chapter 16 #2
but the last thing she wanted was to let herself get sucker punched by hoping for and expecting a good outcome only to be
handed off to some authority or other. Still, at Charlotte’s remark, she stepped forward.
“You don’t know what your next book is about?”
Worry lines creased Charlotte’s forehead as she shook her head. “I’ve been surfing the internet, trying to find a good idea.”
“How long does it take you to write a book?”
“Well, I’ve only written one, and the first isn’t anything to judge by. With Playing for Keeps, I was sort of feeling my way through the dark, teaching myself the craft as I went along, so it was an extended process.”
“You’ll be able to do it faster this time?”
“Theoretically.”
Lilly knew what that word meant and hated the concern that welled up.
She didn’t want to feel what she’d felt so often for her mother.
It was too hard to take care of the adults around her.
She’d done her best with Sabrina, but nothing seemed to help.
Someone always said something he or she shouldn’t, or her boss insisted she do something a different way and she didn’t like it, or a customer tried to stiff her and that gave her an excuse to lose her temper, which meant she’d get fired if she didn’t quit.
Usually, Sabrina quit. Then she acted as if she’d had no choice, that the working conditions were just too terrible to stay.
And the same thing went for the men she got with. It was all great at the start, but only went downhill from there.
“How long do you have?”
“Just a few months,” Charlotte admitted. “But don’t worry. I’ll figure it out.”
What if she couldn’t? What would happen then? She no longer had Cliff and his money to rely on. She’d made that clear. Would
she have no way of paying the bills?
“Do you have writer’s block?” Lilly asked, trying harder to understand the murky boundaries of her new situation—and the pitfalls
and obstacles she might encounter.
“Maybe that’s it.”
“You don’t know? Have you ever had it before?”
“I hit some difficult patches with my first book.”
“How are you going to get over it?”
“That’s a good question,” Charlotte replied. “I guess I’m going to give myself permission to write something terrible.”
Lilly felt her eyes go wide. “Why would you do that?”
“I need to turn off my internal editor somehow. That bitch has a stranglehold on me.”
When she laughed, Lilly felt better. Because Charlotte wasn’t taking it too seriously, and she hadn’t felt the need to use
different language than she would with Sloane—language more appropriate for children—Lilly felt more hopeful that Charlotte
would be able to fight through her problems, even though Sabrina never could. “You’ll come up with something?”
Charlotte must’ve heard the fear in her voice because she got up to come around the table.
At first, Lilly was afraid she’d try to take her hands or hug her or something, which made her go cold inside, but she didn’t.
She just leaned against the table a foot or so away.
“Even if I can’t write this book and my publisher won’t give me an extension, I’ll make sure you have what you need and we both get through this, okay? ”
Lilly wasn’t convinced. Sabrina had always said she’d make things work, too—and never could. “How?”
“Because I’m capable and resourceful and I’ll find a way.”
Maybe that was true. Maybe Charlotte would find a way. But if times got even harder, it would decrease any chance Lilly had of finding a home with her half sister.
Charlotte’s phone went off, and she went back near her laptop to check who it was.
Lilly’s stomach sank when her half sister began rubbing her forehead as if she didn’t like what she saw on the screen. “Bad
news?” she guessed, feeling the panic she’d battled so often start eating at her again.
“It’s my parents,” Charlotte replied. “I’d better take it.”
Lilly was curious about Charlotte’s parents. How she interacted with them. What her life had been like. If it’d been better
than living with Sabrina. If it was Charlotte who’d been the luckier of the two of them, even though she’d been the one who
was put up for adoption. But she didn’t want Charlotte to think she was in the way or being too nosy, so she said, “I’ll get
some breakfast,” and went into the kitchen.
Lilly had left the room, but Charlotte carried her phone into her bedroom and closed the door anyway.
She was doing her best to be kind and reassuring with her half sister, but this situation wasn’t easy for her, either.
The way she’d been blindsided made it difficult to forgive her parents.
She also didn’t want to be quizzed by them when everything was still so up in the air.
