Tattered Edges (Love Me Tender)

Prologue

I sealed the last box closed, then set aside the tape dispenser and surveyed my surroundings.

This was happening.

I was moving.

Not across town or to another state. I was leaving the country.

Whether or not I’d come back with my tail between my legs was anyone’s guess. But I’d made up my mind. Moreover, I’d jumped through all the hoops to make it legal.

In forty-eight hours, I would be seated in premium economy headed for London, England.

I wasn’t exactly a minimalist, but I didn’t have an overwhelming number of things. At least, not an overwhelming number of things I planned on taking with me. I’d already sold most of my furniture, and I was donating a bunch of odds and ends, wishing to start fresh across the pond. The majority of my wardrobe fit into the luggage I’d travel with, and what was left—mainly shoes, my collection of books, and keepsakes—would be shipped to my new address.

Thirty-One, St. Andrew’s Hill.

I’d never actually been to England, but Google Maps assured me my flat was located in a decent part of town. I would be a stone’s throw away from St. Paul’s Cathedral and the River Thames. There was a local grocery chain nearby and a coffee shop that appeared to be a promising spot to grab a latte in walking distance. The Blackfriars Underground stop wasn’t far, either.

It had been a long time since I’d lived in a truly walkable city, and I was looking forward to it.

That very morning, I’d sold my car. I wouldn’t be needing it anymore.

It was the beginning of a new year and the start of my life’s next chapter.

This was happening.

I was moving.

Not across town or to another state. I was leaving the country.

Where I was going, French fries were chips and chips were crisps and rather than a president there was a prime minister.

And that was just the tip of the iceberg.

A knock sounded at my door. I was quick to maneuver my way around the cardboard obstacle course I’d constructed over the last several days. I didn’t bother checking the peephole, certain there was only one person it could be. I swung open the door with a smile, and the pathetic expression I found on Diane’s face morphed my smile into a grin as I laughed.

“Get in here. Don’t be like that,” I insisted, grabbing hold of her wrist and pulling her over the threshold.

“Do you know what time it is over there right now? Three A.M. And do you know what that means? By the time I close the gallery, and I want to call you to shoot the shit, because I will no longer get to shoot the shit with you all day at work, you will be sleeping.

“I know I’ve had weeks to wrap my head around this, but it’s just now starting to sink in that while we might have all the technology necessary to keep in touch, we can’t cheat time. ”

I admired my best friend, who stood in the middle of what used to be the living room in my cozy one-bedroom apartment. She was the only woman I knew who could pull off bangs over the age of thirty, and she wore her long, wavy, brunette hair loose. She was still dressed in her work attire, her style as eclectic and unique as the pieces she sold at her gallery. The floral print jumper she wore underneath her pretty, blue velvet blazer clashed in a way that worked because she was confident enough, or perhaps defiant enough, to insist upon it.

Diane and I met in class our freshman year at Berkeley, and we’d been almost like sisters ever since. Any angst she harbored over my departure was merely a reminder of how much we meant to each other.

This wasn’t going to be the first time life separated us. After we’d completed our undergrad, we shared an apartment in San Francisco for a couple of years. Then she met Brady, the love of her life. When work relocated him to Palo Alto, she went with him and then married him. It wasn’t until my stint at Stanford that we once again resided close enough that we didn’t have to flip a coin to decide who was going to have to endure an hour in traffic for us to go grab a drink together.

But there was a huge difference between forty miles and five thousand of them.

“We’re going to figure it out,” I assured her. “We will,” I insisted, this time reassuring myself. “You’re my family, and you know that. I’m not leaving you behind.”

She studied me carefully for a moment, then looked around the room at my assortment of boxes.

“You know, when you told me you were going, it didn’t exactly come as a shock. You’ve always been daring and a little impulsive. It’s actually something I admire about you. But I think there was a small part of me that thought you’d chicken out this time. Because—”

“Because I’m picking up my entire life to move to a country I’ve never seen and manage a business I inherited two months ago from a dead man who claims to have been the father I never knew? Yeah. Trust me, I don’t need you to remind me how crazy this sounds. I’m living it. And maybe it all blows up in my face and I live to regret it but—but what if I don’t?”

