Chapter One
“Once upon a time”—Cosima Frank swept the rain from her curls with a sigh—“lawyers knew how to manage an estate with a bit of flourish.”
She pressed her trench coat into Duncan’s outstretched hands and shook out her umbrella, spattering rain onto the marble floor.
“Is that so?” Ever the gentleman, he carefully hung up her coat for her in the alcove off the foyer.
“Haven’t you seen the movies? They’re supposed to gather the mourners together for a reading of the will where dark secrets come to light. Perhaps an elegant young woman faints. That sort of thing.”
“Your meeting with the attorneys didn’t go how you expected?” Duncan offered her his fond, paternal smile, which Cosima made an effort to return. All the small muscles of her face that made it possible to smile had grown stiff with disuse.
“At one point, I wasn’t sure if the gentleman from the title company was describing the Venice Beach lot Mother bought in the seventies or if he was casting a spell,” she said. “Although I did learn that her various waterfront investments have appreciated nicely. No one can say Phoebe wasn’t savvy with her money.”
Duncan glanced toward the center of the foyer, where a three-story-tall pink marble fountain of an elephant, complete with gold saddle, dominated the space. “At times,” he said diplomatically.
Duncan was always diplomatic.
She followed him to her mother’s study, where they had been meeting in the afternoons. The routine had settled on the pair of them in the quiet of the massive Beverly Hills estate that Cosima’s mother had liked to call “the Castle.” Without its queen, there wasn’t the bustle of staff making rooms ready for guests anymore. There weren’t caterers, or a bartender coming to the back entrance to set up in one of the lounges for a gathering. There weren’t deliveries of flowers or dresses. No architects or moneymen or agents or managers or glittering, famous, beautiful people here, admiring a new painting or antique.
It turned out the Castle was only the Castle because of Phoebe. Without her, it was a collection of empty rooms.
The smallest one was this study, where Cosima and Duncan could still smell a thin vapor of her perfume and survey the chaos piled on her desk, feeling as though she would walk in at any moment to kiss Duncan on the neck.
They settled into their chairs, a wingback by the tiled fireplace for Duncan and an Eames that could take all of Cosima’s long legs without making her back sore.
“Were there many photographers at the gate?” He reached down and pulled two seltzers from a concealed fridge in the study’s breakfront.
“Fewer. The rain’s so bad today.”
The weather for the funeral had been obediently sunny, seventy degrees, and clear as crystal—Los Angeles obeying Phoebe’s whims, as usual. But it had been raining ever since, for three weeks straight. The drumming of the rain became a constant in the background while Cosima sat to be interviewed about her mother, the Queen of Hollywood, and how nothing in the world would be the same without her.
The tears of the world would end, she assumed, whenever the rain did. On the first sunny day, the planet would start to spin again, and with it Phoebe’s legacy, which Cosima had inherited so she could preserve it forever.
She was the Castle’s princess, after all.
Duncan placed his seltzer bottle on the edge of the overflowing desk, centering it on a silver coaster. He pulled out his phone and a pair of tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses that made a distinguished contrast to his salt-and-pepper hair and beard. When he leaned back, his shirt settled into a drape worthy of Robert Redford. “Are you ready?”
Cosima took a deep breath through her nose. She counted to four before exhaling over a slow eight counts to settle her tight stomach. She’d had a number of doctor’s visits and tests attempting to get to the bottom of her sharp stomach pain, only to have a kind physician suggest that she consider developing a mindfulness practice and try deep breathing. It didn’t work—her stomach still managed to twist itself into a pinching knot—but she figured the extra dose of oxygen would assist with the next set of tasks at hand. “What do we have today?”
Duncan tapped his phone. “I’m sending you a file with terms from the public library for their display of Phoebe’s papers.”
Cosima retrieved her tablet from her bag and swiped it awake. “Got it.”
“I already had the attorneys review them, and I accepted their edits. You just need to sign.”
Nodding, Cosima dragged the papers into her project organizer. “Next?”
“There’s an issue with the release of the budget for the endowed theater chair at UCLA. When I talked to the foundation CFO, she said what’s needed is a phone call to the bank, but you’re the only one authorized to talk to them.”
“Right.” Cosima made a note, adding it to the list for her assistant to schedule an appointment. She took another slow breath.
Duncan leaned back in his chair and fiddled with his heavy gold wristwatch. Her belly cramped again, this time because he was stalling, and she knew why.
“You’ve seen the stock reports,” he said.
This wasn’t a question. In her Burbank office, a high-definition wall-mounted monitor displayed the vagaries of the global market in real time. She had a phone and a tablet and a laptop, all of them connected to the internet. In addition, Cosima received a crisp butter-yellow cardstock folder every morning with her breakfast. It, too, contained a market update, among other briefings essential to the operations of Phoebe Frank Studios, better known as PFS. It was the same folder her mother used to review while eating her own breakfast.
“Power vacuums make the market nervous.” Her voice sounded far away.
“They do. On the upside, that means the market will settle out once a new CEO has been named.”
Once you name the new CEO, he meant.
Cosima’s mother had built PFS into an empire on the shoulders of her first project, Ship of the Cosmos, a low-budget film that she wrote, directed, and starred in as Captain Astra Saturnine. Ship of the Cosmos went on to become one of the biggest film franchises of all time. It spawned sequels and prequels, limited-series spin-offs and animated versions, comic books and novelizations, action figures, fast-food toy tie-ins, and conventions. For three decades, PFS had been synonymous with Ship of the Cosmos, even as the studio’s scope grew to constitute a significant portion of Hollywood’s continued output.
And yet Phoebe Frank, in what was possibly her first misstep, had not named a successor. Instead, she had charged Cosima with the knighting. Phoebe had called this a “compromise.” Cosima considered it a punishment, since it had come after she made it clear that she could not—or, in her mother’s view, would not—succeed Phoebe.
That last, horrible, monthslong argument with her mother was the first time Cosima had refused to do what Phoebe wanted.
It surprised them both.
Cosima often thought of her life as Phoebe’s daughter in terms of before and after. From her birth and appearance on the cover of People—swaddled in lace, cradled in her loving mother’s arms—until her graduation with a niche degree in the arts, her life had been a public performance of what it was to be the daughter of a famous creative. After the whirlwind of finals and graduation, Cosima had traveled, experimented, and dreamed of making something of her own. Then she’d come home to rest and regroup, only to be told that Phoebe needed her. Cosima’s advice was required. Her unique knowledge of Phoebe Frank Studios. How well she could anticipate what her mother would want done. How good she was at doing things Phoebe’s way.
It worked out well for Phoebe. For the stockholders, too—until Phoebe was gone.
Now, the global entertainment industry, the markets, the PFS licensing and franchise partners, the media, and even the internet cinephiles looked to Cosima for a decision that she’d already taken too long to make. They had expected her to deliver it like a puff of white smoke from the Vatican, perhaps. Or they’d looked for the name of the annointed to float from the Castle on the exhale of her mother’s last breath.
Duncan watched her for a long, quiet moment.
Her stomach pressed against her heart, her throat, and locked her voice up tight.
He sighed at the screen of his phone. “Do you want to talk about the garden project instead?”
She did not. She took a sip of seltzer, hoping it would remind her stomach to be a stomach rather than a bag of knives. “Of course. That sounds perfect.”
When he looked up from his phone, it was to smile at her with sympathy.
Duncan was wonderful. He’d always been wonderful, ever since Cosima’s mother met him on a jet boat in the French Riviera, where he had at least six heiresses and models fighting over him—but naturally he chose Phoebe, with her long legs and curly hair and big eyes. At that time, Phoebe’s fame was wildfire, but, telling the story, she’d liked to portray herself as though she were an awkward girl reading on the beach, noticed by a handsome rake.