But she felt she owed them more than to grow sullen, angry and uncommunicative. They’d been good to her and weren’t totally
responsible for this situation.
Still, suddenly feeling so indebted to them for the rights and privileges she’d taken for granted when she thought she was
a natural-born child was part of the myriad emotions she was struggling with.
“Hello?”
“There you are,” Penny said. “How are things going?”
Charlotte could tell she was trying hard to compensate for the recent drama. “Fairly good, I guess.”
“What does that mean? What’s Lilly like?”
“She’s guarded, defensive, frightened—as you can imagine.”
“I was hoping you’d send us a picture, at least. I’d love to see her. Maybe we could even have a Zoom call where you introduce
us.”
Her mother was obviously insecure about what was happening and eager to be part of it. But this was something Charlotte had
to work through before everything could go back to normal. “I’m not ready yet.”
There was a prolonged silence. Penny wasn’t used to meeting with any resistance, not when they were getting along, and they
were almost always getting along.
The sudden guilt she felt for being the one to change that added to the other negative emotions Charlotte was experiencing.
“Okay,” her mother said at length. “Well, I’m here when you’re ready.”
Squeezing her eyes closed, Charlotte began to knead her temples. “Lilly’s a pretty girl and will be beautiful one day,” she volunteered, just to have something to say that wasn’t emotionally charged. “She looks like her mother. Did you ever meet Sabrina?”
“No. Our caseworker had us come get you from the hospital. We were open to meeting her in person, but she didn’t feel up to
it and, of course, we didn’t want to make the situation any harder on her. The agency agreed to deliver a letter we wrote,
thanking her for letting us have you and promising to do all we could to give you a good life. We hoped it would reassure
her. Of course, she already knew a great deal about us from the application. She picked us from among many families. We submitted
pictures and everything.”
This revelation only made her feel worse. Penny was clearly proud to have won the parent lottery, but Charlotte could only
focus on the fact that her birth mother had never even tried to see her. “So it was an open adoption, but she never reached
out?”
Charlotte had looked up the difference on the internet. A closed adoption meant no identifying information was shared with
the adoptive parents, and there was no ongoing contact. An open adoption meant that information, updates and sometimes even
visits were allowed.
“It was a semiopen adoption, I guess you could say,” Penny explained. “Her parents didn’t hide her identity. They allowed
us to have a few pictures, her medical records and background information. We wanted to be sure she hadn’t been taking drugs,
you know, and tests revealed she hadn’t. But we didn’t have any other contact.”
Why not? Charlotte wondered. Sabrina hadn’t been curious about her? Hadn’t wanted to meet her first child, even after she
became an adult and had Lilly? Why had Sabrina simply given Charlotte up and walked away without ever looking back? And what
about Sabrina’s parents? Why weren’t they ever interested enough to contact her?
Charlotte couldn’t wait for the results of her DNA test with , but she was scared about what they might reveal at the same time.
“What does she have to say about her father?” Penny asked. “And her grandparents?”
“I haven’t asked about them yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s twelve, Mom, and her mother died only a short time ago. Not only that, but I’m still almost a total stranger
to her. I don’t want to make it sound like I only came to Italy to pawn her off on someone else. I want to build a relationship
with her before going after certain information. If I can get her to trust me, she might open up and say more than she otherwise
would.”
“I understand that. I just thought . . . She hasn’t volunteered anything about her relatives? I assumed she would’ve said
something.”
“She hasn’t. Not a word. So far, she’s been reluctant to talk about her mother at all—doesn’t even want to go through Sabrina’s
belongings.”
“Did they not have a good relationship?”
“That’s hard to determine.”
“The Italian man they were living with can’t tell you that much?”
“They lived with Luca for three short months, and he and I have only had two conversations, both of which revolved around
logistics—like getting Lilly and her things and Sabrina’s personal effects.”
“He gave you Sabrina’s stuff, too?”
“He had to do something with it.”
“What about shipping it to her parents or a sibling or something? What will you do with it?”