I was self-aware enough to admit I’d spent the last thirteen years trying to escape my mother.

It’s how I, a native New Yorker, ended up in California in the first place.

I got my bachelor’s degree in art history just to piss her off.

I also minored in English, because I wasn’t completely stupid, and she wouldn’t have paid for it otherwise.

The trouble was, I spent so much time and effort trying to not be her, I had a hard time figuring out who I was.

Maeve Nielsen.

She was a best-selling contemporary American fiction author. She’d accumulated enough awards and accolades that her best novels would sit on shelves in stores around the world for decades. They’d already outlived her. She was exceptional at her craft.

It was when she died that I enrolled at Stanford to pursue my PhD in English Literature. To this day, I couldn’t say whether or not I did it as my own masochistic way of grieving, or because it was something I wanted but didn’t feel at liberty to chase so long as my mother was around to take credit for it.

After I’d earned it, I didn’t feel any closer to knowing what it was I wanted to do with my life.

Now, even though she’d been dead for six years, it felt like California was merely a pitstop and maybe, just maybe, I’d finally been gifted an opportunity to find myself somewhere far, far away.

Maeve Sawyer Nielsen.

I wasn’t a junior , but I had been named after my mother—a woman so narcissistic, whatever fame she could claim wasn’t nearly enough. I was expected to be a reminder of her accomplishments and greatest achievements. I was a living, breathing reflection of her brilliance. Regardless of the fact that she was a well-known woman who went by her given name , she called me Maeve, too, until her dying day.

I hated being the echo of her.

She hated that I introduced myself as Sawyer—the part of my name I believed was mine and mine alone.

It wasn’t until a few weeks after my thirty-first birthday that I learned even Sawyer wasn’t mine to claim. Not entirely.

David Johnson.

That was the lawyer’s name. The lawyer from London who showed up at Diane’s gallery two months ago looking for me. He represented the Blackstone family—specifically their businesses and financial affairs. I’d never heard of the Blackstone family. Neither was I aware of the Blackstone Publishing House, which had been around for an actual century; nor Tattered Edges, the family owned used-bookstore.

It was over coffee when I learned I was, in fact, a Blackstone myself.

Not only that, but I’d been bequeathed Tattered Edges and the flat above it, located on St. Andrew’s Hill.

The man who left it to me claimed to have been my father.

I knew I had one. Biologically, it took a man and a woman to create me. Except, as far as my family tree was concerned, my father’s identity was unknown— until it wasn’t.

Sawyer William Blackstone.

Now this was where things got really interesting.

Maeve Nielsen died slowly. In true Maeve fashion, before she went, she wrote one last masterpiece—or so the critics claimed. She never saw it in print. It was her editor and publisher who got it to the finish line. It was her agent who made sure to inform me it was different than anything she’d ever written.

Supposedly, it was a love letter to me.

I never read any of my mother’s novels. Neither was I brave enough to read her last. But Sawyer Blackstone read it.

At first, it seemed insane that a stranger would read my mother’s book and then come to the conclusion I was his; furthermore, for him to believe such a thing for years without breathing a word of it to me, and then for him to die and leave me something so substantial was downright delusional.

Then I read the letter he wrote me when he changed his will—the letter he insisted Mr. Johnson deliver to me in person when the time came.

His unexpected death meant that time came sooner than anyone thought it would. At least, for anyone who knew him. I was so stunned by the knowledge of his existence, his death was more of an afterthought to me.

For weeks, I debated over whether or not I believed him because I wanted it to be true or because it really was.

I decided either way, he believed it. And while he might have been a stranger, he’d left me something important to him, and that meant something to me. I wasn’t sure exactly what, but I wanted to find out.

Then, of course, there was the matter of my name—a name given to me so intentionally, I felt the weight of it my entire life.

My mother was a narcissist, but she gave me Sawyer for a reason, and I couldn’t overlook that.

