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  Lies Jane Austen Told Me

  © 2018 Julie Wright

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, ­Shadow ­Mountain®, at ­[email protected]. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of ­Shadow ­Mountain.

  This is a work of fiction. Characters and events in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are represented fictitiously.

  Visit us at shadowmountain.com

  Proper Romance is a registered trademark.

  Library of Congress ­Cataloging-­in-­Publication ­Data

  Names: Wright, Julie, 1972– author.

  Title: Lies, love, and breakfast at Tiffany’s / Julie Wright.

  Description: Salt Lake City, Utah : Shadow Mountain, [2018]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018010591 | ISBN 9781629724874 (paperbound)

  Subjects: LCSH: Motion picture producers and directors—Fiction. | Man-woman relationships—Fiction. | LCGFT: Romance fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3623.R55 L55 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018010591

  Printed in the United States of ­America

  LSC Communications, Crawfordsville, IN

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Cover photo: © Rasputin Viktor/Shutterstock.com

  Book design: © Shadow Mountain

  Art direction: Richard Erickson

  Design: Kimberly Durtschi

  To all the women who work in Hollywood,

  and in other creative endeavors, who are making

  the changes needed to have their creativity

  and voices heard and recognized.

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Acknowledgments

  Discussion Questions

  About the Author

  “I’m not going to let anyone put me in a cage.”

  —Holly Golightly, played by Audrey Hepburn

  in Breakfast at Tiffany’s

  Audrey Hepburn was haunting me. She had been ever since I was a child. Not in the literal sense. No wispy spirit trailed behind me everywhere I went or anything like that—at least, I didn’t think so—but we were connected, Audrey and I, because she died from cancer on the same day I lost my right eye to that same monster. She had been sixty-three; I was five. Likely the connection wouldn’t have been all that remarkable except the TV from the nurses’ station across the hall was loud, and the news coverage focused on one story.

  The one story where Audrey died.

  My five-year-old mind feared I would be cancer’s next victim. After all, it had already taken my eye. And it had taken a woman the nurses had loved well enough to cry over.

  “She was an amazing woman,” said one nurse.

  “And so brave,” said another.

  I imagined cancer lurking through the dark hallways and sneaking into my room to steal my life like it had stolen hers. People say I shouldn’t be able to remember that day so clearly because I was so little, but I bet if they had lost an eye, the details would stick out in their memories, too.

  The surgery was not the most frightening part of losing my eye. The scariest part was when night came and the hospital noise quieted to whispers. I imagined cancer hiding under my bed or behind the monitors that glowed and beeped in the dark. With only half my vision available to me, how was I supposed to see when cancer attacked? Every noise from the hallway or squeak from the frame of my own bed sent my heart rate speeding enough that nurses came in to check on me. I was glad to see them come and devastated when they left again.

  Alone in the dark, I thought of Audrey. In my mind, I pictured a beautiful woman in long, white, glowing robes. I gave the ghost woman a sword and a shield and imagined her at the foot of my bed, keeping watch over me. The ghost of Audrey conjured by my imagination battled the cancer lurking in my closet and under my bed. She fought back death for me.

  Only then, with this picture of a woman guarding me firmly fixed in my mind, did I finally go to sleep.

  Thankfully, cancer didn’t collect anything more from me than the eye. But I still worried—even when the doctor released me from the hospital. Later, when she fit me with my prosthetic eye, she asked me what I was going to name it.

  “Name?” I asked. “Why would I name an eye?”

  “It will make it personal to you so you’ll take better care of it.”

  I didn’t know exactly what she meant, but coming up with a name was easy. “Audrey,” I said. The name of my midnight protector.

  Though I slowly grew out of the idea of Audrey as my guardian angel, Audrey-the-eye remained my constant companion.

  Audrey-the-eye went through many iterations over the years as I grew and had to upgrade to larger models. When I was twelve, my parents gave in to my tantrums and let me get a version with a star-shaped pupil.

  That was the year Grandma commented that it was fitting for me to want a star for my eye since I’d named my eye after a star.

  When I asked her what she was talking about, she explained that Audrey was a movie star—not just an eye, not just a random person who died from cancer. She wasn’t even just a star. She had been the star. The one woman to teach other women how to be.

  “She taught us to reach for the moon in a way that would make the moon want to reach back,” Grandma had said.

  “Sounds like a horror film, Grandma.”

  Grandma had glared at me. “Don’t be sassy.”

