Happily Ever After: A Novel (19 page)

“This is an old house, Sadie,” she says. “We need to be careful.” With that, she aims the nozzle at Clarissa and lets loose.

Chapter 34

W
e all stand around the pile of black dust. No one says a word. Greta has returned to the kitchen, muttering about carelessness and old wood.

“Is she gone?” Lily asks tentatively. Jason sticks a toe into the dust.

“I think so,” he says. I have yet to take a really close look at his face. Is it going to register pure disbelief? And if it does, what does that mean for us? He holds my hand. I squeeze. He squeezes back. I take that as a good sign, at least for now.

“I thought I was going to be dead,” Lily says. “I was prepared to be dead. But I’m not dead. Am I?”

I shake my head. No. They are not dead. But they are still here. Aidan, who has not said a word, finally speaks up.

“We’ve got a problem,” he says.

“Yes,” I say. “We’ve got a lot of problems, but at least we can check ‘witch’ off the list, right?”

“No, Sadie,” he says. “We’re got a real problem.” He holds up his hand, fingers spread, palm facing me. And I can almost see right through him. He’s fading. As is Lily beside him.

“No, no, no, no!” I shriek. “This isn’t fair.”

For the first time in two days, I’m furious.

“None of this was supposed to happen,” I yell. “
Stolen Secrets
was about these two falling in love! There were no witches or spells or magic or random disappearances to other realities!”

I feel betrayed, but by whom I cannot say.

“So make it that,” Jason says, with some urgency. “Do it. Write it. Now.”

Write it now. Make it go the way I’d intended. Make everyone happy. Give it a “happily ever after.” I grab Jason by the shoulders and give him a shake.

“Get my laptop and meet me upstairs,” I say. “Aidan and Lily, don’t disappear. Not yet. Please.”

I sprint to my office and sweep everything off my desk. I pull up my chair. I take a few deep breaths. I look out the window into the darkness. Jason arrives, panting, and drops my laptop in front of me. The machine is cold and dead. I fumble in the top desk drawer for the power cord and plug it in.

For a minute, I think nothing is going to happen. But then it whirs to life and the happy little apple comes dancing into view. I want to kiss it. Oh, I’ve missed you these past two days! I have so much to tell you.

I click on the icon for the
Stolen Secrets
manuscript. It pops up. The word count stands at exactly where I left it when I went to bed two nights ago. There is nothing left of Clarissa on the pages.

I’ve done some stupid things in my life. A lot of things, actually, but I’ve never been fool enough to try and bang out an entire novel in one sitting. But my characters are fading away before my very eyes, and if I don’t get them on the page, if I can’t preserve them there, I might lose them forever. And there is a very real pain in losing characters you love.

“What do you need, Sadie?” Jason asks as I touch my fingers to the keyboard.

“Just stay with me, okay?” Be my muse.

“Of course,” he says.

“But you can’t talk,” I say. “That’s distracting.”

He laughs, pulling an advance copy of my latest novel, due to hit the shelves in four weeks, from a cardboard delivery box. He lies back on the couch and begins to read, just as if he’s done this a thousand times before. I begin to type.

Aidan Hathaway sat on the broad black leather sofa with his feet up. They had decided to meet here in his office, on neutral ground, because it might make things easier. He reminded himself that he already knew what Lily was coming here to say. He felt it too. It was undeniable.

They tried, but in the end, physical lust was not enough. They did not love each other, and that was the cold, hard truth. But it was okay because it went both ways. No one would end up brokenhearted if they both accepted defeat.

It had started when Aidan was out with his best childhood friend, Erin. Erin was bright and sassy, short and round and smarter than almost anyone Aidan had ever met. They had known each other since grade school, and their friendship had blossomed in recent years as Aidan found himself more and more isolated from regular people. Erin worked as a DA for the city of New York, and the stories she brought him were little gifts, full of drama and madness. He could listen to her for hours. All night long, in fact, and often did.

Which was part of the problem with Lily. When he was with Lily, he found he missed Erin. At first he dismissed it as a feeling totally appropriate for a good and reliable friend, but after a while even he had to examine it more closely.

He thought he might love Erin. He thought he might be in love with his best friend after all.

Aidan was lost in this thought when Lily knocked gently on his office door. His secretary was long gone, the hum of the building the only sound.

“Come in,” he said.

Lily gave him a small smile. He could never see her without losing his breath, she was that beautiful. Today, her strawberry-blond curls hung loose down past her shoulders, and her bright purple dress hugged her curves as he often had these last months. He would miss being in bed with her, running his hands over her soft, pale skin, hearing her moans of pleasure. But it wasn’t enough, and they both knew it. In a way, he was proud of her for taking the initiative, as he had been unable to do.

