CHAPTER 35
Willa felt excited and a little nervous. She hadn’t gotten feedback since she’d turned in the completed cookbook. She wasn’t sure if that was good news or bad news. Did they like what she’d come up with? Did it fit Sam’s persona? Did it fit what the publisher wanted?
She knew the recipes were solid, if nothing else. For the first time in a long time, she’d felt thrilled with what she’d come up with. By the end of the process, she’d actually enjoyed conceptualizing them, testing them, even eating them. It was incredible how a project that seemed so daunting, so wrong for her, had led to this new sense of possibility. It felt like she’d been eating plain oatmeal for years and now tastes were exploding on her tongue, the aromas filling her nose, the feel in her mouth a mix of textures that made her want to dance in her seat. She’d forgotten, and now the pleasure of it was almost overwhelming.
She had the feeling it was tied to Hudson. Not just the sex, although that definitely was a contributing factor. It was more that the things he did gave her space to just focus on creating. It had been longer than she could remember since she’d had that, she realized.
In fact, she may never have had it.
When she’d been growing up, her life had been all about focus: the drive to get scholarships, to get top grades, to go to college. But she knew now that she’d always wanted to be a chef, but being a food scientist had been her “ghost profession”—the one she took as an adjacent to what she’d truly desired. The nonalcoholic beer as opposed to the artisanal pale ale.
Then she’d met Steven, and he’d encouraged her to finally move away from caution and take a leap with him. The problem, she’d realized later, was that they both always leaped, usually without much looking. It had been exciting and nerve racking. Steven had been able to laugh off their failures for the most part, writing them off as experiments and learning experiences. She’d nodded ... and then quietly cushioned him from the day-to-day realities of the aftermath. The bills, the paperwork, the legal pitfalls. She’d loved him enough to do that.
She was also starting to realize, even without the help of therapy, that a part of her had resented him, but guilt had kept that part locked tight and buried deep.
It’d be foolish to think somehow, after this short period of time, that Hudson loved her enough to protect her in the same way she’d once buffered Steven. She wasn’t even sure that was what she wanted. But she was sure that she wanted to see where they did go, if possible.
Her phone rang, and when she saw it was Vanessa, her heart pounded with excitement. “Hi there,” she said cheerfully. “It’s good to hear from you.”
“Hi, Willa.”
Was it paranoia, or did Vanessa sound subdued? Willa pushed past it. “Were you able to read the cookbook? What did you think?”
A small sigh.
Now her worry meter was rising exponentially. “I can always change recipes, if something’s not working.” She realized there was that note of desperation in her voice and dialed it back. “I mean, I was really inspired on this project. I even have several alternates, so if you can tell me what you think might work better, or how you want the concept tweaked, I can change gears and have something new in almost no time ...”
“They canceled the cookbook.”
She went still, the words not processing. “What?” she whispered.
“They canceled it.” Vanessa’s voice was mournful.
“But ... why?” Willa asked. It just didn’t compute.
“Because word somehow leaked online that Sam was using an ‘old lady’ to ghostwrite it,” Vanessa said bitterly. “He’s already catching backlash. Lots of negative comments. Losing followers. He’s hitting a downward spiral, and his manager’s trying to stem the worst of the damage.”
While Willa felt a pang of remorse for Sam, she couldn’t help but be focused on the problem at hand. “But ... I finished it, on time, to specifications.”
“I know. It was good work, Willa.”
But not good enough.
“I was able to convince them to let you keep the signing half of the contract, though,” Vanessa said.
“If I remember correctly, the ghost contract wasn’t about publication. It was about turning in an acceptable project.” Willa found herself arguing, something she rarely did. “I’m not angry with you, Vanessa. I’m just trying to understand this.”
Vanessa sighed. “I know. I’m not thrilled about this either,” she admitted. “Between you, me, and the tree ... the new management team they put in has been making really questionable decisions, and I don’t like them.”
Well, Willa really didn’t like them. “So I’m not getting the rest of my fee? The on-completion?”
