There is a laminated piece of paper sharing a table with a camera.  I nearly topple out of the papasan chair as I reach for it.  Silently I scan the list of questions.  There are five of them and most don’t seem so bad.

What was it like growing up in a famous family?

How do you feel about returning to your childhood home? 

How would you describe your relationship with each of your siblings? 

What was your life like immediately prior to returning to Atlantis Star? 

What is the biggest regret of your life? 

Surprisingly, talking is easy.  I don’t really mind that there’s surely some dude holed up in front of a screen somewhere, absorbing every word I say.  I’ve spent my life grappling with my family’s legacy and it’s almost a relief to say the words.  I know there are a lot of people who would roll their eyes over the complaints of a so-called privileged little rich girl but there are a lot of people who don’t know shit.  They can assume whatever the hell they want.  I’m here for the sake of my family.   If anyone needs to despise me, or all of us, for the spectacle we’re making, then so be it.

It’s not until I reach the final question that I find myself stumbling.  I repeat it out loud.

“What is the biggest regret of my life?”

He’s there, unbidden, unwanted, and my tongue loses the will to function.  For a long time I had nursed a secret fantasy that he would find me.  The fantasy never got any further than that.  How could it?  I’d made it cruelly clear that I never wanted to see him again.  For all I know he isn’t even alive.  He left here a penniless, furious boy.  The world doesn’t have patience for a boy like that.

In the end I leave the question unanswered.   Better people than me have tried to put words to the agony of lost love.  They usually fail.

After rolling out of the papasan chair and switching the camera off, I stand in the center of the Blue Room for a moment, listening to the silence.  Somewhere in the distance I hear the bark of my brother Monty’s voice, then the burst of a car horn.  I don’t especially want to leave the Blue Room.  The remainder of the day yawns in front of me like a blank canvas I’m expected to populate one molecule at a time.  Not for the first time I wonder what will happen if Gary and friends fail to extract their pound of tabloid flesh.  After all, a bunch of wayward siblings wandering around a former movie set and trying to think of things to say to one another doesn’t make for compelling programming, no matter whose blood runs through their veins.   Just a little while ago Ava had argued with me that this is real life, but people won’t tune in for tedious breakfast exchanges or to watch Brigitte skipping around with chickens.   They want shouting and hair pulling, scandal and sex.

It’s kind of funny to think of your daily life turning into channel surf bait.  Picture some bored married couple lounging on opposite ends of a faux leather couch and flipping channels to find a distraction from the fact that they’d rather do just about anything than have sex with each other.  Maybe if there’s nothing on television one will wander into the bathroom, iPad in lap, playing Free Cell on an endless loop while sitting on the toilet while the other one composes a completely fictitious Facebook post.

I don’t know how much time I’ve been sitting here in the Blue Room.  There’s no clock.   Eventually someone will be obliged to come hunt me down so I decide to save them the trouble.

The hallway is quiet.  There are three bedrooms in the old house.  I’ve got one and my sisters have the other two. I heard from Brigitte that during the planning phase of the show there were plans to add a few rooms on to the house but Spence had a fit and wouldn’t cooperate.   Apparently Gary knows when to pick his battles because he gave up on that one. Spence was gallant enough to give me his bedroom and he’s decamped to our father’s old paneled study. Monty could spare one of the closet-sized rooms in the old caretaker’s place, but he and Spence still don’t mesh well together so it’s probably better if they stay apart.

After wandering around the house, nearly tripping over another stupid cameraman, and feeling like the walls of the brick house are pushing inward, I step outside into the yard.  The sunlight is harsher than a tanning lamp.  A fat brown chicken darts in my direction and collides with my legs, causing me to unleash a shrill yelp and jump back about six feet.

“Jesus,” Spencer scolds as he stalks past with a saddle slung over a wide shoulder.  “You girls will jump at the sight of your own damn shadow.”

“Sorry,” I mumble, “I’m not accustomed to being assaulted by poultry.”

My brother pauses, looks me up and down with the same inscrutable gaze that he was born with.  When Spencer looks your way you can’t help but feel vaguely inadequate.  It’s annoying. I don’t really need anyone’s help to feel inadequate.

I roll my eyes at his silence.  “Good morning to you too, little brother.”

He issues a Spenceresque grunt and loses interest in both me and the livestock.

“Hey!” I have to trot a little to catch up to him.

He turns around and waits.

“Uh, you need any help?”

There’s no expression on his face.  I’m sure I’m boring him.  “With what?”

I resist the urge to lean over and unleash an ear-splitting shriek right in his face, just to see whether it’s possible to rattle his cool cowboy composure at all.

“I don’t know, anything.  Sponging off the horses?  Shoveling manure?”

“Nah,” he turns away.  “I’ve got it covered.”

“Spence!” I shout.  I want to ask him not to leave me here in the dusty yard with nothing to do.  Ava can keep herself busy with the baby.  Brigitte is surely off somewhere coordinating her next staged camera appearance.  I don’t want to think about what Monty is doing because it’s probably disgusting.  I’ve got to find something to keep busy.

“Can you rebuild an engine?”  Spencer asks.

“Huh?”

“I’ve got a ’75 Mustang in the barn.”

“Oh.  Why?”

“Restoration project.  The owner lives in Phoenix, was a friend of August’s.  Which I’m sure is why he sought me out.  Lord knows there are closer places he could have gone.”  The saddle on Spence’s shoulder is thick, expensive.  It looks heavy.  He doesn’t even shift his weight though.  He holds it there casually as if it’s a wad of cotton.

I fall in beside him and he resumes walking to the barn.  “Can’t help you with that,” I say.  “But I need to do something.”  I lower my voice, hoping that maybe the mic doesn’t pick up everything, then figuring it doesn’t matter anyway.  “Please, Spence.”

Spencer walks in long strides.  The soles of his leather boots make rhythmic crunching sounds in the dirt.  At first glance he’s not as striking as Monty but there’s a rugged surety about him.  I’ve seen the way women drool when he’s around.  Spence isn’t one for relationships though.  That might be the only thing he has in common with Monty.  He does whatever he wants and shrugs over the fallout.  He’s a born loner.

“If you want to clean out the stall I’m fine with that.”

“Good,” I breathe, oddly relieved to be granted permission to mop up horse crap.   “What about that?”  I point at a tiny red house sitting in the middle of the yard.  It sits several feet above the ground on raised wooden stilts and a plank runs from the ground to the cutout door.

Spence curses and glares at the thing.  “Chicken coop.  They dumped it here with those fucking birds.  Pain in the ass to keep chickens alive out here.  Now I’ve got to enclose the damn thing with barbed wire or else the coyotes will be rolling in a bloodbath an hour after sundown.”

The chickens, unaware as to the precarious nature of their fate, bob around the yard and peck and the dirt.