Happily Ever After: A Novel (14 page)

Chapter 25

T
he minivan is quiet as we cross the invisible line from urban to suburban. Suddenly, there are more trees and no sidewalks and even the occasional smooth stretch of highway. I sit in the front alone. In the rearview I can see Aidan and Lily. He whispers in her ear, runs a hand down her thigh. She appears to be softening. I, however, can think only of spells and incantations and charms, anything that might be considered mystical or magical.

But it’s not easy. The extent of my knowledge on the subject comes from Disney. Nowhere else can you find such a collection of modern-day, spell-chanting witches. They take many forms, but most are tall and lean and pinched and bitter. They sport eyebrows you could cut yourself on. They scheme and plot and throw themselves in love’s path whenever possible. Oftentimes, it’s about revenge for getting old or losing power, which are kind of the same thing when you think about it. Sometimes they simply hate the beautiful young princess’s happiness, an emotion no longer able to root in their cold, dark hearts.

But none of that is important. What’s important is what they
say.
I should have paid more attention. When I sat beside Allison on the couch, watching
The Little Mermaid
for the forty thousandth time, I should have listened to what Ursula sang when she stole Ariel’s voice. But instead I was typing away on my keyboard, working, and smiling at Allison every time she told me I had to watch a specific part because it was awesome. I should have been much more present. I should have skipped the multitasking. I regret that now.

To hedge my bets, I put my heels together, carefully, so as not to drive the minivan into a ditch, and click them three times. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.

I wait for a dreamy bubble of light to appear, carrying a good witch or a fairy godmother who will fix everything, but of course, this does not happen. My characters still occupy the backseat. However, we are not completely without miracles. Lily smiles. Or half-smiles. And while I can’t see Aidan’s hand, I have a sneaking suspicion I know in what direction it has traveled.

I squirm. I turn up the music. I return to obsessing over spells. If I’m the default team leader here, I’d better come up with something fast. My daughter has programmed every music outlet in my car to play the pop songs she favors. It creates a nice barrier around me, and I drive, barely conscious of my actions. This route is automatic, just like the ride to school. On the radio a twenty-year-old pop singer complains about love and how she’s alone again, and as she does, an audible gasp escapes me.

I need help.

Now these are three little words I rarely dare utter, because who would I ask? Who would listen? Roger is out. Greta is out. I don’t have the types of girlfriends I call “sisters” and spill my guts to on a regular basis, so that leaves . . . Jason.

Jason? I run a nervous hand through my sweaty hair. Are you insane, Sadie? Jason is someone you have sex with. Yes, I know he likes me well enough. He would not continue to show up at my house every Friday morning, bearing sandwiches, if he didn’t. But Jason and I are about the physical, not deep conversation. Not help.

For the first time, the limitations of our relationship sit like a rock in my stomach. I don’t want to tell just anyone about my situation, I want to tell Jason. This, coupled with my reaction to seeing him last night with Belinda, is cause for concern.

In the backseat, Aidan kisses Lily. If
Stolen Secrets
had proceeded in a normal fashion, I would have had them in positions much more compromising than a single kiss. So why does it make me uncomfortable? I clear my throat. Aidan pulls away. Lily’s eyes remain closed, her luscious lips parted ever so slightly.

“Spells!” I bark at them. “Do you know any? Maybe a charm or two?”

“Clarissa’s in your book,” Aidan says, still gazing at Lily. “Shouldn’t you know the answer?”

“No,” I shout.

I slam on the brakes and skid off the highway and onto the sandy shoulder. Aidan and Lily pitch forward.

“Jesus, Sadie!”

“I didn’t create Clarissa!” I say. “She just showed up and made a mess of things!”

Suddenly the minivan is too small. I push open the door and fall out, the fingers of panic clawing at my throat. If I didn’t create Clarissa, where did she come from? It doesn’t make any sense, no matter which angle I approach it from.

I brace myself against the hood of the minivan, arms straight out, propping me up. The metal is so hot I’m at risk of burning my palms, but I don’t care. There’s a thought, down deep in the murky water of my mind, pushing toward the surface, but I can’t quite hook it.

