Chapter Five #2
“Frank meant a lot to them,” Maddie says.
“So I get it. People are sad, and they want to pay tribute. But he’s not here anymore.
It’s Ciara who has to sort through all the things people leave, and worry about them breaking in.
And maybe it would be different if she got on with his fans, but she does not and—” She breaks off, her eyes shooting to mine.
“Not that she’s a grump or anything,” she adds hurriedly.
“She can be grumpy, but we all get a little grumpy. It’s just that they can be intense sometimes. ”
“Sure.”
“She’s a professional otherwise. And a really good writer. She just needs some bolstering.”
As if on cue, a floorboard creaks above us, and Maddie throws her head back, yelling at the top of her lungs, “It’s me! I brought food!”
There’s nothing for a moment, and then sudden, rapid footsteps. I can practically track her movement across the floor as they grow louder until they’re thudding down the stairs.
“Morning, sleeping beauty,” Maddie calls, and I twist on my stool to see Ciara appear in the doorway.
She’s in pajama bottoms and a short, baggy white T-shirt that shows off a sliver of her stomach. Her feet are bare and her toenails are painted blue. She looks furious.
“What the fuck, Mads?”
“What? You can show up to my place of work unannounced, but I can’t show up to yours?”
“How did you even get in?”
“I took a key for emergencies.”
“This is not an emergency.”
“Lunch is always an emergency. Plus, your editor was waiting.”
“I can come back,” I say, rising and focusing on the space above her left shoulder. I’m not sure why. She was wearing less clothing the other day, but pajamas are…pajamas.
Not that Ciara seems to care. There’s a long pause as she and Maddie have some sort of silent conversation with their eyebrows before they both huff.
“No,” Ciara finally says to me. “I slept in. Give me two minutes. And you can go.”
“Moi?” Maddie asks.
“You.” She turns and heads back up the stairs. “And leave the key on the counter!”
Maddie dumps the peppers into a bowl and the bowl into the fridge as she grabs her empty shopping bag. “Good luck,” she whispers exaggeratedly to me, and, slipping the key pointedly into her pocket, vanishes through the porch door she just opened.
Leaving me alone in Frank Sheridan’s kitchen.
Somewhere upstairs a door slams, and I stare at the pile of mail on the counter and the clock on the wall and the corkboard filled with printed-out recipes and be cool, Sam.
Be. Cool.
No matter how much you want to log back in to the fan forum you moderated when you were fifteen and tell them where you are.
I move silently as I turn in a circle, taking in the room.
Outside the window, I spy the corner of a large oak tree and know instantly it’s the one Frank included a drawing of in his fifth book.
The one that made him buy the property in the first place.
He spoke at length in an interview once about how it inspired him.
How he used to read under it. And now I’m looking right at it.
Another slammed door. This time followed by footsteps, and I sit and then stand again as Ciara reappears.
She’s brushed her hair and changed into a tank top and a pair of loose cotton shorts.
Her face looks damp, as though she just splashed water on it, and for the first time in a long time I have absolutely no idea what to say.
It’s as if someone’s taken an eraser to my brain, and for a moment all I can do is stare at her.
“I usually work at night.” Her voice cuts through the silence, defensive and unsure. “I sleep in because I work at night,” she tries again, and this time I feel myself nod.
I open my mouth to apologize for yesterday, to blame my attitude on any number of things, but instead all that comes out is, “I thought we could start looking at what Frank left you. Casey said he was in the middle of outlining when he…” Died.
Yeah. Good start, Sam.
Ciara just frowns. “There’s not much,” she says. “That’s part of the problem.”
“Whatever you’ve got is great.”
“Okay.”
A pause as the tap drips once behind me. “So do you want to do it here or—”
“Right. No. This way.” She turns stiffly and leads me back into the hall, the one that I take in properly for the first time.
I do my best not to be obvious about it, only letting myself glance at the wood paneling and the faded gold mirror, the antique lampshades hanging from the ceiling.
Dark green wallpaper covers the walls, as if we’re stepping into the oak tree itself, and—
“You’ve already seen the kitchen,” Ciara says, almost hitting me in the face as she points a finger to my right. “Living room’s over there. I work up here.” And with that she starts up a large winding staircase, taking it two steps at a time.
“It’s not haunted,” she says as I follow.
“What?”
“The house. It’s not haunted, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s just falling down.”
“I didn’t think that at all,” I say, confused. “And it doesn’t look as if it’s falling down.”
Without stopping, she whacks her hand lightly against the wall. As she does so, somewhere below, something thuds to the floor. “It’s falling down,” she says grimly, and swivels to a stop at the top of the stairs. I almost walk straight into her.
“This is my dad’s old office,” she says when I’m done stumbling. My breath catches in my throat, and I glance at the plain door next to us, trying not to react. Instinct tells me this is a test. One I’m determined to pass.
“Great,” I say. “Where’s yours?”
