Billionaire Beast

“Yeah, you just got off a vacation,” Danna scoffs.

“Yeah,” I say, frustrated, “I just got off a vacation. I have to head by the studio in about an hour, so it might have to wait until tomorrow.”

“You’ll go?” Penelope asks.

I sigh.

Penelope was always a bit quieter than her husband, but what she lacked in communication skills, she more than made up for by being one of the sweetest women on the planet.

When Jamie and I told her parents that she was pregnant, Penelope jumped out of her seat cheering. She was so involved with everything. To tell you the truth, I was actually kind of starting to get sick of her: she was around to provide Jamie with guidance so often.

After Jamie died, Ed declared that neither him nor anyone else in his family would ever speak to me again for what I did. That night, though, I got a late phone call from Penelope, letting me know that as long as she had breath in her body, we were family.

There are a lot of things that I would do for Penelope, almost anything, but going in there to take Ed’s abuse and blame over the death of his daughter, who I happened to love more than anything, isn’t really my idea of a way to spend an afternoon.

Still, it’s for Penelope.

“Yeah,” I tell her, “I’ll go in tomorrow.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you,” she says and comes over, giving me a long hug. “You’re not going to regret this,” she says. “I promise. Visiting hours are between 10 and 6. If you let me know when you’re coming by, I can meet you out front and we can go up to the room together.”

“That should work,” I tell her.

“I should be getting back,” Penelope says. “Danna, I hope you know that you’re more than welcome, yourself.”

That’s not going to happen. While Danna was quick enough to tell me that I needed to go and look for some kind of détente, there’s no way she’d ever go into that hospital room herself.

She tends to take grudges even more seriously than I do.

“Thanks for the offer,” Danna says, “but I’ve been having a bit of trouble getting around recently, and I wouldn’t want to slow everyone down.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that you’re not doing well,” Penelope says, “but if you can, I still think it would be great if you could both make it before…before…”

I was really hoping we could get through this without seeing Penelope cry.

Since Jamie’s death, every time I’ve seen Penelope cry, it just takes me back to that hospital room.

So now Penelope’s crying, and I’m doing my best to comfort her without crying myself.

“She loved you, you know,” Penelope says. “You were the world to her.”

“I loved her, too,” I tell Penelope.

“So did I,” Danna says.

Penelope wipes her eyes and releases me from her embrace, shifting her attention to Danna. “Yes, she did,” Penelope says. “She loved you both very much, and I’m so glad she had the two of you to brighten her life while she was here.”

I do miss Jamie. I probably always will.

I offer to give Penelope a ride back to the hospital, but she declines. “Thank you for the offer,” she says, “but I’ve got to go back to the house to pick up some stuff for Ed and then the kids are coming in, so I should probably just go.”

“All right,” I tell her.

We say our goodbyes and I promise again to go by the hospital tomorrow, though I’m looking for some way, any way, to get out of it.

Penelope leaves and not long after that, it’s time for me to head back to the set.

On my way out the door, my phone starts to ring.