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Page 16
She had to read on. What did the words mean to the Matilda character?
The script showed Matilda's bewilderment. She was a stranger to Pittsburgh, having arrived that very day in the bustling fort town where the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers joined to form the Ohio. She didn't know Porter, yet he had issued to her his strange demand.
What did it mean?
Mariah read further, but nothing sank in. She closed the screenplay and stared at it. Its blue plastic cover was warm where her fingers had clutched it, but the heat seemed fiery, intense. She wanted to hurl away the script.
Get a grip, she ordered herself. It was only a screenplay. She had read hundreds before. Sometimes dialogue in one became indistinguishable from the rest. That was all that had happened here, a repetition of yet another trite line.
But she knew that wasn't true. If she had ever read this one before, she'd have known it.
"You must right a grievous wrong."
This was absurd. Why did that statement send her pulse rate soaring, wreak havoc with the evenness of her breathing?
Because it had haunted her dreams forever. And it had always given her a sense of expectancyand impending doom.
She tried to recall how old she'd been when she'd had the first bad dream. Impossible, she decided after a few moments. She couldn't recall a time before she'd first heard the words.
Where had she been the first time? She nearly laughed aloud. Who could tell? New York? Boston? London? Trinidad? Somewhere alone with her mother, of course, after one of her father's frequent abandonments. She'd lost count of the places she'd lived as a child, thanks to him.
She lived in Los Angeles now, more or less. At least it was her base. She had always thought, once she was on her own, that she'd settle down in one spot. Never leave it.
But not until she found a place she wanted to call home.
With a sigh, she picked up the screenplay again. She had a job to do, and her nervousness was ridiculous. She would

 
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