Dear Adam (43 page)

“
Never mind.” Ollie shook
his head. “What would the real Adam do, you think?”

Evelyn became wistful. She could write reams
on the topic.

“
I don’t know how many
times I’ve played this game. I had about ten different endings
for
Dear Adam
. I
could go more realistic, sure. But I’m not ashamed to say I want my
fairy tale, even if it’s only in a book I wrote. The real Adam – if
he was real, if his love was real – would do something quiet yet
profoundly meaningful. Something that no one else could do, but
Adam.”

“
So when is the next book
in the series going to be out?”

Darcy was officially
Evelyn’s first fan. And an enthusiastic one at that. She had found
out about the
League of Librarians
from a fantasy book blog with 35 followers and had
devoured all three books in one week, so she told Evelyn excitedly
when she came up to her at table at the San Francisco Indie Authors
Convention. Darcy had persuaded her friends to read Evelyn’s books,
and they in turn became fans as well. Because of Darcy and her five
friends, Evelyn was saved from becoming a wallflower at the
convention, which was dominated by bestselling romance novelists
with their scores of devoted followers.

She was starting to feel like the ugly
duckling of the homecoming dance, sitting all alone in her little
table by the corner. Her plate of chocolate chip cookies lay
untouched, and her new signing pens unused. She was regretting
letting Ollie persuade her to buy a table.

“
You need to connect with
readers!” he had told her. “Online social networking won’t cut it.
They need face time. You need to get out of the house, stop sitting
in front of your computer. Get out into the real world.”

He had sounded so reasonable, and she had
been swayed by the fact that the convention was being held in one
of her favorite places in the city, Green Apple Bookstore. So she
had signed up impulsively without checking to see who else would be
attending. When she finally got the list of convention authors, she
scanned the names with a sinking heart. There were no others in her
genre.

She was about to text him with “I feel like a
leper” and a frowny face, when Darcy and her boisterous group of
library science cohorts had come sweeping in straight for her
table.

Evelyn at first thought they were standing in
the long line for Lavinia Wilde, who was next to her table, and
stuttered with surprise when Darcy exclaimed, “Are you really E.A.
Valfiero?” She almost forgot her own pen name and had to think for
a second before replying with an astonished “Yes!”

Evelyn was in awe of Darcy and her friends’
glamorous vintage clothes, piercings, and tattoos. Her fans were
cool! she felt like squealing. They made gratifying comments about
the adventures of her magical librarians, insights which only came
from close reading. They “got it.” She couldn’t wait to tell Ollie
that they had picked up on the Benjamin Franklin references, the
ones he said were too obscure.

She spent a glorious half-hour answering
their numerous questions about some subtle threads and minor themes
she had woven throughout all three books. Signing their physical
copies of her series felt surreal. It was one of the happiest times
she’d had this whole year. Ollie was right. There was no substitute
for a face-to-face connection.

“
Well, I’ll be coming back
to the series soon. I just e-mailed my next book to the printers
yesterday, and it will be released digitally and in print in two
weeks.”

Upon seeing Darcy’s face
light up, Evelyn quickly said, “It’s a departure from the series. A
contemporary romance, called
Dear
Adam
. I should have an excerpt up on my
website soon. I’m a bit late on pre-promoting it,” she said
apologetically.

Darcy looked a bit disappointed. She shrugged
her shoulders. “You know what? I’ll try it. I love how you
write!”

“
Really? I hope so. It’s
very close to my heart,” she said softly. “But don’t worry. The
series is my baby. The Librarians are much too much fun to write
about.”

“
Librarians rock!” She and
Darcy high-fived each other. It felt completely natural, even
though she hadn’t done it in about ten years.

She was sad to see them go, but cheered
herself up with the thought that if no one else visited her table
the whole afternoon, Darcy and her friends more than made up for
it. Lavinia Wilde may have her hordes of hundreds, but she had six
cool librarians-in-the-making. Not only did she achieve #2 on her
secret list, she had exceeded it.

“
Yay! I have fans! They
drove down all the way from Sacramento just for me!” she texted to
Ollie.

“
That’s great,” he texted
back. “Have you read
The Altar of
Vices
by Phillip St. James?”

Evelyn frowned.
The Altar of Vices
? Why
was he texting her about someone else’s book? Sure it was #1 in the
New York Times bestseller list, but she had six fans. Six. She
needed two hands to count them.

“
No, but I’ve heard of it,”
she replied. “Hey, guess what? They thought the Ben Franklin
references were original! Author-1, Editor-0.”

Instead of texting, Ollie called her.
“Evelyn, I just finished reading the book three hours ago.”

“
Oh-kay,” she said. “It’s
that good, huh?”

“
It’s brilliant,” he said
offhandedly, “But that’s not really what I’m calling about. Did
Adam tell you that he got shot near the heart when he was about
19?”

Evelyn gasped. That was one
of the details she had left out in
Dear
Adam
. Instead, she had written that he got
stabbed in the chest. “How did you know that?”

“
It’s in that book,
The Altar of Vices
.
Listen, when I was reading it, I thought some of the plot elements
sounded really familiar, but it didn’t click with me at first. It
was the best book I read this year. Well,” he corrected himself,
“Except for yours of course.’