Cosima had her own memories of that trip. She’d been four years old, just beginning to understand that there was a difference between her mother when she was being her mother and her mother when she was being “Phoebe Frank.” Cosima had liked it when her mother took her into the cold sea, holding her hand. She’d liked this tall man with his fascinating Scottish accent. He found a gold coin behind her ear and gave it to her, and he said it was real gold. She could still remember the way he crouched down, putting his kind eyes right at her level. He buckled her into a bright pink life jacket he’d bought for her in a beachside shop. It pressed underneath her chin when she sat down on his boat.
Duncan set his phone on the arm of the chair and removed his glasses. “Maybe we can reconvene in the morning. You’ve already had a long day putting out fires.”
Cosima looked out the window of her mother’s study at the sprawling landscape of native plants and quiet, flower-filled paths to the pool. The gardens had been Duncan’s intervention. A casual gardener in the way many Europeans were, Duncan had decided to cultivate plants and flowers as a way to cultivate his relationship with Cosima. The first time Cosima and Duncan’s gardens had been photographed for a magazine, she was sixteen. There had been several more features over the years, the product of writers and editors charmed by the duo and the oasis of California native plants they’d created.
At the height of Cosima and Phoebe’s arguments about the future of PFS, Duncan had used the garden to broker a ceasefire. He’d suggested to Phoebe that Cosima’s desire to build something of her own was equal to Phoebe’s but not identical. Perhaps a few calls could be made to support Cosima’s passions. Audiences might be interested in a new kind of gardening show, a stylish one filmed at the Castle. Many an empire began with a single audience, as Phoebe well knew. Cosima simply needed her own audience. If this grew into a younger, leaner sister studio to PFS? Well. It wouldn’t be surprising.
And so, the blow to Phoebe thus softened, Cosima came to be in charge of two projects. First, she was to handle the peaceful transition of power and the initiation of a new era for PFS so that everything might be done just the way Phoebe would want. Then, a few weeks from now, she would begin filming the pilot of An American Castle’s Garden.
PFS had already inked multiple streaming contracts and a global distribution deal for the new gardening show, somewhat losing sight of the “leaner” sister studio that had initially been imagined. Cosima’s studio now employed dozens of people who depended on her new passion and vision.
She missed gardening. It would have been nice to be out there, her knees and hands in the dirt, alone with her feelings.
“I’m fine, Duncan. Truly,” she said. “I do need to find a paper, since we’re here in Mother’s office.” She rose to her feet. Her arches hurt. “One of our producers wants it, something she said Mother put aside for her in her desk. A note from Scorsese he wrote after he saw Ship of the Cosmos.”
Her mother’s desk was a disaster, though Phoebe had always claimed to have a “system.” No one had been permitted to touch the teetering piles on top of it—not even Cosima. She didn’t know where to find a note from Scorsese, even if she’d had the urge to search for it. She trailed her fingers across the stacks of paper and wished it were the end of the day so she could take off her shoes and curl up in her bed like a small, soft animal.
Instead, she started taking apart the piles, flipping each item over, one by one. There were papers falling off the desk, sliding under it, drifting onto her mother’s desk chair. Duncan rose to his feet. “I’ll just give you a hand.”
“I’ve got it.” She reached out to steady a stack before it collapsed but miscalculated, sending it tumbling to the floor. “Shit.”
A sheet of her mother’s canary-yellow stationery fluttered to the carpet between her feet. Cosima crouched down to retrieve it, her arches throbbing.
Her hand stilled over the paper.
“What is it?” Duncan asked.
It was a list. One she’d written down for her mother, who dictated the items to her when the doctors made it clear Phoebe was intractably ill despite her efforts to hide it.
“Mother’s au revoir list.” She tried to keep her voice neutral as she picked the paper up. If she sounded distressed, Duncan would try to help. If Duncan tried to help, Cosima would end up with one more thing to do.