“Come on,” I say. “What the hell is it? What can’t I see?”

Aidan hops out of the car.

“Sadie?”

I ignore him. I pace alongside the minivan. Grit, kicked up from the traffic flying by on the highway, covers me. I will not be able to get away with wearing the skort for yet another day.

“I wish we were more helpful,” he says.

I keep pacing. I remember my obstetrician telling me, when Allison was two weeks late, that if I moved around it might help the baby be born. Well, maybe the same logic applies here. If I keep moving, perhaps the thought I’m grasping for will break free and be born. I pace faster. Aidan blocks my way.

“Sadie,” he says. “Please. It’s hot as hell. Get back in the car.”

“What was it you said?” I ask him.

“Get back in the car?”

“No, before that!”

“That it’s your book and you should know the answer?”

And there it is. Fully formed.

“Yes!” I grab him by the shoulders and shake him. “Of course I should know the answer! Paranormal!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I demand you get back in the car this instant.”

I laugh insanely. I spin around in the dirt. I hug Aidan.

“Paranormal,” I say again.

“Get in the car.”

I do as I’m told. Aidan joins me in the front seat, a look of deep concern on his face. It’s the same one Roger wore in the bathroom not an hour earlier.

“Paranormal,” I repeat. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it earlier.”

“Will you stop saying that word? Or at least explain what the hell you mean?”

Okay. Sure. Listen to this.

I have a friend, an older man, who writes mysteries and is quite well known. Every few months we get together for drinks and complain about the business of publishing. This friend has had twenty-four novels hit the
New York Times
bestseller list. He has rabid fans. He has multiple houses. He has a very young wife. He is the epitome of success for an author. But is he happy? Yes, mostly, but for the fact that the same newspaper upon whose bestseller list he so frequently appears refuses to review his work. It’s a thorn in his side.

“Snobs,” he yells. “Bastards.”

He has tried different strategies to get them to pay attention, but they turn up their noses and instead focus on “real” literature. I have told him that until a genre writer—mystery, political thriller, western, whatever—wins the Nobel Prize in Literature, we will be out in the critical cold. I have told him to buy a warm parka and take comfort from his outstanding success. But it doesn’t matter what I say. He’s still angry.

I myself am perfectly happy to have robust sales and be critically ignored, but I understand his pain because writing a good mystery is hard. Writing a good romance is hard. Writing a believable sex scene is hard. Yes, the results vary, but the process is still a long and delicate one.

This was not something I appreciated on a visceral level until I tried to write a paranormal romance. I’d done quite well with straight romance and then with the erotica, so my agent, always looking out for my professional future, suggested paranormal.

“It’s all the rage,” Liz Stelow said. “It’s huge. Enormous. And I don’t mean that in a double entendre way. So look, when Alexi at Harper calls me and says she wants something for her spring catalog next year, I immediately think of you. You bang out a few books a year easy. Want to have a go at this?”

I was two years post-Kurt and two months shy of meeting Roger, so I certainly had the time. But the problem was I didn’t read paranormal. I wasn’t even exactly sure what it was.

“Vampires?” I asked.

“Not necessarily,” she said. “You could do witches or people with magical powers or some sort of sensitive zombie, I suppose.”

Remember, we were two adults having this conversation.

“And it needs hot, young things in it,” she added, “but you’re really good at those.”

I was. It was true. My feathers fluffed up with pride.

“Just, you know, don’t skimp on the otherworldliness. Okay?”

My feathers collapsed. Clearly, Liz didn’t read paranormal any more than I did. But I’d transitioned from one genre to another before, so I figured paranormal would be no big deal.

I jumped in with both feet. I read the bestsellers. I studied the craft, and then I sat down at my laptop to write a story about two witches, sisters and rivals, who are in a battle for the soul of a mortal man. A very good-looking mortal man, of course, and scantily clad when possible.