  She was perturbed that I had the audacity to name an eye after Audrey Hepburn when I didn’t even know about her movies. So for my twelfth birthday, I got a starry eye and an education on the film My Fair Lady. The
movie had the longest beginning of nothing but names and music that anyone had ever been forced to endure, and I almost sneaked out of the living room, but Grandma had zebra cookies baking, so I decided to stick around until they came out of the oven. The credits finally ended, and actors bustled out in front of the camera, hit their marks, and froze.

  I froze, too, standing in front of the television, mesmerized by the scene cuts, the music, and the smudged flower girl. It was the first time I noticed camera angles and how the movie cut from one actor or actress to the other.

  Grandma and I stayed up late to finish the film, and I left Grandma’s house with bloodshot eyes—well, one bloodshot eye, since I only had one—but perfect vision. I knew what I was going to do for the rest of my life. I was going to make movies, and it was all because of Audrey.

  Which was why I felt like I could blame her for my mess of a life when, years later, I landed a job as Portal Pictures’ newest assistant film editor, and things weren’t as awesome as I’d hoped. Audrey-the-ghost-protector had become Audrey-the-poltergeist-getting-me-into-trouble.

  I sat in the editing studio and checked the digital wall clock, the one patterned after Portal Pictures’ first science-­fiction film, and tightened my mouth to keep from saying something that would make Grandma scowl at me.

  He’d said he’d meet me here so we could go to the sound studio together.

  He’d promised he’d be on time today, and though common sense told me that that was a bald-faced lie, I’d held out hope.

  When I received an out-of-the-blue text from Ben Armstrong, who had been my boss when we’d worked together at a much smaller film studio, asking me how it was working with the illustrious Dean Thomas, I wanted to write, “I wouldn’t know, since he’s a serial no-show.” What I actually sent was, “Great! Thanks for helping me get this job! You’ll never know how much I appreciate you helping me get this chance.”

  And I did appreciate it. My career meant everything to me. I wanted to climb until there were no mountains left. I wanted to make films that mattered—ones that had staying power in the minds and hearts of audiences everywhere. I wanted to make movies like My Fair Lady. Like the hundreds of other movies that inspired me through film school and kept me inspired even after job hunting had become awful. But now that I’d landed a job—with Ben’s help—at a high-profile studio, it felt like I was babysitting, not creating iconic films.

  Sending the text decided it: Dean Thomas was going to show up today because I did not want my text to Ben to be a lie.

  I pushed back from the editing panel and stood. “Let’s figure out where you’ve gone off to this time, Mr. Thomas.” I was only twenty-seven years old, and the phrase “I’m too old for this” played on constant repeat in my head.

  I marched to where Adam, Dean Thomas’s personal assistant, sat at his desk and guarded the way to the boss’s office. As soon as Adam saw me, his face flushed as red as his hair, and he put up his hands as if to defend himself from my attack. “I swear I reminded him, Silvia.”

  I jabbed a finger at the closed door. “Is he even in there?”

  Adam stood, apparently anticipating that I was about to barge in uninvited. He stepped in my way. “He is in there, but he’s busy.”

  “Busy with what?” I kept my voice to a whisper-yell. “The only thing he has to do is the stuff I’ve been doing for him and the stuff you’ve been doing for him. Between the two of us, he’s completely unnecessary. We should fire him.”

  Adam frowned in confusion. “But he’s the boss. And I don’t know what he’s doing. He just told me he wasn’t to be disturbed.”

  “Are you kidding? We’re supposed to be meeting the sound director today. Dean said he’d be there for this meeting. How do you think it looks when I have to tell these ­people that their film editor is too busy to meet with them?”

  Adam shrugged. “Take good notes.”

  I’d never punched someone before, but Adam was treading on dangerous ground with me. I glared as hard as a one-eyed woman could glare. “You do know that when I asked Dean if we could have a post-production assistant because I saw we had it listed in the budget, that he told me you were the office assistant and that I was to use you. Do you want to be the one to take good notes, or do you want to step aside so I can fetch Dean?”

  Adam moved.

  I sucked in a deep breath of courage, knocked on the door, and then entered before he could tell me to go away.

  Dean had his head bent over his laptop. I could see the way his dark hair was thinning on top, revealing a shiny scalp under the carefully combed lines. He looked up from his laptop and growled, “Adam!”

  Adam poked his head around the doorframe.

  “What part of ‘I’m not to be disturbed’ did you miss?”