This list of her mother’s was the reason why Cosima had stayed the night at the Getty, curled up in a sleeping bag in the dark beside Phoebe with a laughing Rembrandt looking down at them. Why she’d skydived, buckled to an instructor who smelled like cold air, the wind impossibly loud in her ears. They’d met a “nose” in Paris, who bottled a scent for the two of them. One by one, they’d drawn a line through each of the items, until the time came when her mother needed to rest and be taken care of.
Because it was Phoebe’s list, it also included her wish for the Castle to be converted from their private home to a center for the performing arts. Who could deny her such a generous bequest? The Castle, of course, had never been for Cosima or Duncan. It was a decadent showpiece, Phoebe’s homage to Hollywood. Phoebe’s.
Cosima was surprised to see an item left on the list. She’d forgotten about it.
Stay at Gregory Place, it said.
An inn, located in a tiny village in England. A long time ago, in the 1980s, it was where Phoebe met and fell in love with Cosima’s father, a dashing Formula One driver who died in a race when Cosima was in preschool. Phoebe had wanted to have the “full-circle experience” of visiting the inn together with Cosima. She’d said Gregory Place was “magic.”
Duncan cleared his throat. “It was such a lovely thing for the two of you to share.”
Was it? Cosima bit back the comment, feeling awful for even having the thought.
Duncan read the list over her shoulder. “Ah. A trip over the pond would be a pleasant escape for you once you’ve made your announcement to the stockholders and we’ve wrapped up filming season one. I was already planning on opening my estate in Dundee for a visit. You could tick this off the list, then come up and breathe clean Scottish air and put pen to paper for ideas for season two.”
“Yep.” Cosima rubbed her thumb over the paper. Her lungs were too tight. Her stomach roared into her throat. “Good idea.”
“Are you all right, darling?”
She closed her eyes, annoyed she’d let her tone be short. “Yes, I’m sorry. The day was too long for these shoes. You’re hearing my arches and pinky toe, not me.” She gave him a practiced smile.
But she wasn’t half the actress her mother had been. When Duncan quickly turned his head toward the dark window, she witnessed his mask slip, his mouth bracketing with grief. All at once, her vision telescoped, framing Duncan’s face at the pinpoint end of a long black tunnel. Cosima shook her head, trying to make the tunnel disappear, but his faraway face didn’t change. From here, she could hear the water in the elephant fountain. She could smell the familiar pompelmo fragrance her mother liked to infuse into the air.
She had never known any other home but the Castle.
Cosima didn’t know why it was still so important—always and forever the most important thing—to make her mother happy.
Her mother was dead.
Duncan turned toward her again. His fond smile had been restored. “We’re both knackered.” He started out of the office, but before he went through the doorway, he squeezed her shoulders. “Breakfast at Lulu’s?”
She nodded, or she didn’t. She couldn’t meet his eyes.
Eventually, with a final pat, he left.
Cosima came back into her body enough to notice her feet hurt too much to stand. In that, at least, she had been truthful with Duncan. She collapsed onto the Eames ottoman, staring at the mess she’d made of her mother’s desk. Her phone and tablet buzzed and chimed with notifications while her eyes started to burn with the tears she would not shed.
When her stomach cramped, hard, taking her breath away so completely she couldn’t even gasp, she dropped the list in her lap and picked up her phone. She watched one notification after another slide up the screen while her hand vibrated.
She opened the phone’s browser.
With a fingertip, she filled the boxes with the required information at each step. Her payment confirmed with another notification. Shucked-off heels in hand, she walked barefoot past the elephant fountain, up two flights of stairs, and came back down with luggage she’d packed in the dark, her heart alternately pounding and freezing in place, her stomach so tight it felt numb.
The last thing she did was strike through the final item on her mother’s list and set the paper down on Duncan’s chair.
Then she ran from the Castle. Escaped, really—a princess dashing through the pouring rain into the night.
Not to find magic. Magic didn’t exist anymore.
Copyright © 2026 by Mae Marvel