From the beginning I had delusions of grandeur. I saw sequels, a television series, a blockbuster summer movie, Barbie dolls and action figures. But then reality showed up rather inconveniently.

As it turns out, genre writing is not interchangeable. If it were, believe me, we’d all be writing legal thrillers or novels about Russian spies. But each genre requires a gift, a skill that might not be translatable to another world.

I could not write the book. I liked my witches. They were tart and sassy and mean as hell to each other. They paraded around their East Side castle like divas, in high heels and gowns, no matter what time of day. The man in question was a policeman, on a beat in their neighborhood. And oh, they loved him! It should have been easy. It should have followed the same rules as romance or erotica. But it did not. I couldn’t get the tone right or the nuance or the comedy. My manuscript wasn’t fun. It was dreary and dark. It did not read like the work of Sadie Fuller or K. T. Briggs. In short, it was awful.

“What do you mean you can’t do it, Sadie?” Liz shrieked when I admitted my failure.

“It’s too different,” I said.

“It’s not at all,” she said. “You’re just overthinking it.”

No. I once heard a critically acclaimed novelist proclaim he worked on a single sentence for a full year because he could not get it quite right. That’s overthinking it. I was just accepting defeat before I got to the painful part.

“I can’t do it,” I repeated.

“Fine,” Liz said in a huff. “If you can’t, I’ll find someone who can.”

Of all the terrible things to say, that was the worst. Briefly, I reconsidered my decision to abandon the paranormal universe, but by then it was too late. Liz had hung up. I sat at my desk for a few minutes, chewing on my fingernails. Was my career over?

Of course not. I had several good ideas on deck for erotic romances. I just had to choose one and get started. And that’s exactly what I did.

The air in the minivan is damp and stale. Aidan and Lily stare at me, blank looks upon their wrinkle-free faces.

“And?” Aidan asks as I finish my tale. I have obviously not made myself clear.

“The witches,” I say.

Lily pushes up between the front seats. She glows with sweat, but it looks nice, like it’s mixed with glitter or pixie dust.

“What about the witches, Sadie?”

“Clarissa was one of the sisters. I wrote her
before.
”

Chapter 26

I
feel we’ve had a breakthrough, but my passengers don’t seem to appreciate that fact. They appear thoroughly confused.

“What exactly do you mean by that?” Aidan asks.

“I did create her, as you suggested, just not for
Stolen Secrets.
I still can’t get a handle on why she’s after you, Aidan, but there is one thing I do know.”

“And what’s that?” They’re skeptical, understandably. I haven’t been a huge help thus far.

“The manuscript, the paranormal one with Clarissa, had spells,” I say. “Lots of spells.” And they all rhymed. Not that it matters, but I’ve always been fond of the rhyming couplet. I came up with spells everywhere, in the shower, at the market, out to dinner. It was the only part of the paranormal experience I really enjoyed.

“And you think one of them will send us back?”

“Yes,” I say. “She banished people in that story, so the right spell just has to be there.” Plus I have no plan B, so I feel I ought to sell this one for all it’s worth.

“Do you remember them?” Lily asks, anxious.

“Not off the top of my head,” I say. But there are days I can’t remember what I had for lunch, so this doesn’t seem significant. “They’re written down somewhere. I just need to find the manuscript or my notes.”

My left eye twitches. Finding the manuscript or my notes is actually much scarier than it sounds. Fortunately, before anyone asks for additional information on that topic, my cell phone rings.

“Hello?” I say.

“Hi, Sadie. It’s Jason.”

“Hi, Jason,” I say, swallowing. I’m nervous. Why am I nervous?

“Are you home?”

“In the car.”

“You shouldn’t talk on the phone in the car. It’s a huge ticket, plus it’s dangerous.”

“Bluetooth,” I lie.

“How are you?” he asks.

Not very well.

“Fine,” I say.

“Hey,” he says, “about last night. It was a blind date. The wife of a colleague set me up, and I couldn’t say no. I’m sorry it turned out to be your neighbor and your, ah, fund-raiser.”

