She got pregnant right away, maybe that very night. They wrapped the shoot, and she headed back to LA with a film in the can, a baby in her belly, and a brand-new husband in tow. Queen Anne, happy at last.

They would have named the baby Shane, after their favorite movie, but that seemed a bit much, so they settled for something almost as good. Cody was a golden child, with his dad’s rugged good looks and his mother’s soft beauty, and they were both crazy in love with him.

The movie came out a little later and was a hit, and they bought the place in Malibu.

But somehow the film came to be known as the last great western, a nostalgic farewell to a classic genre, and in that weird Hollywood way, everyone was saying it because that’s what everyone was saying. Pretty soon the only horses in the movies were the ones pulling carriages through Central Park, and Harley McCall found himself with a lot of time on his hands.

There just wasn’t a lot for a cowboy to do in Malibu.

For a while they thought he could be a big help at Wishbone, a fresh eye, an honest voice, that sort of thing. But he picked the dumbest projects-unfilmable books, remakes of old flops, stories that were pitched by writers he went out for beers with… it didn’t work out.

And she discovered, to her immense sorrow, that West Hollywood was a lot different from the West, and all the qualities that she’d found so fresh and exciting out on the desert became old and grating at the lawn parties, studio meetings, and premieres. And if “Harley doesn’t say a lot” was something she had originally said with a measure of pride, she found herself saying it as an apology more and more, especially as Harley’s reticence changed from quiet confidence to sullen despair.

There just wasn’t a lot for a cowboy to do in Malibu.