“I’m guessing I didn’t like the book.”
He coughs out a hard laugh. “Oh no, Helena. It’s safe to say you didn’t like the book. I’m surprised you’ve forgotten it, actually.” He glances down, wiping a hand on his sweatpants before looking back out. “You wrote a four-page letter to my editor and were kind enough to CC me on it. You described every flaw in the novel, the root of your opinion being that my writing was flat and without talent. Childish, that was one word you used.” He tilts a head toward the house. “You can read the letter if you’d like. It’s framed in my office, right next to a New York Times list, the first one where I topped you.”
“It wasn’t malicious.” I straighten in my seat. “I was probably trying to help.”
“Help?” He snorts. “You scared my editor so badly she pulled the novel. It was never published, and I never got the rest of that advance. My writing career was done. Just like that.” He snaps his fingers and looks over at me. “That easily. All because Helena Ross didn’t like my book. You were hot shit and I was expendable.”
I should apologize. The path is clear and obvious. But I push my lips together. If I took the time to write a letter, it must have been bad.
“I couldn’t get my job back. Ellen… she worked at a farm up the road, and we limped along and I wrote anything and everything. Publishers weren’t interested in any of it. Then she got sick and I got desperate. I started self-publishing, in a bunch of different genres. Erotica is the one that took off.” He leans forward and spits out, into the darkness. “And Marka Vantly was born.”
I’ve read Marka Vantly’s bio fifty times. It’s all flowers and champagne, a California party girl who stumbled onto publishing success after writing down her steamy exploits on the Beverly Hills dating scene. It doesn’t say anything about a sick wife, or a grizzled cowboy, one who cooks a mean pot of chili but doesn’t clean his baseboards.
I tried to do the math in my head. “How long did your wife… when did she—?”
“It started out ovarian cancer. She fought it four years before it took her. She left us three years ago. Three years and two months.” He probably knows more. He probably knows the days and the hours, the timeframe clicking through his mind. In some ways, I recognize so much of his grief. In other ways, we are completely different.
I stand up. “I’d like to go to bed.”
I am opening the screen door when he speaks.
“You asked why I started to email you.”
I pause, not certain I still want the answer to that question.
“For a long time, I hated you. I emailed you out of that hatred. I wanted you to know who I was. But over the last seven years…” The dog approaches, and he puts out his hand, drawing the animal closer. “You made me a better writer. Knowing that you were reading my novels—that pushed me forward.” He looks over at me. “So, thank you. For responding. I’m sure that you get a lot of mail.”
I shift, and his forgiveness only makes me feel worse. “Okay.”
I nod to him, an attempt at a parting gesture, and then, swinging the door open, I escape inside.
A baby. Impossibly chubby face, her eyes just slits that avoid my own, flitting over everything else. She cries all the time, a piercing shriek, a broken record on repeat. In some ways she’s delicate, in others she’s a battering ram.
I feel damaged every time I lift her. I feel wrong, void of instincts, lost at what to do with her. The insecurity grows every time I look into Simon’s eyes and see his disappointment.
It’s only been a week, but I think I hate her.
I wake up in the small guest room, the room hot. I kick off the blankets, my mouth cottony and metallic, my headache painfully strong. Rolling out of the twin bed, I move over to my bag, my limbs slow as I pull on my jeans and a fresh shirt, not bothering with clean underwear or a bra. The house is quiet and I brush my teeth, then head downstairs.
His house is an odd mix of clean and dirty. The bathrooms sparkle, the scent of bleach in the air, the mirrors spot-free, the grout freshly scrubbed. But in the main rooms, there is clutter—stacks of mail and odd items, a dead light bulb left out on the counter, oily fingertips along the edge of a table, filthy boots left by a chair. I walk down the staircase, my eyes moving over the framed photos, and I stop at a larger frame, a single page surrounded by a thick mat, a page of stationary, with the copy of a check below it. It’s an acceptance letter, the publisher’s seal at the top of the page, a flourished signature below two paragraphs of congratulatory communication. The book name is there. MEMPHIS BRIDE. He had framed it, or his wife had, like a proud parent with a certificate of achievement poster. Thousands of books were bought each year. Thousands of checks written, thousands of dreams begun. Probably thousands of framed items like this. Was it my fault his had temporarily died? Without my letter to his editor, would he be writing contemporary fiction? Creating books he actually respects?
I take another step and move past it. In our industry, the work speaks for us. It’s not all my fault. I write scathing blurbs all of the time, for books that still end up published. If it had been a strong enough novel, my opinion wouldn’t have mattered.
I continue down the staircase, following its curve into the foyer. There is a note stuck to the front door.
I’m at the barn. There’s some food in the kitchen. Royce can get you over if you want to see the baby.
I leave the note and move to the kitchen. I grab a banana from a bowl on the counter, peeling it back as I take a leisurely tour of the first floor. It’s spacious, everything made for a giant. The wide leather couch straight out of an Architectural Digest catalogue. The thick coffee table made from a section of tree trunk. It’s knick-knack-free, everything a mix of leather, wood, and photos. Someone in the family is a photographer. There is a huge print of a pasture, the vivid color of a setting sun giving warmth to the entire room. I wander into another room and see a series of black and white photos, close-ups of Mark’s hands, a sway-back horse, and one of his daughter’s smile. I look away, and realize I am in his office, a printer in one corner, a desk before me, filled with stacks of pages. Along the far wall, below a long window, there are bound manuscripts, over twenty of them, and I scan the titles, hunting for, and not finding, the doomed Memphis Bride. I don’t look at the walls, to see if my framed letter is there. I believe him when he says it is brutal. I don’t need proof of that.