After Miles’s death, Alex gave up his London apartment, and the money helped her dwindling funds. She and the baby stayed at the farm and after the initial shock that he was finally gone, she met with her financial advisors and learned that the situation was much worse than she had expected. Her stock portfolio had shrunk to almost nothing. She had returned the million-dollar payment to her publishers for failure to deliver the last book. She was nearly a year late when she returned it. And giving them back their money had left a huge hole in her finances. She still got royalties, which helped, but there were no payments for new books, and there wouldn’t be until she started writing again. The money had flowed only out and not in for the past year with Miles so sick, and she had stopped working. She had a half-finished book in her desk, but hadn’t had the time or heart to touch it. And she felt even less able to now.
Miles’s horse-breeding operation ate up all her cash, and every time she turned around, she had to write another check. The obvious solution was to sell the farm and the horses, get an apartment in London, and start writing again. Most of what she had saved was gone. She had been lending Miles money for years, and helping to keep the farm running. His production company had been failing, either through bad management or lack of work. He had never made the kind of money she did, and she had never begrudged him a penny of what she’d given him. She knew she could barely squeeze by with what she had left, and then she discovered that Miles had left two million dollars’ worth of debts, some of them attached to his production company and some of it from the racehorses he’d bought, and the stallions he’d used for his breeding lines, all of which had cost far too much. It was why he had never wanted to marry her, so she wouldn’t be saddled with his debts, but now she was anyway, and she had to figure out a way to pay them. There was no way she was going to sell the farm, she had already made that decision, and she loved it as much as he did. It was their home, and she wanted to preserve it for the children. But she had to find a way to support it, and to pay his debts, and for her and Desiree to live in the meantime.
She found a local girl, Maude, to help her with the baby, and contacted the dealers Miles had used to purchase his horses. She sold those she could privately through agents, and put the rest up for auction. She kept five of the Thoroughbreds to ride, but got rid of all the others, and she reduced the staff to two young stable hands who were knowledgeable about horses. It took six months to sell the horses, but she was amazed by how much money it brought her.
She got a mortgage on the farm, since the property was valuable, and little by little and month by month she paid off his debts. It took her two years to do it. She tried writing once or twice, but she just couldn’t concentrate. All she did was go over figures and numbers, bank statements and bills. She dreamt of them at night or woke up at four A.M. to calculate it all again. And every time she tried to get back to work, her mind went blank and she sat staring at the paper, and she went back to the stack of bills again.
It was three years after Miles’s death before she could see her way clear, and didn’t panic every time she saw a bill come in. She had enough money in the bank to support them for a while. Desiree was a chubby three-year-old by then, running everywhere and chattering to her mother.
Alex hadn’t had a book published in almost three years. There had been countless stories at first about why Alexander Green had stopped writing. Was he ill? Was he dead? Had he been killed? Was he the victim of a crime? Did he have a stroke? There were avid fans pleading for answers. And Alex offered none.
She spoke to Bert from time to time, and he begged her to start writing again.
“I can’t, Bert. I don’t know why. Something stops me.”
“You went through too much,” he said kindly. “It will come back. Just give it time.” But how much time? Miles had been gone for more than three years, and it had taken that long to get a handle on his debts and right the ship again. “It will start again when you stop pushing.”
“What if it never comes back and it’s gone forever?” She had no ideas anymore. She couldn’t concentrate. All she could do was run the farm and take care of her daughter. Alexander Green appeared to be dead. Her publishers were shocked.
“Go somewhere, take a trip, come back to Boston. Get some air,” Bert suggested. But it felt overwhelming to go anywhere without Miles.
“I shouldn’t really spend the money to travel,” she said to him. She had to be careful, there was no money coming in except for a few remaining royalty payments on the old books that continued to sell. She was relieved to have sold the horses. Even if Miles had loved them, they needed the money more. At least she had been able to preserve the property, the land he loved so much.
She hadn’t spoken to Rose Porter in a year, because she had no book to sell, and Alex hated disappointing her. She felt like a has-been. The ideas for her thrillers had stopped coming. Bert said that when it came back, the books would be better than ever, but she no longer believed him. The dry spell had gone on for too long. She no longer had a burning desire to write. She couldn’t.
The joy of her life was Desi now. They went on long walks. She traded a mare for a pony and taught her how to ride, holding her in the saddle. She called Brigid from time to time late at night, and her children sounded like hellions, but at least she had stopped at four, and was enjoying them immensely. Alex talked to Fiona occasionally too, but hadn’t been to London in two years, and didn’t want to go. She had retreated from the world.
—
Miles had been gone for four years when she started having ideas again. She just had bits and pieces and snippets. She jotted it all down in notebooks, and put them away in a locked drawer. Maybe she would write again one day, although it seemed unlikely.
She called Bert and told him what she was doing, writing in her notebooks and saving them. He told her that the sleeping giant was waking up. And she would know when the time was right to start writing again. She still didn’t believe him and ignored what he said.
“What makes you think I can still do it? I think I’ve lost it, Bert.” She was sure of it.