Chapter Five
Sam
Okay, so bad first day on the job.
Scolding-your-author bad.
Your now-biggest author who lost her father less than a year ago and who your boss sent you across an ocean to help.
I adjust my laptop bag over my shoulder and stare at Ciara’s front door as if, if I look at it hard enough, it will magically open.
Jet lag is kicking my ass this morning. I didn’t sleep last night, the surroundings too unfamiliar for me to settle.
That, and the heat. There’s no air-conditioning in my room.
There’s no air-conditioning in any room, and when I got up early to drive to the nearest town in search of a portable fan I was laughed out of the store and told I should have come in three weeks ago.
As a result, my patience is not at its highest as I stand here on her porch like a sucker.
I shouldn’t have been so short with her.
I should have stayed and discussed everything, because that’s what an editor does.
Contrary to what my family and friends might think, it’s not just about reading.
It’s about being an ego manager and a therapist rolled into one.
It’s knowing when to pull back and when to push hard, and remaining calm when someone is sobbing down the phone about not hitting the New York Times bestseller list or writing you a six-page email about how they couldn’t possibly cut five thousand words and I would know that, too, if I understood anything about craft.
This kind of stuff comes with the job, but, for the first time in my career, I snapped. I don’t know why. I’ve dealt with worse than her before. Paul is perpetually late with his books, and he doesn’t have a tenth of the sales she’s going to get for us. But I lost it.
Maybe it was the flight. Or the whole falling-into-a-pit thing. In any case, it doesn’t matter. That was yesterday and today is today, and Casey said she needed hand-holding and that’s what I’m going to do.
It’s just that, in order to do that, I need her to at least be home.
I don’t have her number to call, and I know now she doesn’t look at her emails, but still, I take out my phone to check she hasn’t sent anything in the past few minutes.
That movement alone makes my shoulder twinge, and I let my bag fall to the ground as I stretch it out.
It’s not the only part of my body hurting this morning.
I woke up to bruises in the weirdest places.
All because she dug a grave for research.
I’d hate to see what her search history looks like.
Distracted, I open Google, trying to find the hit man book she mentioned yesterday, but, if she wrote it, it was never published.
A quick scroll shows nothing with that description, but it does pull up a bunch of articles from when she was revealed as Frank Sheridan’s kid.
A lot of like father, like daughter headlines and a scramble for old photos.
The most used one is of them together at some signing event.
She can’t be more than fifteen and looks agonizingly shy, her waist-length blond hair covering half her face, her shoulders slumped, her smile wary.
She didn’t look like that yesterday. The woman I met was all long, tanned limbs, with a sparking energy I could almost feel.
She held herself straight and strong, with no hint of the awkwardness so painfully obvious in the photo.
Not to mention that the blond is gone. Her hair is brown now.
Cut short in a choppy bob that flew around her face with every movement.
No wonder Lizzie couldn’t find a trace of her. She looks like a completely different person.
I keep hunting for mentions of her and am halfway through a fan site interview with Frank from ten years ago when I hear a car approach.
A second later, a small blue convertible glides up the driveway before rolling to a stop by the house.
A woman steps out, a bag of groceries in her hand.
She’s tall and beautiful and wearing a navy jumpsuit with bright pink Crocs.
Her blond curls are pulled up into a scrunchie, and she pushes her sunglasses into her hair as she examines me from head to toe.
“Can I help you?” she asks, and I brace myself for more suspicion.
“I’m here to see Ciara Sheridan,” I begin. “I’m an editor from—”
“An editor?”
I pause, surprised, as she bounds up the steps.
“Her editor? Are you here about the book?” She stops before me, looking confused. “Sorry. Aren’t you supposed to be ninety or something?”
“That’s my boss,” I explain. “And I didn’t think anyone was supposed to know about—”
“Oh, I’m not just anyone,” she corrects. “I’m her best friend. And I know everything. Maddie Buckley. Sagittarius.”
“Sam Avery. I…June twentieth?”
“Gemini.” She tilts her head, her gaze assessing. “You don’t know your star sign?”
“I don’t believe in astrology.”
“How manly of you.” She takes a step back. “Ciara’s not in trouble, is she? She’s been working really hard; she’s just going through a lot and—”
“There’s no trouble,” I interrupt. “I’m here to help.”
“Oh. Okay, then.” We watch each other for a beat before she smiles. “You want to come inside?”
“I—”
“Don’t worry,” she says, rummaging through her bag. “I’ve got a key.”
“You sound like you shouldn’t.”
“She doesn’t know I have one. But what am I going to do, let you stand out here all day? You’ll melt.”
“I don’t think she’s even in.”
“She is,” Maddie says, unlocking the door. “She’s just asleep. Ciara’s a night owl.
“Seriously,” she adds at my obvious reluctance. “Come in.”
She ushers me past her, practically pushing me over the threshold, and before I can so much as blink I’m inside Frank Sheridan’s house.
It’s not exactly the massive moment I thought it’d be.
My first impression is of dark wallpaper and cool air, but I barely get a chance to look around as Maddie crowds me from behind.
As she shuts the door, there’s the subtle beep of an alarm, one she deftly turns off as she meets my curious look. “I also know her code.”
I say nothing, following her into an adjoining kitchen.
This room is stuffier, with the sun streaming in through the windows, but it’s inviting and warm, with white cabinets and wooden counters.
Mugs of every shape and size take up the open shelves, along with trailing plants and herbs, giving the space a wild feel despite the modern appliances, like a cottage in a picture book.
“Frank was a big cook,” Maddie says as she gestures to a stool.
“Ciara, not so much, though she makes a mean lemonade.” As she speaks, she dumps her bag on the counter and opens the fridge, pouring two glasses of said lemonade before sliding one my way.
She waits until I take a sip before she unloads her shopping, taking out fruit and vegetables and what looks like a tub of smoothie mixture.
“So you knew Frank?” I ask as she washes and dices a bell pepper. She’s not being quiet, but there’s no sign of Ciara.
Maddie hums, not taking her eyes off her admittedly impressive knife skills. “I used to come here after school while my parents were at work. Did you?”
“Know him?” I shake my head. “I wish.”
“A fan, then? What’s your favorite book?”
“The Winding Path,” I say, growing more comfortable now that we’re on familiar territory. “What’s yours?”
“Oh, I only read the first one.”
I smile, thinking she’s joking. She’s not.
“What?”
“I don’t really read,” she says. “Like I know how to read, but I just…” She flicks the air by her head. “You know?”
“Not really.”
“Yeah, guess you wouldn’t. I bet you have to read a lot if you’re an editor, huh?”
“It’s part of the job.”
“Lucky I’m in catering, then. Pepper?” She holds out a slice, which I dutifully take. “Christ, it’s hot in here. Are you hot? I’m roasting.”
Before I can answer, she spins on her heel, heading to a side door by the refrigerator, where she undoes three locks before throwing it open.
“She has a lot of security,” I say, stating the obvious.
“Yeah. It’s a bit much, but it makes her feel safe. She gets a lot of people showing up at the house.”
I think back to the woman I saw yesterday. “You mean like Mary?”
Maddie rolls her eyes as she returns to her vegetable. “Of course, you’ve been here for, like, an hour and you know about Mary. She’s fine,” she adds. “Don’t get me wrong, the woman could run her own gossip column, but she’s harmless.”
“Then who?”
“Readers mostly. I mean, people came by over the years, but they just wanted a peek at the house and off they’d go.
Like if they actually saw Frank, their heads would explode.
But when he died…” Her forehead creases, and she starts on another pepper.
“It started out innocent enough. People left flowers by the road. Cards. Drawings. But then they got braver, and now she can’t go a week without strangers knocking on the door or leaving stuff around the garden.
She got the alarms installed after someone came inside. ”
Shock makes me straighten. “Someone came into the house?”
“I don’t think they expected to be able to just walk in,” she says, unfazed.
“But what do I know? Basically, Ciara and I were in the front room watching TV, and then the door opened, and this man and woman are just there. We all stared at each other, and then I screamed, and then they ran. Ciara put in all this stuff the next day. Cost her a fortune.”
Shit. No wonder the bartender was suspicious of me. No wonder Ciara was too.
“Sounds like a lot,” I say eventually.