  I cut in before Adam could speak. “I’m sorry, Mr. Thomas, but we have a meeting with Bronson, the sound director.” I added Bronson’s job description because Dean’s blank look indicated he had no idea who I was talking about. Of course, he had to know Bronson, but Dean’s increasingly erratic behavior meant I couldn’t depend on anything. “He wants to discuss the musical score we’ve planned.”

  “If we’ve already planned it, what’s there to discuss? You have my notes. Surely you can manage the follow-up meetings without me holding your hand.”

  I refused to look away from his challenging gaze. The fact was, I did have his notes. And they were useless. Which meant that it was a good thing I had taken copious notes during our last meeting with Bronson. Dean had spent the whole time drawing stick figures shooting each other or stabbing each other. I tried not to read anything into the art, but when I mentioned the stick figures to my friend Emma, she bought me a can of pepper spray to keep in my purse. Just in case.

  “Bronson’s asked to speak with you directly, sir. And we’re also supposed to visit the set today to talk to the director and the script supervisor. They’ll be waiting for us at the video village. I was also wondering if we could let the DP know the slate isn’t getting its fair share of screen time. Some of the shots are too dark to see it properly, and it would be great if we could get more of the slate in the shot.”

  “You don’t bother the director of photography with slate details, Sara. Call the assistant cameraman. I’m sure you have his number—or do I need to get that for you, too?”

  “It’s Silvia, sir. And I do have the number. I have called the assistant cameraman, and the slate is still a problem. If you could mention it—”

  Dean narrowed his eyes at me as he lumbered to his feet. “Look, new girl, I’ve worked with these guys for a lot of years, and the slate has never been an issue before, which means the problem is likely not with them.”

  I shut my mouth with a clack of teeth before I said all the things in my head. New girl? Really? He called me new girl even though he’d just heard me say my name? And for him to imply that the slate fault was mine?

  But at least he was standing. That was movement in the right direction.

  I forged ahead. “Also, with production under way, the DIT is sending the raw footage dailies faster than I can process them. Have you thought any more about the second assistant film editor position we discussed last week?”

  “DIT?” Adam whispered to me.

  “Digital imaging technician,” Dean answered, proving he was listening to at least one of us. “Look, I know you’re new, which means you’re still trying to figure out my processes, so listen up. I’m not someone who gives in to the idea that an assistant needs an assistant. The redundancy is ridiculous.” He slid his jacket off the back of his leather chair and shrugged into it.

  I should have let the conversation go. He didn’t like to be contradicted, but he wasn’t helping with the dailies at all. I was the assistant, which meant I was there to assist someone else and not do the job entirely on my own. “But the budget allows for—”

  H
e pinned me to the spot with a single sharp glance before he resumed fixing his jacket collar. “Budget? Just because something is budgeted doesn’t mean it’s needed. Don’t be frivolous with other people’s money. You’re the assistant, which means we don’t need another assistant, because we already have one. If you don’t like it, maybe this won’t work out for either of us.”

  I closed my mouth again. But this time I kept it closed. At least Dean was walking in the direction of the sound studio. I had to celebrate the little things.

  When we got to the studio, Dean held out his hand to Bronson and flashed a smile I barely remembered from when I’d had my interview with the man. I swear that interview was the one and only time Dean Thomas had ever really looked at me. Dean gave Bronson a one-armed hug and clapped him on the back. “Good to see you, good to see you!” Dean never used Bronson’s name, which made me wonder if he really didn’t remember. He never seemed to remember mine.

  Bronson had us listen to a variety of needle drops that he felt added to the emotion of the film before he took us through a full list of the sound effects he intended to use. He’d marked the script for each sound cue.

  “At our last roundtable, I also took some notes of some sound effects I thought might work really well for the mood Danny said he wanted.” I offered up my iPad.

  Bronson was excited to see my notes and to hear my ideas. He played with the sound board to create a few of the sounds I suggested then nodded and scribbled some notes of his own. Together, we talked about some of the more creative Foley work we’d heard throughout our careers and laughed at how something like a chair scraping back on a cement floor could create a monster growl.

  Dean laughed along with us and added suggestions of his own that sounded like he was being unique and original at first, but when analyzed, were simply different ways of restating something Bronson or I had already said. I tried not to sigh at that, or at the way he chummed with Bronson as if they were good friends.

  Going to the actual set was more of the same. Dean shook Danny’s hand like they were long-lost brothers. “Danny, it’s so good to see you. How’s filming going? The weather reschedules haven’t seemed to hold you back any.”