. “Well, so what? Maybe I was jealous. But that doesn’t mean you’re entitled to steal my guy.”
“Of course not,” SondraBeth sneered. “Because as usual, you, PJ Wallis, are a far better person than I am. Because you grew up with all the manners.”
“Not this again,” Pandy said warningly.
“Listen, I made a mistake,” SondraBeth said. “I honestly didn’t think you’d be that angry about it. You said that you were done with him. I thought you felt the way I did. Like he was kind of a PandaBeth toy.”
“What?” Pandy screeched.
“Oh, calm down, Peege,” SondraBeth said. “I’m joking. Haven’t you learned to stop being such an idealist? Surely you know that these kinds of things happen in life. You just hate it when they happen to you. Anyway, I was never in love with Doug.”
“I thought you two were supposed to be soul mates,” Pandy sneered.
“Well, I found out pretty quickly that we weren’t,” SondraBeth said, marching back into the bedroom as Pandy followed her. “Especially when I discovered that my so-called soul mate was fucking everything, everywhere, and everyone was covering up for him. And then, it was too late. It was all over the tabloids that we were together. And then you went and married Jonny.”
Pandy frowned. “What’s that got to do with it?”
“Nothing,” SondraBeth said, leaning back on the bed. “It’s just that when you and Jonny got married, the studio decided it would be a great idea if Monica got married as well.”
“Are you saying your getting engaged to Doug was the studio’s idea?”
“Did you think it was mine?” SondraBeth asked.
“Why didn’t you say no?”
“Because I liked having sex with him, and it was good publicity. For Monica. In fact, I almost went along with it—for Monica. But in the end, I couldn’t do it. I didn’t love him, and I couldn’t go through with that much of a lie.
“Why did Monica have to get married, anyway?” SondraBeth continued in exasperation. “What happened to the old PJ Wallis? The PJ who said Monica would never get married, because she’d never get married.”
Pandy winced. “I fell in love, I guess. And now, because of Jonny and his debts, I have to write another Monica book. And now that I’m divorced, Monica is going to have to get divorced, too. And then she’s going to have to try online dating.”
“Dating again? She’s forty-five, for Christ’s sake,” SondraBeth said. “How much more of her life does she have to devote to dating? The woman who plays her certainly doesn’t have time to date. She doesn’t even have time to pick her teeth with a toothpick.”
“I fucked up. Okay?” Pandy snapped.
“How?”
“I can’t say,” Pandy said between gritted teeth.
“What did you do?” SondraBeth demanded.
“Something incredibly stupid.” Pandy glared. “I never made Jonny sign a prenup, and then I gave him hundreds of thousands of dollars for his restaurant in Vegas. And now I’m broke and will probably have to sell my loft and write a million more Monica books.”
“Why did you give him all your money?” SondraBeth said as Pandy began to cry.
“I knew I shouldn’t have, but I felt guilty,” Pandy sobbed. “Because my career was going great, and Jonny’s…well, it should have been going great, and he was acting like it was going great, but it wasn’t. He was losing money. And then, when he couldn’t pay it back, I was forced to write another Monica book. And then Monica had to get married, and now she’ll have to get divorced…” She hiccuped as she glanced at the TV, which was running the news loop of PJ Wallis’s death again. “Or worse. Maybe now that I’m dead, Monica will have to die, too.”