“I’m sorry,” Vanessa said, and she truly sounded pained.
“What if I fight this?”
“They said that you signed an NDA,” she answered. “Also—again, this is in-the-vault, under-the-dome stuff—basically that they’ve got more money, so if you decided to, ah, make this public or decide to fight them legally ... well, it’d be a bad idea. It’s a war of attrition, and you’re lucky you got to keep the initial.”
“Wait, are you saying they’re accusing me of leaking that I’m the ghostwriter on Sam’s cookbook?” Willa said, her voice rising.
Vanessa was simply silent, and it was answer enough.
“Motherfucker!” Willa spat out, then winced. “I’m sorry.”
“No. I truly understand how you feel.” Vanessa’s unhappiness was palpable. “I just wish I could do more.”
Willa laughed woodenly. “I suppose that they’re not offering any more contracts either,” she said. Not that she wanted to work for them, but dammit, she’d counted on using this as her entry point, getting back to what she’d once been good at. Yes, it was freelance, and yes, it was uncertain, but it had been fun, once upon a time. Even better, it let her live life on her own terms: setting her own hours, picking her own projects, working her own way.
“No,” Vanessa said. “They are trying to make it seem like you’re somehow unreliable, when I’ll bet somebody internally let it slip to somebody they shouldn’t and then screwed their own deal, so they needed a scapegoat to cut loose, paying the remainder to you and to Sam.”
Another slice of guilt. Sam would be all right, she felt sure, but still, it would be a blow. She sighed. “I really wanted this,” she said to Vanessa. “Do you know anybody else, at any other house or publisher, that’s looking for a ghost?”
“I can see who might be looking,” Vanessa answered, but Willa could hear in her voice that it was a sop, and a pity one at that. “But with all the freelancers out there, accepting cutthroat rates, and all the food vloggers and such ... it’s just really hard. I can’t make any promises.”
“Thanks, Vanessa. I appreciate it.”
“Hang in there.”
Willa sighed. “You too.”
They hung up, and Willa looked at her phone.
She used to think midlife crises were something that happened to middle-class American men. Ones who wondered where the horny dreams of their youth went as they realized they’d never be that baseball player with the hot trophy wife and then desperately tried to reroute their trajectories with ill-advised sports cars and maybe hair plugs.
Now, she realized that the crisis was real, and she was having one.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t pursued her dreams and regretted it. It was that she had pursued her dreams ... and now wondered, perhaps too late, if she’d made the wrong choices all along and would pay for them dearly in whatever was left of her life.
Numb, she made her way up to her bedroom, pulling off the handmade quilt and slipping between it and the blanket, bare feet be damned. She closed her eyes.
Her parents had warned her, so very long ago, that she’d regret marrying Steven. That she was putting herself on a path to ruin for choosing such an unstable profession. And she’d ignored it, even when the restaurant went under, and when she’d had to work late into the night. When they’d had their house in San Mateo foreclosed on, and they’d moved back to LA to be around Steven’s family. Her parents had been thankfully quiet when Steven had gotten truly sick, and felt truly sad for her when she’d lost him. She’d felt rather than heard their litany of worry. Now, here she was. Nearly fifty, with no clear path forward. She was fortunate, she knew, to have inherited this house, rather than simply bills. But she also knew that at forty-six, with her lack of previous focused experience, her career choices were limited or nonexistent. It wasn’t like she was going to be working the line at a restaurant until two in the morning. She could probably land a line cook job in a diner somewhere, but that’d be the best of it, and she doubted there was anything like that on the island. Her body could handle it for a while, she supposed, but not that long—and the pay would not cover what she needed it to. If they’d even hire her when there were so many young, eager, fierce cooks out there, willing to stage for free, willing to work for shit pay so they could pursue their passion. A passion that, this week notwithstanding, she hadn’t had burn in her for too long.
She curled on her side, the tears starting to slip hot down her cheeks. This was what it meant to question your life, she realized.
And wonder what to do if you’d truly chosen wrong.