“It should probably stay with Lilly. Anyway, I have to see what’s all there before I make any decisions.”
“When will you go through it?”
“When Lilly has a chance to decide if she wants to do it with me. At the moment, she doesn’t seem eager to do so.”
“Maybe it’s too painful for her to think about her mother.”
“Probably. I’m giving her time to adjust to everything before I bug her about it. I have to get a few things done for my editor
today, anyway.”
There was another pause. “Speaking of your editor, have you started your new book?”
The panic Charlotte felt clamped down harder. What was she going to do about her book? “Not yet. But I’m looking for an idea
right now, and once I find one, I’m going to stick with it and push through. No more changing my mind. No more uncertainty.”
“Okay. If you need me to fly over there and help with Lilly so you can sequester yourself away and concentrate, let me know.”
She knew it was not an empty promise—her parents would do whatever they could—and that made her feel she was being too hard
on Penny. “Thanks, Mom,” she said.
“I have always loved you so much,” her mother said.
Charlotte dropped back onto the bed. “I love you, too.”
“Let us know how it goes.”
“I will,” she promised and disconnected. She was about to return to her computer—she had to power through or the tension and
stress would only ratchet higher—but at the last second, instead of getting up, she called Julian.
“Where are you?” she asked as soon as he said hello.
“There’s an old convent above Praiano. I hiked up to it. Why?”
She didn’t know why exactly. She’d just needed to hear his voice. “I was . . . curious.”
“Do you need me for anything?”
She tried to think of something but couldn’t. “No.”
There was a long silence. Then he said, “So this is work avoidance?”
She covered her eyes with one arm. “Maybe.”
“Okay, that’s it. I’m going to call Sloane and have her bring Lilly here. The climb will be good exercise for them—whether
they will like it or not—and everyone will be out of the house for the next several hours so you can concentrate.”
As nice as that was, she wanted to be the one to go find him. She didn’t care how high she had to climb. She didn’t want to think about Cliff or her
divorce or her deadline or what she was going to do about Lilly. She definitely didn’t want to write in her current frame
of mind. She just wanted to enjoy Italy at Julian’s side. There was something cathartic about his presence, his humor, his
smile.
“You’re trying to take photographs,” she said. “They’ll be fine here.”
“Charlotte.”
“What?”
“Block everything out and write five pages. That’s it. That’s all you have to do. Then the four of us will get some cheese,
salami, dates, nuts, apples and other charcuterie fixings, along with a nice bottle of wine, and enjoy a relaxing evening
so you can recharge and get up tomorrow and write five more pages. One day at a time. That’s how you’re going to approach
this—a little progress every day so nothing’s too overwhelming.”
He made it sound easy. But the constant emotional upheaval was killing her creativity. “What should I do with Sabrina’s stuff
in the storage room?”
“You don’t have to decide now. It’s not going anywhere. And there’s no rush to make any decisions regarding Lilly. We’ll all just live in the moment—enjoy our stay here in Italy while you write your book and see where life leads us.”
“And my divorce?”
“Leave that in America for now.”
“But I don’t want to write, Jules. I want to be with you,” she admitted.
He hesitated before saying, “That’s your fight or flight kicking in. You’re trying to flee to safety, but I can’t let you.
You need to stay in the fight and battle it out. I’m here to help, though. We’ll get through the next month together, taking
it one day at a time, like I said.”
She drew a deep breath. “Okay. But I’m going to call you as soon as I get to five pages—even if they’re terrible.”
“That’s fine. Just write them. You can always fix them later.”
She was so grateful for him and his friendship at this critical moment, tears sprang to her eyes.
“You okay?” he asked when she didn’t say goodbye.
She sniffed. “Yeah.”
When he spoke again, his voice was filled with conviction. “You can do it,” he said.
“Okay, coach,” she responded, and she kept repeating what he’d told her as she went back to her computer and started a story
about a woman who had a near-death experience that changed everything about the way she wanted to live the rest of her life.