Her brows rise in a nice try move, and she jerks her head to the left before leading me two doors down. Sunlight streams through the crack at the bottom, and when she places her hand on the polished brass handle, anticipation thrums through my veins.
“Where the magic happens,” she says, and twists it with a firm jerk, letting us into a bright, airy room that faces out onto the oak tree and the woods beyond.
Inside, though, it’s simple—sparse, even.
Nothing like the chaos of other writers’ spaces I’ve seen.
There’s a low couch pushed against the wall, a rug laid down in the center, and a desk placed under one of the windows.
It’s a heavy-looking thing: dark, polished wood that dwarfs the slim laptop on it.
The only other objects are a chair and a bookcase.
A quick scan of the shelves shows a random assortment of Frank’s books, one chunky thesaurus, and a collection of stones that look as if they’ve been taken from the beach.
And that’s it.
I hover in the doorway as she walks over to the desk and produces a manila folder from one of the drawers. It’s stuffed to the brim, and, as soon as she takes it out, a few pages flutter to the floor, each one filled with blue ink in a tiny, neat scrawl.
I know instantly it’s not her writing. And with that knowledge, something in my brain short-circuits.
“This is what Dad left me,” she says, picking up the papers.
My fingers twitch when she dumps them on the desk. I feel as if they should be in a museum. Where you can look at them only in low lighting behind a glass box and surrounded by lasers. Instead, she just riffles through them like they’re the pages of an old magazine.
“I know it seems like a lot,” she says, unaware of my internal freak-out. “But it’s mostly a list of characters and him trying out different settings. There’s nothing helpful plot-wise.”
“Nothing?”
She gives me a wry look. “No one reads Dad’s books for the twists.”
That, I can’t argue with. His magic was in the smaller moments. The characters, the language. Frank Sheridan never did the shock death. He’d tug your heart out and stomp on it, but he would do it slowly. Which made it all the more painful.
“I’ve been over these a dozen times,” Ciara continues. She sounds terse now. As though she doesn’t expect me to believe her. “But there’s nothing. Here.” She snatches the folder up, thrusting it my way. “Maybe you can make sense of it.”
And then it’s in my hands.
She perches on the chair in front of the desk, and, with nowhere else to sit, I take the couch.
I immediately wish I hadn’t. It’s one of those once you’re in it, you’re never getting out of it ones, and my normal act of sitting turns into an abnormal act of falling as I sink into the cushions and lose my balance.
Ciara just watches me. Waits.
Her body is rigid, her shoulders almost to her ears, and just like that I can see how the next few weeks are going to go. How difficult this is going to be.
Ciara Sheridan does not want me here. And, even more than that, I don’t think she wants to be here either.
I glance down at the bundle of papers in my lap, stalling as I rethink my opening spiel.
My little speech about all the authors I’ve worked with before and how safe she’ll be in my hands seems moot.
Casey’s right. This is the biggest book of the decade.
The one that will follow me around for the rest of my career.
That could make my career. And she’s not even pretending to try. She’s already given up.
The realization rankles more than I thought it would, and I rub my thumb over the corner of the first page, smoothing out a crease.
Maybe she thinks she can coast by on her father’s name, or that, because of who she is, we’ll let her run rings around us.
But this is clearly not going to work, and I didn’t spend the past ten years climbing the ladder to crash and burn on the final rung.
Yesterday’s annoyance with her resurges, and I take a moment before I meet her wary gaze.
Fuck it.
“We can give this to someone else.”
Ciara startles, her blue eyes going wide, but I push on.
“We can get a ghostwriter,” I say, rehashing the same proposal I ran by Casey. “Or a collaborator. You don’t have to write this book if you don’t want to.”
“I do want to.”
“You would still be involved,” I say as her face pales. “We could work up a list of names. Audition a short list. You would have the final say. Oversee the entire process.”
“No.”
The word is firm. Unbreachable. I try a different tactic.
“These books are loved by millions of people.”
“I’m aware.”
“I just mean—”
“I know what you mean,” she interrupts coolly.
“But thank you for trying to explain my father’s legacy to me.
Maybe you could remind me who shared this house with him while he wrote them?
Or who made his dinners every night because he’d get so lost in the story he’d forget to eat if you didn’t feed him.
Maybe you also know what it’s like to receive threatening messages from people who didn’t like the movie casting or who accuse you of being ungrateful because you dared to publish your own work under a pen name.
” She slips one leg over the other, her back now ramrod straight.
“I know what this book means to people,” she continues.
“I know how big it is. Even if I didn’t, the money you’re giving me would tip me off.
But I didn’t spend a lifetime with these characters just to see a stranger finish their story.
My dad wanted me to write this book, and while I admit I need some help, what I don’t need is some stranger waltzing in here with a Moleskine notebook and a fan club membership thinking he can do it better. ”
She finishes with a sharp exhale, and I gawk at her before my eyes drop to the notebook poking out my bag. Then I wonder, did she guess about the membership or does she actually have the records?
“So,” Ciara says, dragging my attention back to her. “Where do you want to start?”