The Writer (8 page)

“Handisides wasn’t like
that, though. He commended us.”

Sophie stopped. “You’ve told
the police sheriff this story?”

“We had to show him the
body.”

“Otherwise, he may suspect
us.”

“You can’t be too careful
these days.”

Sophie watched in stunned
silence as they both decided to run out to the woods again, racing
to get there first. She didn’t know whether to believe their story
or be shocked at how cheeky they had become.

It had taken three days for
Jill to accept that Max had named one of his character’s
Craigfield. She first assumed that he was named after her new
friend as some sort of dig at her, but now she realised that she
had overreacted. Her quiet apology was accepted by Max and she
hoped nothing more would be said about it. As far as she could
tell, the Craigfield in Max’s story was nothing like the Craigfield
she knew, and she hoped that Max would either change the name or
drop the character from his story. She started reading his first
draft to look for a way to convince him of doing that.

From what she read, she
could see potential in the story but it would need work, and
probably only had a limited audience. It started out as a
predictable piece of ‘chick-lit’, and yet had unwelcome dark
shades. The shaky attempts at duplicating Gendry’s local quirky
humour were also a concern, as was the way he depicted the
children; at times too childish and at other times too smart. She
gave thought to the problems, trying to figure out who the target
audience could possibly be who would want to read it, before
deciding to confront Max over it.

“What’s going on with the
girl?” she asked him without much of a warning. “I thought she
falls for Craigfield?”

Max was sitting in his
writing room with his feet up on a stack of boxes that might or
might not be full of old and discarded drafts. He did not know
exactly what they were, since it had been a few months since he was
brave enough to look. Such drafts were never a good read. Sometimes
he would use them as a distraction for whenever he felt stuck and
wanted to dream that he could turn one into a motion picture full
of amazing visual effects. Such dreams usually continued to trying
to cast his stories with the latest movie stars, which would make
him feel bad because he could never find anyone who was exactly
right for any of his characters.

He looked up from a music
magazine that happened to be covering the recent decline worldwide
of Elvis impersonators. It was just a short article, a side piece,
but it was the reason it had caught his eye in the bookshop. The
other articles looked interesting too, and he was contemplating
looking for their online site and maybe subscribing.

“And what’s with all that
other stuff in there, that murder stuff?” she continued, becoming
too emotional for something so trivial. “Isn’t it meant to be a
love story? I’m not getting it, Max. I’m not getting it at all. We
need to talk about it.”

“That’s the story, yes,” he
replied calmly, wondering why she was going off at him. “I’m just
taking me time with it. I don’t have to rush it. Other things need
to happen, or you haven’t got much of a story to tell. You can’t
tell the whole story in the first part of the book. That’s what the
rest of it is for.”

“Your love story looks like
every other story I’ve ever read.”

“It’s only just begun. I
have to set scenes and introduce characters. You can’t rush these
things.”

“But a love story? Can’t you
write something different? Something original? What you’ve done
with the twins is also a concern, but obviously they’re not the
main characters. I really doubt kids would act like that; certainly
not backward ones somewhere like Gendry. And I really don’t know
why you’ve made the main character a girl. You don’t seriously
think you can think like her, do you? And okay, you’ve added this
thing about a dead body, or whatever. Okay, so this girl’s met this
guy, but she doesn’t know anything about him except he’s writing
some book and she can’t stand him. What if he’s a fugitive? That
would be good. Someone on the run from debt collectors, maybe? Or
from the murder? Perhaps he should have been killed but it was
mistaken identity? Or what about making him the murderer? He’s on
the run, and this poor girl gets dragged along by him. Then the
twins can follow him and stop him. Perhaps you should make the
twins older, so they can fight him? How old should they be to be
able to realistically handle a gun? How old are they meant to be,
anyway? I don’t remember reading that anywhere.”

“Handle a gun? Sounds to me,
you’d rather be writing it.”

“And what’s with having no
chapters? Some kind of modern thing, is it? I don’t know if that’s
a good idea.”

“It’s my book and I’ll write
it how I want to, if you don’t mind.” Now he was feeling insulted.
“Or did you want to do it for me?”

Jill went to leave the room,
insulted that he was not paying attention to her ideas. She had
expected him to take notes, not just look at her like she was
interrupting his magazine.

“Why would I waste my time
doing that?” she asked tersely. “Oh, and by the way, the real
Craigfield is a nice guy. I’m sure I must have mentioned him to
you. How else would you have stolen his name?” She continued
talking as she went into the next room. “You must have, since you
can’t think of anything original yourself.”

Max tossed his magazine to
the floor and followed her. He stepped too hard on his bad foot and
pain shot through his leg, causing him to take a second to lean
against the doorway. He didn’t see that Jill was looking at him not
with pity, but with disgust.

“What do you mean, the
real
Craigfield?” he asked her. “Who’s that?”

“Are you serious? I’ve told
you about Craigfield. I know you know who he is. I just hope he
never finds out you’re using his name like this.”

“Remind me.”

“Remind you about
Craigfield? My gym instructor? Don’t I talk about him every time I
come back from the gym? Or do I talk about him without using his
name? Then let’s clear it up right now. Max: I’ll have you know, I
have a gym instructor. He’s cute, he’s dreamy, he’s buffed, he’s a
great teacher, and his name is Craigfield. I’m allowed to have a
schoolgirl crush on him if I want to. Why don’t you put that in
your story too? Especially the bit about him being
buffed.”

Max was speechless as he
eyed his wife. She ignored him as she checked through her purse in
the way she always did before going out. The old house-jeans and
casual blouse would have to do, since there was no time to try on
one of the nice new tops that she had in her closet. Max was too
angry with her to want to question where she was going. He enjoyed
the sound of the door closing since it meant that she was no longer
in the house.