“
Yeah, yeah.”

“
So I decided to see if he
had any other books.
The Altar of
Vices
is his debut novel. But he also
self-published another book. It came out last week. Are you sitting
down? It’s called
Evie
. I downloaded it and did a side-by-side comparison with my
galley of
Dear Adam
and it comes pretty close -”

Evelyn stopped breathing.

“
No,” she whispered, “He
didn’t.”

“
You said he was writing
the story of his life, right? Only with ‘poetic license’ and under
a pseudonym.”

“
Uh-huh,” she replied
weakly.

“
Evelyn, if only half of
what’s in
The Altar of Vices
is true – My god. He’s been through some deep
shit. I mean, the mob, murder attempts, and the women –”

“
Ollie, is there a
picture?”she interrupted. “In the back, anywhere?”

“
No, there isn’t. I
checked. Not on the book jacket, not on Phillip St. James’s
website, not on the publisher’s website. He doesn’t even have a
bio.”

The disappointment was swift. “Of course he
wouldn’t have a photo. What am I thinking? This is Adam we’re
talking about.”

“
So does this mean he’s for
real?”

“
No. It means he told me
the same story he wrote in his NOVEL. Fiction is fiction. I was
just a beta reader,” she said bitterly.

“
Don’t you want to know
about
Evie
?” he
asked timidly. “It’s dedicated ‘To the Woman I Love.’”

“
Ha!” she scoffed. “I can’t
believe he would do this! Not only did he lie to me, he’s trying to
profit from my heartbreak! How dare he! He probably just started
our relationship solely to get material for his book!”

“
Yeah,” Ollie agreed, not
at all convincingly, “How dare he write a book about you. About
something so private.”

“
And he published his story
before I got to publish mine!” To add insult to injury. “Tell me I
wrote it better.”

Ollie was silent on the other end.

“
Seriously, Ollie? You’re
my editor AND my friend! I’m going to put you in my next
novel!”

“
His version is …
different. From his POV, it makes it seem like you abandoned him
when he needed you the most.”

Evelyn winced. “See what I had to deal with.
He’s even got you convinced of his innocence.”

“
Uh,” Ollie said, a
peculiar note in his voice, “This probably isn’t the time to ask,
but, uh, uh,” he stammered.

“
What?”

“
Um, did you really, um,
you know, do
that
over the phone?”

“
Do what – OH DEAR GOD. He
put THAT in the book?”

Evelyn suddenly felt really hot. The room
started to spin a little, and she felt dizzy. The last time this
happened, she had been three months pregnant and had hit the back
of her head against the counter before fainting.

She put her head between her legs.

“
What if Danny comes across
this? Or my parents? Or people from work? Adam didn’t even bother
to change my name!” she wailed as she dropped her phone in shock.
It thudded below her table.

With this sudden turn of bad luck, she
wouldn’t be surprised if her phone was broken. She got on her hands
and knees and ducked behind the skirt to look for it.

Its screen glowed in the dim space below her
table. It appeared to be okay. She could hear Ollie’s tinny voice
saying, “Evelyn, are you alright?”

“
Yeah, hold on,” she called
out as she reached for her phone. “I dropped the phone. Give me a
sec.”

She heard a throat being cleared somewhere
above her.

Below the table skirt, she saw a pair of
expensive-looking black leather shoes, the crisp hem of black
trousers. Its well-dressed owner was standing in front of her
table.

“
Ollie,” she whispered, “My
seventh fan is here. At least I think he’s a fan. He’s the only man
I’ve seen in this place. He’s probably just lost.”

She started backing out, taking care not to
knock her head against the table’s legs.

“
Evelyn, there’s one more
thing –“

“
I gotta go,” she whispered
urgently. “Find contact information for St. James. E-mail, agent,
anything. Call you right back.” She hung up the phone just before
she fully emerged from the table, still on her hands and
knees.

Her eyes traveled from the black dress shoes,
up the pressed, pin-striped black pants, to a square hand being
held out to her.

She was about to say “Thank
you” as she reached for it, when she saw what the man held in his
other hand. The words died in her throat as she stared at the book
he held. She would recognize it anywhere. The distinctive blue
cover art, the typography she had commissioned. It was the book
that she had just e-mailed to the printers yesterday. The book that
hadn’t even published yet.
Dear
Adam
.

She started trembling.

She dared not raise her eyes. It was an
illusion wasn’t it? The black shoes, the black pants, the faint
whiff of Armani Code. The familiar hands in front of her – pictures
of which she had stared at a million times in the past year. The
only physical copy of her book in them.

Before the tears had even begun falling, a
white handkerchief appeared in front of her. She took it and
covered her face.

“
Evie, darling.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. She’s just
imagining his voice. That rich, deep, unforgettable voice. He
couldn’t be real.

She dropped the handkerchief and opened her
eyes. The man was still there standing in front of her.

He was real.

She wanted to hang onto this moment as long
as possible. That moment just before opening the door, before
rounding the corner, the moment just before she finally meets the
man she loves.

Smiling through her tears, Evelyn slowly
raised her eyes.

Books and
Authors Mentioned in Dear Adam

Real
: