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I want to say, of course I do. I’m not one of those East Coast snobs who doesn’t “get” the rest of the country, who refers to everything west of Philadelphia as flyover country.

But if we’re being honest here, that’s exactly what I am.

I grew up in the Philly burbs, went to college in the city, moved to New York, and haven’t left the tristate area except for vacations for my entire adult life.

I know more about the UK from being with Peter than I do about anything between California and Ohio.

So I admit what I don’t know and ask her to explain it to me. Sometimes you need to know exactly when to show your ignorance. Male reporters are terrible at it.

“You all like to think of Silicon Valley when you think of tech. But all those tech companies need you to be the product. They need content. They need users. And this is where they get both. This place is ground zero for it. It’s Valhalla for influencing and digital creating.

It’s where the mommy blogs began and where they all died to give birth to the influencers.

It’s why I chose to move here from Los Angeles.

I saw something in this desert. Everyone I worked with in Hollywood thought I was a fucking moron, but I saw what was coming.

My dad worked in the entertainment business in the nineties. ”

“What did he do?”

“He was the assistant, the right-hand man, to this big shot music producer who built boy bands. There was a lot of traveling and the head honcho always wanted Dad around so I got homeschooled on the road and the studios paid for it. We’d go all over the country auditioning teenage boys, plucking out the cutest ones with a modicum of talent and nice hair and clear skin.

Made them dance and prance and show their hairless little chests.

Made them millionaires. You remember that one music video of the band SweetBoyz, the one where they’re all puppets, marionettes, bouncing around on the stage?

That’s how I always think of my dad’s boss.

That motherfucker was the puppeteer. He was pulling all the strings. ”

“Where is he now?”

“Prison. Embezzlement. He was a greedy bastard. But brilliant. It would have been any other little girl’s dream, getting so much access to those bands.

But those dudes always seemed so silly to me.

It wasn’t until I was a little older and my dad wasn’t doing so well anymore that he sat me down and explained what they had done with those boys, how those teams had molded them to be exactly what teenage girls, and even horny moms, wanted.

That’s when I understood. I wanted to do what his boss did.

It felt like the perfect combination of business and art.

So I got a dual degree in management and accounting from UCLA.

I got in-state tuition, which I needed because by 2002 we didn’t have that much money.

My dad’s job ended when the big guy went to prison.

Pop’s cancer treatments were expensive. I started working at different accounting firms and then at talent agencies.

Got my law degree at night. I think some people felt sorry for me.

They used to see me sitting in the wings at those concerts and in the hotel lobbies while my dad scurried around getting shit done. ”

Her hands are flying all over the place, intensely animated. She loves telling her story to me. Most people do. It’s one of the things I learned when I became a journalist. Get someone talking about themselves and 99 percent of them won’t shut up until you ask them to.

“I realized early on that social media was going to be the future of media. And then I found the women here. They were bloggers at first. Their churches encourage women to stay home and have as many kids as possible, but they also encourage journaling and they loved the idea of the blogging. It showcased the lifestyle in a way they liked. It was a way to bring new people in. Come for the beautiful pictures of four blond children pulling eggs out of a chicken’s ass and stay to find out how to save your eternal soul. Plus the girls are gorgeous.”

I take note of the fact that she calls them girls and not women.

“They’re all blond and blue-eyed with skin so tight you could bounce a quarter off of it because they’ve never had a drink or a smoke in their lives. You don’t smoke, do you?”

I shake my head, because no one smokes anymore, but I do miss it in times like this.

“I don’t either, but I could go for one now.

I miss it every day when I have my first sip of coffee or a shitty beer.

The men here are usually gorgeous too, but so fucking thick, and the kids…

oh my god, the kids. You could go to a dozen casting calls in the Valley and never see angels like these.

They’re obedient and beautiful. A talent manager’s dream.

“The culture out here definitely pushes women hard to be a certain way. The quest for perfection at all costs is intense. They’d do it without a camera so why not give them one—I moved here and I offered up my services.

