She nods, gingerly touching the gaping wound above her eyebrow. “Is it terrible?”
“It’ll be hardly noticeable once a plastic surgeon is done with it,” I assure her. “And the scar tissue will prevent you from ever needing Botox again.”
She smiles wanly, her eyes tired. “A silver lining.”
“Do you feel that?” Jackson asks, coming around to support Stella’s other side. “The wind is dying.”
I activate my flashlight. “The eye.”
“We should get to the cellar,” Jackson suggests. “There’s a first aid kit in the supply closet next to it. We can patch everyone up and get our story straight.”
“Just give me a little direction. I’m ready to play my part,” Stella croaks.
A rush of gratitude warms my chest. I hide my emotion with a glance out toward where the ship has disappeared into the black night, hoping the pocket of relative calm allows it to sail far enough out that the ocean swallows Cole’s body whole, never to be seen again.
We turn our backs on the roiling sea and climb the hill arm in arm.
Taylor
The wind outside had abruptly stopped, the only noise the chaotic ocean sloshing against the boards of the bungalow.
“It’s time,” I said to Mary Elizabeth, scooping her from the cocoon of Cole’s bed and zipping her into my bag. “Sorry.”
She yelped as I slung the bag across my body and waded through the ankle-deep seawater swirling across the living room in the flickering candlelight.
Through the windows, the moon in the suddenly clear sky illuminated the storm-tossed sea in shimmering silver. The water was still high, the waves cresting over the porch outside, but I couldn’t wait any longer for the tide to go out. The eye was upon us.
I said a silent prayer and swung open the door. The wind immediately blew out the candle, but after the total darkness of the storm, the moonlight was as bright as day. I was relieved to see the path of the pier stretching to the island seemingly intact. The water level was even with the deck, the peaks of waves periodically washing up and over the boards, like a bridge through the clouds. I took my first tentative step onto the wood. Then another, and another. The dock was stable. As I sprinted toward the beach, I could make out three shadows moving across the sand, a flashlight bouncing between them. Two women and a man too tall and thin to be Cole. Water crashed into my calves and thighs as I ran faster and faster over the planks toward the island, my heart soaring with each step closer to land.
Part VII:The Aftermath
January 14, 2020The Biz ReportNinth Woman Speaks Out against Cole Power
Talia Goldman announced today that she is representing yet another woman who has come forward with allegations that the late Cole Power drugged and sexually assaulted her. The woman’s name has at this time been withheld, but she detailed meeting Power at the Ninth Circle nightclub and going back to his home in the Hollywood Hills with a group of friends, only to wake up alone with him in his bed with no recollection of the prior evening and signs she’d had intercourse. The woman claims not to have been drinking heavily the evening in question and says she did not come forward earlier because she was ashamed of the incident.
This is the ninth woman to come forward with allegations of assault against Power in the two months since Taylor Wasserman wrote an op-ed detailing her alleged rape by Power while she was working with him as producer on The Siren, the film he was shooting when he died in June. Both Power’s son, Jackson Power, and his ex-wife, Stella Rivers, have corroborated Wasserman’s claims that the rape resulted in a pregnancy, which she miscarried, and the miscarriage was confirmed by a doctor on the island of Saint Ann, where Wasserman now resides.
Jackson Power is the sole heir of Cole Power and has said he plans to compensate his father’s victims for the pain and suffering they endured at his hands.
May 2, 2021
The Book BlogWhat We’re Reading This Week:
“Coming Clean,” by Stella Rivers
Stella Rivers’s memoir Coming Clean predictably reads like something between a tabloid and an after-school special…so why couldn’t any of us over here at the Book Blog put it down?
I’ve been familiar with Stella Rivers since I was a child: first as the talented kid in Under the Blue Moon and the Harriet films, then as the sexy ingenue in Call of the Sea and Faster, but the image of Stella that’s burned into my mind is the tawdry one we all remember, from a grocery store in Hollywood. Her pickle-jar-throwing fall from grace coincided with the pinnacle of tabloid culture, when paparazzi stalked celebrities like prey and the public gawked, ever hungry for more.
But the Stella pictured in the makeup-free, unedited black-and-white photo that graces the cover of Coming Clean is a Stella Rivers we haven’t yet gotten to know. And the content of her memoir is just as honest as the jacket. Rivers unflinchingly details her troubled childhood, meteoric rise to fame, and rocky marriage to Cole Power with surprising candor and wit. But it’s her candid account of the overdose death of the woman she loved, during a time (only fifteen years ago!) when neither bisexuality nor opioid addiction could be discussed without stigma that makes Coming Clean a must read this summer.
Everyone knows the press account of Rivers’s miscarriage (thought to be an abortion at the time), divorce, and the substance abuse that led to her shocking fall from grace, but experiencing it from her viewpoint is both heartbreaking and eye-opening. The hindsight she’s gained with her hard-won sobriety gives her a unique perspective on the ways she both benefited from