“It’s not crazy,” said Diane, extracting me from my reverie. I quirked an eyebrow at her. She grimaced playfully and amended, “Okay, maybe it is a little. But whether or not you’ll live to regret it is irrelevant. I’ve known you long enough to be sure, you’d never forgive yourself if you didn’t go.”

She was right. Going was the only choice I could live with.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t nervous.

“I’m not going to fail, right?” I blurted, needing to expel the doubt. “I’m not a loser aimlessly wandering through life destined to be a disappointment?”

“Wow. Okay, Maeve. That was a leap,” Diane replied with a frown.

I drew in a deep breath and nodded as I blew it out. I’d earned that.

“Real talk?” she went on to say. “You are a lot of things, Sawyer, but a failure isn’t one of them. If you want to find success over there, you will. It’s only a matter of if you want to.”

Her comment was as encouraging as the truth would let it be. I understood what she meant. She knew me, better than anyone. She understood the reason I could drop everything and move to another country was because I didn’t have much to drop. I didn’t have a career I’d been chasing. I didn’t have a dream that propelled me. Since I left Berkley, I’d been a waitress, a library assistant, then a receptionist, aimlessly jumping from one job to the next. I might have been a little lost, but I worked hard to make ends meet.

The happiest I’d ever been was when I was working as a professor’s assistant while in the graduate program at Stanford—but I didn’t think teaching was my calling; so, when I was finished, I convinced Diane I wasn’t overqualified to fill the vacancy she had at her gallery. It paid the bills, most of the time. When I needed a little extra, if I felt desperate enough, I’d dip into my mother’s royalties. They were mine now, technically, and I could live off of them if I wanted—but I didn’t.

“Listen—don’t overthink it. It’s too late for that now,” Diane teased. “You are the smartest woman I know. Not to mention beautiful and courageous and fun. Whatever happens, you’re going to make the best of it. You always do. While the gallery will not be the same without you, I’m so proud of you for not allowing yourself to get stuck there.”

“Stuck? Diane, I love your gallery. I wasn’t—”

“You love me. But the gallery is my dream, not yours, and we both know it. Life has seen fit to hand you this grand adventure. It seems only right that you give London a shot. Besides, you running a bookstore? Literature has always been your destiny.”

I nodded, absorbing her encouragement. “I do have a thing for great literature.”

She shrugged knowingly. “Turns out, it’s in your DNA.”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

She then furrowed her brow and said, “All that aside, our long-standing friendship also compels me to say, I love you dearly. I’m going to miss you so much. But I’m an only child, and I’m selfish, and you were mine first. I know you have a half brother and sister over there, and it would actually be incredible if the family you deserve has been out there this whole time, waiting to love you—but don’t forget Brady and I have first dibs, even though we’re not actually related.”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

She was right. Sawyer Blackstone was kind of a package deal. He had a family. A family I belonged to. It was a strange reality. So strange, in fact, it didn’t feel real. I thought maybe it would when I finally met them. My brother and sister. My stepmother. I had an aunt, too. It was a lot to think about. Maybe a little too much. I’d been tiptoeing around it in my mind for the last several weeks.

The dead dad bit had taken precedence.

Whoever the Blackstones were, I was still a Nielsen. Diane and Brady might not have been my blood relatives, but until recently, they were the only family I had left in the world.

I reached out my hands, and she was quick to grab them. As she squeezed my fingers, I felt the tingle of approaching tears in my nose.

“I’m going to miss you, too. So much.”

Her face relaxed as she smiled at me. “All jokes aside, I am excited for you.”

“Thanks,” I sniffled.

“Okay, enough of this. We’re not saying goodbye yet! We’re supposed to be going out for drinks. This is my last chance to buy you a martini at our favorite bar, and I will not be denied.”

“Right.” I swiped my fingers across my cheeks, wiping away my tears, and immediately began searching the room for my purse. “You know, you could always come visit me and let me take you to my favorite pub. Once I have one, of course.”

“Find that pub, and I’m there.”

I spotted my purse and grabbed it, looping the straps over my shoulder as I smiled at my friend. “Deal.”