Accounting at first. There was a lot of money coming in from banner ads and sponsored posts.

And then management when the bigger brands and deals started waking up to how influential the girls were.

It was similar to what my dad’s boss had done with the bands.

He found the kids who had something special.

They didn’t have to have too much talent, in fact real talent could be a pain in the ass.

They just needed an ‘it’ factor. Everything else can be manufactured.

And over the years that’s what I’ve done for these ladies.

I find the ones who have something and we work together to nurture their careers. ”

“How long have you worked with Bex?”

“A long time. Seven years now. She was one of my first. We figured a lot of this out together. And she really has it. That ‘it’ factor. She’s an incredible baker, but she was shy about showing it off at first. I convinced her to amp that up.

To be proud of it. I also launched Tripod’s Instagram.

That stinky-ass goat pays the mortgage for the whole farm. ”

“Gray’s family seemed so rich. Why are there all these debts and mortgages?”

“Gray’s granddaddy made that money. He had eleven kids and Gray’s own daddy had eight.

That’s a lot of slivers of pie to dole out even if you’ve got a lot of pie.

And then a bunch of them made some shitty investments.

Gray’s been in financial free fall since they got married, but he hid it for a few more years afterward.

When they first moved out to the ranch, he had big plans to breed bison like a millennial Ted Turner.

Thought he was gonna make a bison-cow hybrid called the beefalo.

But bison are ornery and nasty. They break out of every fence.

They rip up your land and they’ll try to kill you every chance they get.

No vet wants to touch them, and the farmers out here have no experience with them.

It was a disaster. Also, they’re never camera-ready.

Rebecca actually took to the farming pretty well.

She was raising chickens by hand while she was raising those babies and was making some dough from her egg money alone.

And then those chickens made her a star on Instagram.

We got more and more of them. Henfluencing is a real banger.

The chicken phase was incredibly lucrative for her.

That’s when we decided to start selling merch.

Her wicker egg-collecting basket was the first thing we tried on the product side, and it was a massive hit.

From there we expanded into clothes and linens and kitchenware.

We figured out how to do one media day a week to streamline the production process. Rebecca became a real vibe real fast.

“And she has something else too. She’s not from here, so she wasn’t afraid to push the boundaries, to want something bigger than what this tiny world could offer her. More and more of the women out here are seeing that now, but they didn’t then. She’s truly a star. Always has been.”

“It’s insane,” I blurt out. “They’re all pushing this arcadian fantasy of homemaking and living off the land, the anti-girlbosses, when they’re all building capitalist empires.”

“It’s genius, right?” Olivia claps her hands like an excited child. “She gives the people what they want. They all do. Don’t you fall down rabbit holes of bread baking and closet organizing and baby swaddling? No one is immune to it. You all can’t get enough.”

“How do the husbands feel about this? Do they hate it?” I think about how the tables have turned with Peter and me since he lost his job.

He’s grateful that I have mine, but I know he bristles at the fact that I’ve become the sole breadwinner.

He can’t seem to help it even though he has the feminist soul of a man raised on the Spice Girls.

How must these “manly” and painfully masculine men feel about their wives’ success?

“Not all of them hate it. In fact, plenty of the hubbies like the cash. Money is always nice. But when it’s women making the money they get power. They want things. They question things. The husbands don’t like that and the men who control these towns and the churches, they don’t like it either.”

“How did they feel about Rebecca?”

“Loved her until they hated her. She got too big. She had so much influence, such a big audience. People actually moved out here saying they wanted what @BarefootMamaLove had. They said that to the real estate agents. They showed up at the church services. They bought into the lifestyle. At first it was great. It really set Gray up to be a star in the church and the community.”

“Did Gray want to be a star?” I keep thinking about the cipher on the edges of Rebecca’s pictures.

“He wanted to be important. His dad was an important man around here. He was a big deal in the state, and everyone loved him. Gray wanted that kind of love, that kind of admiration. Politics always appealed to him. Rebecca told me that early on. I could always tell he was desperate to prove himself, desperate to show he was more than his family’s money, especially when it was gone. You can smell that on a person.”

