Maddie:
We drove through a cavern of trees that blocked out the sky. Pine and oak leaned across the road and caught one another’s boughs in leafy hands, forming a canopy. In twenty-five years, the town hadn’t changed. The people still acted as if they were one breath away from revealing some deep dark secret. Even though the words—whatever they were—never escaped their lips, their eyes seemed desperate to speak.
Almost as if someone or something was forbidding them to talk.
I shivered slightly as I drove over the winding blacktop road. It curved and dipped and tried to evade me, spinning off into a myriad of forks and unmarked turns—almost as if someone were trying to hide the path through this village.
Tucker fidgeted with his PlayStation in the backseat, and Samwise curled beside him. All the good that was left in my life had dwindled down to what was contained in this car.
Maybe not, I told myself. Maybe I’ll find what I’m looking for here.
I pulled two granola bars from the bag of groceries on the front seat, tossed one back to Tucker, then rustled the other bar open with one hand and took a bite. That was when I missed our street. I drove for a few more blocks before I realized my mistake, cursed below my breath, then slammed on the brakes and pulled into a driveway to turn around. For some reason, the GPS hadn’t worked since we’d arrived this morning. I fumbled with a map that lay on the seat next to me.
That was when my phone rang. I switched on the Bluetooth.
“How’s it going?” A familiar voice said in my ear.
My shoulders sagged. It was my agent. “I’m heading for the cabin right now,” I said. I traced a nearly invisible hairline road with my finger, tried to figure out how I had gotten off the main road. Two pickup trucks flew past me—must be rush hour up here—before I was able to pull out again.
“So, anything yet?”
“Simon, I haven’t even unpacked yet, so, no. Nothing.”
I crammed my half-eaten granola bar in my pocket. The map crinkled across the steering wheel as I backed the SUV out onto the two-lane highway, the narrow blacktop spine of this little mountain village.
“No worries, Maddie. You’ll get your mojo back soon. I know it—”
He meant it, I know he did. But we both also knew that if I couldn’t break through my writer’s block soon, my career would be over.
“I didn’t really call to talk about that, though,” he said. “It’s just that, well, I didn’t want you to hear about it on the news—”
“Simon, if you’ve got something to tell me, just say it. I mean, my life already sucks, right? How much worse can it get?” I said, waiting for my agent to say something. For a moment, I thought I had lost his signal.
“Simon?”
Then I saw the cabin up ahead and I felt a sense of relief. It didn’t last long.
“He got married, Maddie. Yesterday, in Las Vegas.”
I slowed to a stop in the driveway of the cabin where my parents had taken me on one last holiday, where they fought and drank and made love like teenagers, trying desperately to hang on to the love they thought they had.
“Maddie?”
I got out of the car, opened the door for Tucker.
A chill autumn wind cantered through the trees that surrounded us. Much too cold for October, it howled against my light jacket. I knew that I should have felt some emotion, but in reality everything felt flat and hollow.
“Did you hear me?” Simon asked.
“Yeah,” I answered, my voice cracking. “So who was the lucky girl?” My ex had plenty to choose from. Hollywood was just one big dating smorgasbord for a director of his caliber.
“Lacey.”
I sat on the front steps of the cabin, the air in my lungs coming in short staccato puffs. Meanwhile, the dog loped across the grass, frolicking with Tucker. They chased each other, my son pulled the German shepherd’s tail and the dog turned, leaped through the air, giving Tucker a big sloppy kiss right on the nose. Both of them laughing, mouths open, tongues hanging out.
A kiss.
Wasn’t that how it had all started? Wasn’t that what I had seen in the tabloids, month after month? My ex with his tongue down my best friend’s throat. A photo taken when I’d been on a movie set in Romania. Back when I and the rest of the world were pretty sure that I was still married. Had been for eleven years.
Since then I hadn’t been able to write, couldn’t even come up with a decent character. It felt like somebody had crept in during the night and stolen all of my ideas.
All that was left was a blank page.
And an empty bed.