Sophie found her grandmother
in the kitchen. She was busy working on the guest menu for the next
month and it was work that needed her full attention and everyone
except Sophie knew not to talk to her. The menu itself would seldom
change, which was more for Simona’s benefit than any guests that
they might have with them, but it still needed to be
approved.

“I have met your guest,”
said Sophie.

Susan looked up and instead
of giving an annoyed sigh, which would have been her response under
normal circumstances, she smiled, expecting to hear happy
details.

“He was at Sal’s,” Sophie
continued, beginning to worry that Susan might not agree with her
opinion, “when I happened to be there too, so we said
hi.”

“More than that,” Susan said
with a twinkle in her eye. “You two went on a romantic walk. That’s
what I heard, anyway, and I see you’re not denying it. No one is
safe from eyes in this town.”

“So, I shouldn’t bother to
ask who told you that? Well, I guess it was a nice walk, I’ll admit
that much. What he said, he wasn’t so easy on the ears as he was
the eye. You never know until you get around to talking to someone,
see they’re not on the same playing field as you.”

“Easy on the eyes, he
certainly is. How I wish I was your age, my girl. I wouldn’t be
wasting any time just talking with him, like you were.”

“Grandmother! I was just
getting to know him. After all, he is living in this house too. I
need to do my bit for the family, make him feel welcome and all.
That and his writing, we had some things to talk about. And I’m not
saying I won’t talk to him again, if that chance came along. He had
just better impress me next time, if we did get to talking.” Sophie
realised she was letting Susan’s opinion get the better of her, and
she wondered if she had been too harsh with him.

“Good for you,” said Susan.
“Pity, then, about his wife.”

“His
what
?”

“His wife, dear. He’s
married. Not seen her here. Don’t think she likes the country life.
Prefers the city, apparently.”

“His
wife
?”

“Didn’t he tell you about
her? Perhaps he didn’t have the chance.”

“No, he didn’t tell me about
her. In fact, he gave me no reason to think he was married. In
fact, he said he didn’t think much of married life. He’s
married
?”

“Sounds like you should
watch that one,” Susan said with a wise smirk. “Might be a player.
I met plenty of them when I was your age.”

“I’ll be watching him all
right, so he doesn’t get too close again.”

“Perhaps the reason he’s by
himself is because he’s not with his wife at the moment. He seems
to be about the right age to be starting his second
go-round.”

“That’s an awful thing to
say. You don’t know anything about him, do you?”

“I can see a glint in his
eyes. I know men well enough.”

Sophie was about to point
out that since she had been alone for a while and since she wasn’t
in the same age group, that she wouldn’t really know what a man
like Craigfield was like. She also stopped herself saying that it
was better to be single at her age rather than at Susan’s
age.

“I saw the twins outside,”
said Sophie, wanting to change the subject before saying something
she might regret. “They were excited about something they’d found
in the woods. They were real secretive about it. Did you hear what
it was?”

“Some kind of dead body, I
think they said,” Susan said like it wasn’t important.

“Kind of a shock, isn’t it,”
Sophie said after she let it sink in. Gendry wouldn’t get too many
victims of crime lying around in the streets?”

“People do die, dear. It
does happen. We may not be as spectacular as the way you do it in
the big city, but we have been known to keep up. A lot of the older
people I’ve always known in town are no longer with us. One or two
who recently passed, I remember being old when I was a girl, so
they were old a very long time. Come to think of it, they’ve been
gone a good ten years now. Shows you how time can fly like the
birds.”

“But we’re actually talking
about a dead person they found? Someone found in the woods? Do you
know who it is? You’d probably know them.”

“Haven’t a clue who it is.
It’s all hush-hush. I’m sure Andy will have it sorted for us soon.
I think they have some city investigator in town to look around. At
least, that’s what the boys said Andy told them they were doing. In
all likelihood, it was one of our elderly folk out walking one nice
sunny morning, when Father Time caught up with him and dropped him
dead on the spot. If you ask me, that is not such a bad way to
leave this world, with the birds and the trees. Literally going
back to nature, I suppose.”

“You think that’s a good
thing, to die alone like that?’

“There’s worse ways to go,
dear.”

“I don’t know why you’re
acting all calm about this. The twins seemed to think someone else
was involved. They think it was a murder, and a violent one
too.”

“They’re just boys being
boys, and boys with particularly rampant minds. Let’s just wait to
see what Andy and this city person has to say. They need to wait,
apparently, for the family to be notified, before us public find
out. I’m just pleased all my family is present and accounted for,
so I don’t need to worry about that. Same with all my friends; I
made sure I checked in on them when I heard. Whoever it is, he must
have been a loner.”

Sophie looked at her
grandmother and almost completed her thought, in that the deceased
person was probably not married. She then feared that Susan might
put the two thoughts together, and Sophie might again have to hear
the assurance that dying in alone the woods was actually a good way
to go. Sophie also realised why Susan was talking up Craigfield and
people dying in the woods. She wanted her to find a partner before
she became old and unattractive, otherwise she too might one day be
found in the woods by two boys eager to run around town bragging
about it.

Dale Gant swore with a short
and violent shout when he found that his coffee was both cold and
terrible to taste. He opened his car door to throw the cup out
before the car came to a stop. The top came loose and it made more
of a mess on the road than he was expecting. A group of people were
watching him and he eyed them back, daring them to make a complaint
about his littering. They all looked away as he stepped out of the
car and straightened his clothes, and he kept watching them until
he was sure they were not about to confront him.