“What’s it smell like?” It’s half a joke.

“Expensive cologne.” She doesn’t miss a beat. Our steaks arrive, Olivia’s as bloody as she requested. When she slices through the flank with exquisite precision, the blood pools around the muscle. Some of it drips off Olivia’s lips as she continues.

“With Gray’s swagger and cheekbones he could have run for office without her, but throw in a pretty blond wife and six perfect children and he was gonna have it made. But he got itchy when she got bigger and bigger. He never wanted her to expand. None of them did.”

“Them?”

“Gray’s family. The church elders. The local political party. They wanted to keep her where she was at. Make her even smaller if they could. Keep her in a box, a glass box where she couldn’t grow.”

“And that’s not what she wanted. Or what you want?”

“Hell no. That woman is a star and she deserves to shine.”

“And there are probably people out there, out here,” I say as I wave my hand toward the desert outside, “who don’t want that?”

“That’s exactly right.”

I take it all in. All of this information about a world I have uneasily consumed on Instagram and YouTube.

A world that looked beautiful and aspirational.

A world that made me feel bad about my own messy life.

We pause the conversation to gnaw on our steaks.

Mine is delicious and exactly what I needed.

I have the feeling that Olivia is good at giving people exactly what they need when they need it.

There are people who want to silence and control Bex. But she also had every reason to want to get rid of her husband. I’ll be leaving here with more questions than answers.

Olivia’s phone goes off again with that ridiculous ringtone.

“I’m going to have to call them back pretty quick. Always on duty. Go back to your hotel. Get writing. Your room is paid for there as long as you need to stay. I’ve made sure of it. Call me if you need me for anything.”

I finally get a glimpse of her screen to see who is calling. “Veronica.”

One of the Smith triplets? Is Veronica Smith a client?

“Who do you think killed Gray?” I flat out ask her as she signs the bill, leaving a 50 percent tip.

“Not Rebecca,” she says with intense certainty. “And that’s all that matters.”

“Is it?”

“Yes, it is.” She stands. “Goodbye, Lizzie. I’ll see you soon.”

Before she can reach the exit she pivots on her heel and doubles back. “Can I have another Twizzler?”

“Um, sure.”

“Also one more question: What do you want?”

“What do you mean?”

“When this is all over what do you want?” I continue to stare at her dumbly. No one ever asks me what I want anymore.

“I want Rebecca and her kids to be safe. I want to know that she didn’t do it. I want justice.”

“Right. Of course. All those things. But what do you want for you?”

It’s such an odd and seemingly inappropriate question given the circumstances.

“I want to write again, to report out real stories again.” It erupts out of my mouth like it was waiting in there this entire time. “But it feels impossible.”

Olivia gives a satisfied nod. “Elizabeth, I’m a gay Black woman living in God’s chosen countryside. We make our own success. Nothing is impossible. You can do anything you put your mind to.”

She’s deadly serious. “Okay. Good to know your dreams. I like knowing people’s dreams.” With that she strolls out the door, Twizzler dangling from between her fingers.

Who the hell is this woman and what kind of a game is she playing with all of us?

Rebecca Sommers’s Picture-Perfect Life Was Far from Perfect

By Elizabeth Matthews

Like many of you, I’ve been watching Rebecca Sommers’s Instagram and YouTube channels with a sort of morbid curiosity over the years.

She was beautiful. Her family was beautiful.

It all seemed so perfect. But nothing is perfect.

No marriage, no parent-child relationship, no friendship.

I was friends with Rebecca a long time ago, back in college. I called her Bex then. We all did.

Bex was a force of nature. So smart, so driven.

Insanely ambitious but always up for a good time.

When we lost touch almost fifteen years ago, I was devastated, and reconnecting recently meant a lot to me.

But in reconnecting I learned something about Rebecca’s seemingly picture-perfect marriage to Grayson Sommers that I am only sharing now because I think we all need to understand that what we saw on our screens was not Rebecca’s reality…