“Did you have fun?” I ask. I’ve heard Belinda’s side of the story. Now I want to hear his.

“Well,” Jason says. “I don’t think Belinda is really my type. She can’t seem to talk about anything but what she did at the gym and who is cheating on whom. It was depressing.”

Plus she’s a stalker.

“I’m sorry you didn’t have a good time,” I say. But I’m not. Not even a little.

There’s a pause. Jason clears his throat like he’s about to launch into prepared remarks.

“So how about you? Did you enjoy the evening with your . . . young man? That was quite a kiss he laid on you.”

There’s a hint of pain and jealousy in his voice. Are we traveling on a two-way street?

“It was nothing,” I say quickly. “The cocktails were pretty strong. Anyway, we just picked up his girlfriend in New York.”

From Jason, an audible sigh of relief. This conversation is drawing lines around our relationship. It’s forcing definition. In the silence that follows, we both consider what this means.

“Well,” Jason says finally, “I’m glad to hear he has company. He’s very . . .”

“Good looking?” I say.

“Yes,” Jason laughs. “That might be the word for it. I was thinking I would come over.”

“To my house? Now?”

“Yes. Well, when you get home. I want to talk to you about something.”

I hate when people say that. It’s never anything good. Perhaps what I interpreted as jealousy at the kiss is really disgust. Maybe he’s done with me. I should tell him no, he cannot come over. I should remind him we only see each other on Friday mornings, but I hear myself say, “Sure. We should be home in fifteen minutes.” The way today is going, there’s a good chance Belinda will see his car and take up residence in the shrubs outside of the house. How dare I take up with a man she doesn’t want for herself?

We bounce up the rutted driveway and park outside the garage. Greta stands in the front doorway. Although she wears the same sensible wool dress and shoes she wears every day, she does not appear overheated. Greta takes in the scene as Aidan helps Lily from the car.

“The girlfriend,” I whisper to Greta. “Her name is Lily.”

“And she’s a little overdressed for a Saturday afternoon,” Greta says at full volume.

Aidan, awash in chivalry, helps his ladylove navigate the uneven flagstone path to the front door. They both look exhausted, red eyed, and frayed around the edges. I’ve noticed that beautiful people can lack a certain robustness we mere mortals have in spades.

“Why don’t you show Lily the guest room?” I say to Aidan. “You can get cleaned up.”

“And you’ll look for the manuscript with the spells?” His face is five years older than it was yesterday. The youthful arrogance he displayed while propositioning me in my kitchen has faded. Real life, such as it is, can be hard.

“Yes,” I say. Greta is suddenly at my shoulder.

“Is something missing?” she asks. Nothing is ever missing in our house because Greta has a library catalog for a brain. If you ask her for the scissors she will provide turn by turn directions to the kitchen drawer where said scissors reside. She can probably reel off their serial numbers too, if pressed. It’s a gift I do not possess. If Greta did not return my car keys to the table by the front door each night, I’d never leave the house.

I know if I asked her to find me a discarded unfinished manuscript that didn’t even earn itself a working title, she could. But I don’t want to be under her watchful eye. It will only remind me that I’m involved with something I cannot explain and which makes no sense at all.

“No,” I say, “nothing’s lost. Just some pages I want to show our guests.”

Greta swings the door wide and ushers us in. Within moments, Aidan and Lily will have fluffy towels, a clean change of clothes, and a selection of travel-size toiletries from which to choose. Aidan slips a strong arm around Lily’s waist. There is no daylight between them now.

I follow them upstairs and turn off at my office. Gently, I close the door. It smells dank and hot, as if beyond the reach of air-conditioning. I sit down at my desk. I run my hands over the wood. My office may be a sanctuary of sorts, but it is also a mess. There are piles of papers, magazines, books, coffee cups, scraps of Allison’s homework, junk mail, and stale bagel parts covering almost every surface. I don’t allow Greta in here because first, I’m afraid it would give her a heart attack, and second, I’d never find anything ever again. And I know where things are in here. Sort of.

