Rumor has it that Mary and Roger Adler, Don’s oh-so-proud parents, couldn’t be happier to have Evelyn joining the family.

You can bet your bottom dollar that the nuptials will be the event of the season. With a Hollywood family this glamorous and a bride this beautiful, the whole town will be talking.

WE HAD A BEAUTIFUL WEDDING. Three hundred guests, hosted by Mary and Roger Adler. Ruby was my maid of honor. I wore a jewel-necked taffeta gown, covered with rose-point lace, with sleeves down to my wrists and a full lace skirt. It was designed by Vivian Worley, the head costumer for Sunset. Gwendolyn did my hair, pulled back into a simple but flawless bun, to which my tulle veil was attached. There wasn’t much of the wedding that was planned by us; it was controlled almost entirely by Mary and Roger and the rest by Sunset.

Don was expected to play the game exactly the way his parents wanted it played. Even then I could tell he was eager to get out of their shadow, to eclipse their stardom with his own. Don had been raised to believe that fame was the only power worth pursuing, and what I loved about him was that he was ready to become the most powerful person in any room by becoming the most adored.

And while our wedding might have been at the whim of others, our love and our commitment to each other felt sacred. When Don and I looked into each other’s eyes and held hands as we said “I do” at the Beverly Hills Hotel, it felt like it was just the two of us up there, despite being surrounded by half of Hollywood.

Toward the end of the night, after the wedding bells and our announcement as a married couple, Harry pulled me aside. He asked me how I was doing.

“I’m the most famous bride in the world right now,” I said. “I’m great.”

Harry laughed. “You’ll be happy?” he asked. “With Don? He’s going to take good care of you?”

“I have no doubt about it.”

I believed in my heart that I’d found someone who understood me, or at least understood the me I was trying to be. At the age of nineteen, I thought Don was my happy ending.

Harry put his arm around me and said, “I’m happy for you, kid.”

I grabbed his hand before he could pull it away. I’d had two glasses of champagne, and I was feeling fresh. “How come you never tried anything?” I asked him. “We’ve known each other a few years now. Not even a kiss on the cheek.”

“I’ll kiss you on the cheek if you want,” Harry said, smiling.

“Not what I mean, and you know it.”

“Did you want something to happen?” he asked me.

I wasn’t attracted to Harry Cameron. Despite the fact that he was a categorically attractive man. “No,” I said. “I don’t think I did.”

“But you wanted me to want something to happen?”

I smiled. “And what if I did? Is that so wrong? I’m an actress, Harry. Don’t you forget that.”

Harry laughed. “You have ‘actress’ written all over your face. I remember it every single day.”

“Then why, Harry? What’s the truth?”

Harry took a sip of his scotch and took his arm off me. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Try.”

“You’re young.”

I waved him off. “Most men don’t seem to have any problem with a little thing like that. My own husband is seven years older than me.”

I looked over to see Don swaying with his mother on the dance floor. Mary was still gorgeous in her fifties. She’d come to fame during the silent-film era and did a few talkies before retiring. She was tall and intimidating, with a face that was striking more than anything.

Harry took another swig of his scotch and put the glass down. He looked thoughtful. “It’s a long and complicated story. But suffice it to say, you’ve just never been my type.”

The way he said it, I knew he was trying to tell me something. Harry wasn’t interested in girls like me. Harry wasn’t interested in girls at all.

“You’re my best friend in the world, Harry,” I said. “Do you know that?”

He smiled. I got the impression he did so because he was charmed and because he was relieved. He’d revealed himself, however vaguely. And I was meeting him with acceptance, however indirectly.

“Am I really?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Well, then, you’ll be mine.”

I raised my glass to him. “Best friends tell each other everything,” I said.

He smiled, raising his own glass. “I don’t buy that,” he teased. “Not for one minute.”

Don came over and interrupted us. “Would you mind terribly, Cameron, if I danced with my bride?”

Harry put his hands up, as if in surrender. “She’s all yours.”

“That she is.”

I took Don’s hand, and he twirled me around the dance floor. He looked right into my eyes. He really looked at me, really saw me.

“Do you love me, Evelyn Hugo?” he asked.

“More than anything in the world. Do you love me, Don Adler?”

“I love your eyes, and your tits, and your talent. I love the fact that you’ve got absolutely no ass on you. I love everything about you. So to say yes would be an understatement.”

I laughed and kissed him. We were surrounded by people, packed onto the dance floor. His father, Roger, was smoking a cigar with Ari Sullivan in the corner. I felt a million miles away from my old life, the old me, that girl who needed Ernie Diaz for anything at all.

Don pulled me close and put his mouth to my ear, whispering, “Me and you. We will rule this town.”

We were married for two months before he started hitting me.

SIX WEEKS INTO OUR MARRIAGE, Don and I shot a weepie on location in Puerto Vallarta. Called One More Day, it was about a rich girl, Diane, who spends the summer with her parents at their second home, and the local boy, Frank, who falls in love with her. Naturally, they can’t be together, because her parents don’t approve.

The first weeks of my marriage to Don had been nearly blissful. We bought a house in Beverly Hills and had it decorated in marble and linen. We had pool parties nearly every weekend, drinking champagne and cocktails all afternoon and into the night.

Don made love like a king, truly. With the confidence and power of someone in charge of a fleet of men. I melted underneath him. In the right moment, for him, I’d have done anything he wanted.

He had flipped a switch in me. A switch that changed me from a woman who saw making love as a tool into a woman who knew that making love was a need. I needed him. I needed to be seen. I came alive under his gaze. Being married to Don had shown me another side of myself, a side I was just getting to know. A side I liked.

When we got to Puerto Vallarta, we spent a few days in town before shooting. We took our rented boat out into the water. We dived into the ocean. We made love in the sand.

But as we started shooting and the daily stresses of Hollywood started fracturing our newlywed cocoon, I could tell the tide was turning.

Don’s last movie, The Gun at Point Dume, wasn’t doing well at the box office. It was his first time in a Western, his first crack at playing an action hero. PhotoMoment had just published a review saying, “Don Adler is no John Wayne.” Hollywood Digest wrote, “Adler looks like a fool holding a gun.” I could tell it was bothering him, making him doubt himself. Establishing himself as a masculine action hero was a vital part of his plan. His father had mostly played the straight man in madcap comedies, a clown. Don was out to prove he was a cowboy.

It did not help that I had just won an Audience Appreciation Award for Best Rising Star.

On the day we shot the final good-bye, where Diane and Frank kiss one last time on the beach, Don and I woke up in our rented bungalow, and he told me to make him breakfast. Mind you, he did not ask me to make him breakfast. He barked the order. Regardless, I ignored his tone and called down to the maid.

She was a Mexican woman named Maria. When we had first arrived, I was unsure if I should speak Spanish to the local people. And then, without ever making a formal decision about it, I found myself speaking slow, overenunciated English to everyone.

“Maria, will you please make Mr. Adler some breakfast?” I said into the phone, and then I turned to Don and said, “What would you like? Some coffee and eggs?”