Chapter 56
“Back or front?” Evelyn Wickwire wore ladylike low heels and a possibly-Chanel suit, and her blond hair in a severe French twist. Not a wig, at least not today.
She’d insisted on wheeling Tessa’s suitcase to her gray Volvo, where she popped the trunk and with one motion hefted Tessa’s bag inside.
“I’m hoping you’ll hop in the front seat and confess everything. ”
Tessa tried to calm the flare of alarm.
“Front is good, thank you,” Tessa said. She’d wait and see. What might have been a boring ride in a random hired car was now, potentially, part of some bigger game. “I’ve been in about fifty thousand Ubers over the past several days, and all I see is the back of people’s heads.”
“I hear you.” Evelyn opened the passenger door, gestured Tessa onto the saddle-colored leather. “There’s a bottle of Evian for you, and coffee with milk in the cupholder.”
“Coffee. Fabulous,” Tessa said. “First time I’ve smiled all day.”
“Oh dear.” Evelyn drew on her seat belt, pushed the ignition. “Olivette indicated you were—unsettled.”
“Yeah,” Tessa said. “Long story. Boring.”
“Oh, I’ve heard them all.” Evelyn pulled out of the curved hotel parking lane.
“I had an author, a while ago, readers came to her house. With gifts, expecting to be invited in. She actually had to move, leave town. I’m telling you”—Evelyn stopped at a light—“nothing induces passion like the passion for a book.”
Had to move , Tessa thought. Leave town . “Have you ever heard of anything dangerous happening?”
“Not… really. Most do not act out their fantasies—”
“Fantasies?”
“Hopes is perhaps a better word. A book can be an all-consuming thing. Remember the ones that obsessed you when you were a child— Black Beauty , for instance?”
Tessa’s eyes widened. Coincidence , she thought. Coincidence.
“ Anne of Green Gables ? The Edward Eager books?” Evelyn continued.
“Sometimes kids literally become Katniss Everdeen, or a Scottish Highlander. Cosplay, when readers dress up as their favorite characters, can be wonderfully entertaining and a shared community, or it can be—how do I put this. Delusional. I’m not criticizing, necessarily, I’m simply observing.
And if you’ve created one of those icons, then your very existence, in your fans’ minds at least, becomes a center of worship. ”
“Oh, come on.” Tessa took a sip of coffee, that welcoming bite of caffeine.
“Believe me or not.” Evelyn glanced at her, raised a carefully tended eyebrow. “And the authors can also become objects of scrutiny, dissected and discussed, and, not to alarm you, but easily toppled from that created Olympus.”
Tessa pictured that, and all it included.
Evelyn glanced in the rearview, signaled, steered into the fast lane.
“And they’ll dig, too,” she continued, “into your personal life, and your past. It’s not intentionally destructive, but your privacy can vanish.
I’m sure your editor and agent have warned you.
” The car purred, accelerating, tires silent on the smooth highway pavement.
“That’s why publishing contracts have those moral turpitude clauses, where the authors hold the publisher harmless if something devastating is revealed.
But why are we talking about this? You should be riding high on your success. ”
“Oh, I am.” Tessa reassured herself at the same time. “I’m homesick, sometimes, though, two kids, and I always think of them. And my husband, too, doing God knows what.”
“What would Annabelle say about that?” Evelyn turned to her and winked.
“I wish I were more like Annabelle in the book. She has her fictional life all figured out. The rest of us mortals…” Tessa took another sip of coffee. “As an author, I can make stories turn out the way I want, most of the time at least. But in real life, that doesn’t happen.”
“You want to tell me about it?”
“About what?”
“Your editor and publicist called me this morning, as you know, worried about you, and said you were upset about some note you’d received? You haven’t mentioned that.”
Can of worms. “It’s nothing,” Tessa said.
“They’re paying me four hundred dollars an hour because of your nothing?” Evelyn kept her eyes on the traffic ahead.
“I did get a note,” Tessa admitted, since Evelyn already knew about it. “I’ll read it to you.” Tessa pulled the envelope from her bag. Read it out loud. “That’s all it says, see you in Des Moines. So it’s either from someone enthusiastic, or someone scary.”
“And you don’t have any idea who? Have you noticed the same person in several of your audiences?”
Tessa again replayed the past few days. “It all goes by in a blur, but I take pictures of every audience. On the plane I’ll compare them, see if anyone repeats.
But that’s not all.” She took a deep breath, then told Evelyn about the wig.
And then, because it all seemed to pour out of her, about the woman who’d questioned her about summer vacation.
“This is what you’re calling nothing?”
Evelyn had eased the car to the right, toward a green arrow pointing to Sea-Tac airport.
Tessa hadn’t even told Evelyn the whole story. And now there was almost no time.
“It all started, I think , with a locket I found.” Tessa spoke faster as they turned onto the exit, hoping Evelyn was someone she could rely on. “Could this be yours,” Tessa finished the story. “I thought I was so clever, and that the necklace would be claimed right away. But no.”
“Yes, I saw your Locket Mom hashtag. But no one’s recognized the man in the photo?”
“No one.”
“Did you Google Image reverse-search the picture? And the necklace?”
“Yup. Nothing.”
“Well, someone left that necklace there. Question is—why. Did someone call lost and found to claim it? Does the hotel know you took it? It’s possible that person is not on social media. And when they call the hotel, their necklace is not there. Because you have it.”
“You think I should—”
“Tessa?” Evelyn shifted into park, and pointed to a sign that warned drop-off time was three minutes only. “Some poor forgetful hotel guest may be facing a dead end.”
“A dead end that I caused.” Because she’d wanted a good social media story.
As a result she’d created a monster, and now she was fretting about it, and complaining, when in reality, the situation was her own fault.
She’d stolen someone’s property—even worse, someone’s privacy— and exploited it to get attention from readers.
She certainly had gotten attention. But not the kind she’d wanted.
And even worse, hideous to admit, the massive public attention she’d brought to Locket Mom’s life was exactly what she’d worried someone would do to her.
“I’ll take it, if you like.” Evelyn turned toward her, palm extended. “I can handle it for you.”