By my calculations I created Clarissa and Evangeline twelve years ago. Nowadays, I’m fully electronic and proud of it. With the exception of my bedside notebook, used only for late night emergencies, I take notes exclusively on a tablet or my smartphone, and I write only on my laptop. But back in the dark ages, things were different. Back then I had a system, if you could call it that. The system was a little black notebook I tried to carry on my person everywhere I went. If something struck me, I’d write it down. It might be the way a person walked or a certain environment that was perfect for a new scene. Sometimes it was a snippet of dialogue picked up in the store or on the train. When I sat down to write, I would comb this notebook for bits to support whatever story idea I was pursuing. It was a treasure chest of details.

But sometimes I’d forget the notebook and I’d resort to jotting down notes on cash register receipts or coffee shop napkins or whatever piece of paper was close at hand. I’d stuff these notes in my purse and forget about them until the next time I needed something to write on. My office was adrift in little pieces of paper, none of which could be thrown out because they might just hold the key to a particular project.

I took to filling shoe boxes with the notebook pages and the random pieces of paper. On top, I’d pile the little black computer disks containing electronic manuscript drafts. Sometimes I labeled the disks and sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes I used them as coasters. Occasionally, Allison would add one to her preschool art, glitter, glue, beads, et cetera. Occasionally, a shoe box got misplaced or thrown out. I said it was a system. I did not say it was a good one.

Behind me is a vast closet, the kind you only find in the suburbs. I keep things in it that see little use. Snow pants, parkas so fluffy you can barely latch your seat belt when you have one on, cowboy boots that become fashionable every five to seven years. I roll my desk chair over and climb up. On the top shelf are a dozen shoe boxes. They’re old. I can tell because I still wore a size seven shoe when I bought them, and I haven’t worn a size seven shoe since before I was pregnant. I pull down the boxes and stack them on my desk.

I yank the lid off the box for a pair of floral stilettos I wore exactly once. Inside is a mess of paper and black disks. I remember reading Allison a Clifford the Big Red Dog
book when she was a kid. In one scene Emily Elizabeth, the heroine, puts her tiny puppy, Clifford, on a turntable to give him a spin.

“What’s that?” Allison asked, pointing to the record player. I ended up explaining all about defunct technology, right up through music CDs. We never finished the book.

The disks are like that. Defunct. Even if I find the one I’m looking for, my laptop will not be able to read it. The shred of hope I experienced earlier in the minivan, on the side of the road, is wholly tied to the paper notes, which look a lot like old confetti. My heart sinks. This is not going to work. And pulling those spells, written twelve years ago, directly from memory is hardly even worth trying. I will only end up regurgitating bits of the Shakespearean sonnets my father drilled into me when I was a kid. And I don’t need sonnets. I need spells.

I dig a hand into the box and pull out a notebook page. My handwriting is terrible. Do they even teach handwriting anymore, or is that as defunct as the disks and the turntable?

“Home Depot. The rope aisle. The yellow kind. Nylon. Do they do it in the bathroom over by the tractors?”

I have no idea what this note is about, but clearly my witches never went to Home Depot. I close the box and shove it aside. The next box is far more practical, for a pair of Birkenstocks I eventually wore out. They were patent leather, so I didn’t come off as too hippie chick.

“Rain and wind like the scene in
Sense and Sensibility
. They race across a field into each other’s arms at the end. Except she has a broken leg. Rework injury.”

Not that one either. I move on to a pair of expensive Nike running shoes. This makes me smile. For about ten minutes on a spring Saturday, I was a runner. I wore the shoes to the supermarket for years however. I yank open the box.

“Evangeline younger, prettier, the wild sister? Clarissa a better witch.”

I can tell from the slant of the writing that I jotted this down while driving. The last words go clear off the edge of the flyer that had been tucked under my windshield wiper, something about home delivery of dry cleaning. At least I have found the right box.

Before I can get too excited about its contents, the doorbell rings. Jason. My heart leaps at the sound. Quickly, I stuff everything back in the box and run downstairs, a little scared at how desperately I want to see him.