“You look tired,” she said, sitting beside him on the couch and running her fingers down his rough cheek.

“Long day,” he said. “Nonsense in China.”

“Of course,” she said. “But if anyone can handle it, it’s you.”

“Thanks, Lily.” He draped an arm across her shoulders.

“You know why I’m here.” It wasn’t a question.

He nodded.

“We tried,” she continued. “We did. And we’ve had fun, and I know that ex-lovers can’t often succeed as friends, but I feel differently about us. I think we can if we try. Can we try, Aidan?”

“Oh, Lily,” he said. He drew her in and kissed her. It was a long, sweet kiss, and it told her everything he could not. He did love her. She would always be in his life. They would both make it. Just not together.

“Yes,” he said, finally pulling away. “We can try.” He felt her relax in his arms. He knew through his sources that she didn’t have anyone else, but that wouldn’t last. A woman as beautiful as Lily was only alone by choice.

In the end, they wanted different things. He wanted someone who understood him to the point where he did not need to explain himself. He wanted a woman who loved him for who he was, not for what he could offer. He wanted Erin.

“She’s here, you know,” Lily said, sliding away from him. Was she reading his mind?

“Who?” Aidan asked.

“You know,” she said with a coy smile. “And it’s okay. She loves you, really loves you. She would do anything for you. And I suspect you feel the same way. Right?”

Aidan gave her an almost imperceptible nod. His heart raced. Was all of this really happening? He was supposed to get on a plane to Hong Kong tomorrow. Could he do that when his life was so unsettled?

“And I told her to pack a bag,” Lily said. She stood now and smoothed invisible wrinkles from her dress. She removed one stiletto heel, wiggled her toes, and put it back on. She picked up her leather briefcase, the one he had given her in better times, and smiled. It was not a smile of defeat. It was warm and open, and it gave him permission to be happy with someone else, to be happy with Erin.

“Thank you, Lily,” he said, rising from the couch.

“Good-bye, Aidan,” she said. Without looking back she strode through the open office door. The last thing Aidan would ever see of Lily Dell was that stiletto heel, rounding a corner and vanishing.

Erin once said love will find a way in. It may be tricky and it may surprise you, but it will find a way.

And for now, he had to agree that she was right.

I close the laptop. I take a deep breath. I have broken all the rules.

Chapter 35

I
t is 6:00
A.M.
The sun is just beginning to show itself on the horizon. My desk is littered with small ceramic espresso cups, delivered every hour on the hour by Greta. My hands shake, and I’m sure if I look in the mirror my eyes will resemble pinwheels. But I did it. I gave them an ending.

Jason snores on the couch, his head at an awkward angle. Earlier, I told him to go to bed, but he refused.

“I’m staying right here,” he said. If I started to disappear, he was not going to miss the chance to grab me.

It’s cold now, the heat wave broken. I pull a wool wrap around my shoulders and quietly push back from my desk. My body aches from sitting in the same position for hours on end. I pop and crack as I stretch toward the ceiling. On tiptoe, I pad down the hallway to the guest room, where Aidan and Lily retired. I told them I did not know what would happen but I would use some of the best magic I have, my love of words. I nudge open the closed door. The room is bathed in the soft light of morning, the kind that can make the most drab scene beautiful.

On the bed lies Lily, her red hair fanned out against the white pillowcase. She lies on her side, with her two hands tucked beneath her cheek. She looks like an angel, peaceful and quiet.

She is also fully formed. There are no blurry spots or ragged edges. And Aidan, quite simply, is gone. The only evidence that he was ever here is the slight head-shaped indent on the pillow beside Lily.

I will never know if she watched him fade or what they said to each other as their bond was severed forever. Maybe they didn’t say anything. Maybe they were sleeping and the whole thing felt like a dream.

Greta appears silently at my shoulder, a faint smile on her lips.

“Will this be her room?” Greta whispers.

“For now,” I say.

Greta rests a hand on my shoulder. Her touch startles me. “She reminds me of you when we first met,” she says. “Things happen, but you don’t stop. You don’t go around. You go through the hard stuff. We can all learn from that.”

My eyes well up. I’m exhausted and overwhelmed but more calm than I’ve been in years. Greta disappears as quietly as she came.

Love comes in. It comes in Allison and Roger and Jason and Aidan and Lily. It comes in Greta and my agent, Liz, and Ellen, my rule-obsessed fan. It comes in my readers and the friends who meet me for coffee. It comes in the moms on the quad. It comes in the pages I’m so lucky to write when I’m alone. Love is all around me, but until now, I did not recognize it as the only glue necessary to bind the pieces of me together. It is what makes me whole.

