Chapter 34

Cindy Smith hated that she enjoyed getting bigger applause than Bradley Cox—actually despised that diva side of her personality—but at the same time wasn’t about to lie to herself and pretend it didn’t matter. It did. Oh, how it did! And when the audience began their standing ovation on her bow; when their applause died down ever so slightly for her costar—slightly, yes, Cindy thought, but noticeable enough that even Bradley’s parents had to hear—the young actress felt as if her heart would burst with pride.

But when she looked toward the wings and saw that Edmund Lambert was nowhere to be found, Cindy felt her heart deflate. She was sure he would’ve been there watching, applauding, smiling—especially after what had passed between them just before intermission.

“Thank you for the flower,” he said, catching her in the stairwell on the way back down to her dressing room.

“Thank you for looking out for me,” Cindy replied.

Then, a long silence in which she saw the corner of Edmund’s mouth turn up, his eyes narrowing as if he was studying her. Cindy felt her cheeks go hot, felt as if an elec- tric generator had been turned on in the stairwell—the low hum of a charged circuit suddenly connecting them at their chests. He wanted to kiss her. She just knew it. And oh God how badly she wanted to kiss him back!

“You’re very special,” he said finally, his steel-blue eyes locked with hers in that way that made her retinas tingle. “I never realized just how special until tonight.”

Then he smiled and was out the stage door.

Cindy felt as if she were on fire; made her way back to her dressing room and changed into her next costume with the hum of the electric generator never leaving her. It powered her all through the second act. And even before she took her bow, she knew her performance had been a triumph.

But now, as the lights dimmed and the cast left the stage to resounding applause, Cindy’s victory felt curiously hollow. She was on autopilot, it seemed, and caught herself paying only half attention to George Kiernan as she searched for Edmund among the crowd outside her dressing room. He never showed. And when Amy Pratt asked her to join the rest of the cast downtown for a beer and some cheese fries, Cindy politely declined and drove back to her house feeling more alone than she had in a long time.

She lay awake well into the night, straddling the thrill, the satisfaction of her bravura performance along with the hollow disappointment that Edmund Lambert hadn’t returned to the theater after she saw him leave. She had a crush on him. A bad one. And her awareness of how deeply his absence affected her only made matters worse.

Had she misread his signals? Had she come on too strong with the rose? Perhaps she was overreacting—being “melodramatic” as her mother would say. After all, there had to be a simple explanation, hadn’t there?

Nonetheless, Cindy still felt the electric circuit she had closed with him humming quietly beneath her thoughts. And once again she found herself sitting in front of her computer. She didn’t bother with her Facebook page, but instead went straight for Google Earth and typed in the address she’d found in the campus directory. A couple more clicks and Cindy zoomed in the satellite imagery as close as it would go. She went back and forth between plus and minus until she was satisfied, but still the photo was grainy and un-clear—a blurry white square at the end of a long dirt road; some smaller squares surrounded by clumps of trees and patches of green farmland.

Impulsively, Cindy clicked on the Get Directions link, typed in her home address, and discovered it would take about thirty-five minutes to get there.

“A simple explanation,” she whispered. “Perhaps you needed to get home for something. A sick mother, maybe, all the way out there on your farm.”

You’re a sick mother, replied a voice in her head. A fucking stalker, if you ask me.

Cindy sighed and clicked for maximum zoom-in; sat looking at the house for a long time and wondered if maybe, just maybe, Edmund Lambert was sitting in front of his computer, zooming in on her house, too.

“The cast party,” she said. “I’ll know for sure if you come to the cast party.”

Or maybe someday you can just pay him a visit at his little farmhouse and have a party of your own.

Cindy smiled.

That sounds like something Amy Pratt would say, she replied in her mind, and climbed back into bed wondering whether or not the redheaded slut might just be on to something.