Chapter 10
She quickly said goodbye to Henry, promising to tell her news later. Then, as the plane’s engine hummed, and they moved forward in the emerging glints of sunlight, the man leaned forward and pulled her book from his bag.
“So, yeah,” he said, holding up the back cover. “I wondered if that was you. But I didn’t want to say anything. It’s a good photo, by the way.”
“It’s all about the lighting.” Shush, Annabelle said. Say thank you . “But thanks.”
“I know you must be inundated, Ms. Calloway. And probably looking forward to some private time.”
“It’s all good,” she said. “I’m Tessa.”
“Sam. And I promise to leave you alone,” he was saying. “Not be the pesky seatmate. For someone like you, flying can be a juggle.”
She shrugged, smiling, not sure what to make of that. “Someone like you” meant he’d categorized her, created a story for her. He thought he knew what she was.
“But could you sign it to my daughter?” Sam went on. “She’ll be so impressed I met you. Her name is Anna.” He paused. “Short for Savannah.”
Tessa nodded, flipping the phone over and over in her hand.
Savannah. Anna. Every time she heard a new person’s name, her writer brain tested it, imagining it as a name for a character, wondering if it would work.
But Anna, short for Savannah, no. Definitely no.
Savannah was her own middle name, like her mother’s.
Theresa Savannah Mattigan, her birth name.
Very few people, maybe no one, come to think of it , knew that now. Thank goodness.
“Sure,” she said. “After we get underway? It’s about four hours to Phoenix, plenty of time. Okay?” If she stopped talking now, he would stop, and then she could close her eyes and finally sleep. “But I thought I saw you reading it,” she said, disobeying herself.
“I was flipping through.” He’d tucked the book into the seat-back pocket, only Tessa’s eyes, mascaraed to the hilt for the photo shoot and photoshopped even bluer, showing over the nylon pouch.
“Anna was dying to read it, so I picked it up as a gift. Figured I would see what she was so enthusiastic about.”
“Crossing fingers you agree.” Tessa felt the gravity change as the front wheels lifted off. Fly, fly, fly , she instructed the plane.
Sam had lifted the plastic cover over the window beside him. “I love looking at this. This moment of slipping the bonds.” He gestured at the clear, thick pane. “Can you see?”
She looked across him, the wide armrest between them, as the concrete runway and scrubby trees in the distance gave way to the vastness of clouded sky, and saw a patchwork quilt of green and brown beneath them.
A pattern that could only be seen from above.
A few swimming pools twinkled in the backyards of a scatter of houses, and then it was only clouds and they were on their way to Phoenix.
“Physics,” she said. “Always reassuring. When I was a kid, I thought it was magic.” Shut up, she ordered herself.
But Sam simply looked out the window. Good, she thought.
We’re done . She closed her eyes, leaned into the leather.
Four hours. And maybe even now someone was recognizing their beloved and lost family photo, and the locket, and messaging her.
Maybe that could be her next book. She could make “Sam in 3A” a main character, and have his daughter be pictured in the found photo. Maybe she was dead.
But no. She didn’t want to write about that. She wrote about confident people. People with goals. People finding happiness.
She opened her eyes a fraction, checking.
Sam was still staring out the window. She’d often vetted books for her own daughter, an inquisitive and indiscriminate reader, who’d pick up any book Tessa had left within reach.
Tessa’s reading childhood had been centered in the town library, a boxy building with a children’s reading room downstairs where Tessa had curled up in a big red leather chair.
She was allowed to take home ten books at a time, which she’d tucked into her Buffy tote bag.
But she could never go back there. Never.
Her author photo watched her from Sam’s seat-back pocket.
Judging by his age, Anna-like-Savannah could be fifteen or so?
The plot and themes of All This might be a bit too old for her—not that that there was anything graphically inappropriate, but corporate intrigue and cutthroat dealmaking and women’s empowerment might seem—well, never too soon, Tessa decided, for young women to get the Annabelle message.
And she admired parents who cared about what their children read.
She barely remembered her own parents reading books, they’d been all about newspapers.
But her mother had once pulled out an old trunk from their dank basement, and inside were musty-smelling Nancy Drews and Trixie Beldens with plastic-laminated cardboard covers.
Tessa had known they were anachronistic, and old-fashioned, but she’d admired how Nancy and Trixie took control of their lives, and solved problems grown-ups could not.
She’d gotten hooked when she and Emily had checked out a Mary Higgins Clark from the local library.
They’d obsessed over it, looking up unfamiliar words, dissecting the story.
And they’d vowed, stationed on ratty beach blankets and smelling of parentally enforced Coppertone, that they’d be writers when they grew up. Only Tessa had fulfilled that dream.
That she knew of, at least.
She must have closed her eyes, she didn’t remember when, but she did remember opening them, her body feeling the atmosphere shift as the plane began its descent. Two soft bells pinged, and the flight attendant was at her side, checking for seat belts, smiling maternally.
“Almost to Phoenix,” she said. “May I get you some water? Ice? Sir, how about you? Your tray table needs to be up, sir, but the cups will fit in your armrest cupholders.”
“I’d love some,” Tessa said. “Sure, ice.”
“Same,” Sam said, and turned to her as the flight attendant stepped away. “You were out. Totally out. I guess on book tour you have to sleep while you can. Your family must miss you. What do they think about all this?”
“They’re fine, it’s fine. It’s—I’m grateful, mostly,” Tessa said.
Had she told him she was on book tour? “It’s exciting.
But yes, exhausting. But worth it.” She blinked, trying to regain her equilibrium.
Her sleep schedule was out of whack, and she hadn’t napped since the days the kids were little.
Now, on the road, her schedule had gone from settled to scattered, and her brain felt like that, too.
I’m a New York Times bestseller, she remembered, again.
“ Ha ,” she whispered, wrapping herself in the unlikely joy.
“Something funny?” Sam asked.
“No, no, just waking up.” She looked at her Rockport watch.
Eleven a.m. at home. Nine a.m. in Phoenix.
She would never get this straight, whether the kids were awake or asleep, whether she herself was supposed to be tired or hungry.
Her body clock was overwound, or running down, she could never be sure.
Sam had pulled the book from its place in the seat-back pouch.
“Still okay to sign this? We can sneak down your tray table for a minute.”
“My pleasure.” Tessa unhooked the table, and it fell into her lap. She accepted his expensive pen. “To Anna?”
“Well…” Sam’s face had changed. “Why not sign it to me? Sam. Maybe put seat 3A. That’ll be funny.”
“Sure,” Tessa said. People were always asking her to sign her books in certain ways, like Happy Reading, or Enjoy!
It didn’t matter, she knew Henry would tell her a sale is a sale .
To Sam, my seatmate in 3A , Tessa wrote.
Safe travels . And then signed it, Tessa Calloway .
She made sure it was legible. If people wanted her to sign a book, it seemed disrespectful to leave a scrawl.
Signing her own book to a stranger. A childhood dream, and now true. Nothing is promised , someone had once told her, but everything is up for grabs. Just take it. She’d had Annabelle say those same words in chapter 1.
“Your daughter can borrow it,” Tessa said, handing the signed book across the leather console.
“Right,” Sam said, tucking it into his briefcase. “But maybe I’ll get one for her tonight at your event. At ReadRunner Bookstore, right? At seven?”