Love is tricky, and it has certainly surprised me, but it has found a way in.

Chapter 36

Twelve Weeks Later

I
sit at my desk and stare into space. The fragrance of fresh-cut grass floats through my window and makes my nose tickle. Open on the screen of my brand-new laptop is an e-mail from Ellen. She likes my latest book. She thinks I might finally be getting it.

Thanks for sticking with me, I write back. I very much appreciate it.

I do not tell her that once she reads
Stolen Secrets
she will go right back to hating me. But that’s okay. I like it. It might be my favorite book so far.

Allison sits on the small sofa, reading the latest hot teenage vampire bestseller. She chews her fingernails and twirls her hair in a way that reminds me of Aidan Hathaway. But she’s here in my office with me by choice, so I don’t mention the correlation between hair twirling and bald spots. I enjoy her presence. From downstairs comes a racket of pots and pans being slammed around.

“Mom, when are they going to stop doing that?” Allison asks.

“Probably never,” I say. “Greta’s hard-core, honey.”

Upon learning she would be staying, Lily jumped into this reality with determination. She even went so far as to ask Greta to teach her how to cook. Not scrambled eggs and toast, mind you, but real food. Greta, thrilled to have an enthusiastic protégée, now has Lily braising short ribs for dinner. It’s a tempestuous relationship, at least on Greta’s side. She is not the world’s most patient teacher, especially if there is a chance her student is going to injure a perfectly innocent hunk of meat. Lily takes the abuse with good humor. She is easy to have around. And really, if I’d started making babies sometime before my late thirties, I could have had a daughter the same age as Lily, so it isn’t totally strange to have her living under my roof. We are a house of women.

Soon Jason will arrive. He’s always invited when Greta and Lily have spent the day in the kitchen. He’ll show up with his tie undone and his sleeves rolled up. He’ll kiss me hard when he thinks no one is looking.

We go on dates now, just the two of us. It’s nice to hold hands in a dark movie theater or share a small table tucked away in the back corner of a restaurant. We talk on the phone every day. If I hear something funny, I call and tell him. I had forgotten about all the little things in a relationship that make it sweet. We don’t struggle to figure out what is going to happen tomorrow, because tomorrow will happen regardless.

And often, after Allison has gone to bed and I’ve hit a word count I can live with, Jason will sneak in our back door and spend the night with me. But no matter what else is going on, we try never to miss a Friday morning, because only a fool would vote to cancel a really good thing on purpose.

We have yet to discuss the events of three months earlier. I refer to it as “the heat wave,” and it’s common knowledge everyone goes a little insane during a heat wave. Jason always smiles when it comes up, but sometimes I wonder if any of it really happened. Maybe I just fell over in my desk chair and hit my head on the bookcase or something. Or it was in my dreams? But then I see Lily, and that line between reality and fantasy blurs. I’m bungee-jumping on the shoelace. It could all be fine, but you never know.

My cell phone rings.

“Hello?”

“It’s Liz, honey,” my agent says. “How are you? Haven’t heard from you in at least a week. What’re you working on?”

I don’t want to tell, but I find it impossible to lie to Liz.

“Paranormal,” I say quietly. Maybe she won’t hear me.

“You did
not
just say paranormal, Sadie.”

“I did,” I say. “Remember the one with the witches? Clarissa and Evangeline?”

“No,” she says, a little hot, “because you never showed it to me. You told me it was shit and should never see the light of day. Why now?”

Because I denied Clarissa her own story, so she pushed her way into another one. She wanted closure. Don’t we all? And by my calculations, if it happened once, it can happen again. Who’s to say if, left to her own devices, Evangeline won’t pop up next, seeking revenge for Clarissa? I can’t have that happen. It would be a mess.

Really I’m hedging my bets. If I give them their own book, perhaps they will leave me alone. Besides, now I think I know how it’s going to end. I’m going to give them a happily ever after. It will be shocking.

“I’m ready for it,” I say.

“Fine, honey,” Liz says. “You tinker around all you want if it makes you happy.”

I wouldn’t say it makes me happy. Despite recent events, I’m still not a great paranormal writer. But I owe my witch. I’ve been Xanax free for three months now. I feel remarkably calm. I have not even been biting my nails, waiting for feedback from my publisher on
Stolen Secrets
. It’s downright strange, and without Clarissa, I’m not sure any of it would have happened.

“Maybe,” I say, “in a way.”

“Well, I’m glad, but that’s not the reason I called,” Liz says. “Let’s talk about
Stolen Secrets
.”

They hated it.

“They loved it! It wasn’t like your usual fare, but it appears to have struck a nerve. They want a sequel. Can you do that for me, honey? I said you’d need at least three months.”

Did she just say sequel?

Dear me.