Chapter Ten
TEN
Sunday morning, I’m awakened by a phone call. My heart is hammering against my ribs even before I hear my mom say, “You won’t believe what your father’s done.”
I flail to shed the covers and shove my hair out of my eyes. “What is it, Mom? What’s happened? Is Dad all right?”
(The only good thing about these few seconds of pure terror is that they make me forget to chastise her for Bill’s unannounced visit. Because to be fair, she did try to warn me. At least I assume that’s what her three missed calls last Tuesday were about.)
“You remember his friend Rob bought that condo in Florida? Well, he offered your dad the use of it for six weeks this winter, and your dad didn’t even ask me. He just said yes!”
I take a deep breath and try to rein in my pulse. “Condo?” I repeat, trying to process what she’s telling me. “Florida?”
“Can you believe it?”
I mean, yes and no. I’m still not used to thinking of my parents as retirees—well, actually, it’s just Dad; he was a middle-school teacher, and he’s only fifty-eight, so understandably, he’s a little restless with all this free time.
“Maybe you’ll like it,” I suggest. “You’re always complaining about the cold.”
“How am I supposed to take six weeks off work?”
Now, Mom’s a paralegal at a big firm and mostly sets her own hours, plus she probably has two years of paid time off banked, so this isn’t the dilemma she’s making it out to be. “Just tell Dad—”
“Tell him?” she snaps. “You know how he gets.”
“I—?”
I don’t have any idea what she means, actually.
He’s always been the very definition of easy-going.
When I hesitate, shaking my head to clear any remaining sleep cobwebs, struggling to choose my words, she jumps in to bemoan the fact that they’ll be away from home for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, leaving their baby (me) all alone.
I try to reassure her, but by the time we hang up, she’s in tears, still railing against my dad’s selfishness.
I won’t try to claim that my parents’ marriage is without conflict, but I’ve never known their occasional disagreements to escalate to a fight. Maybe things have changed between them since I moved away? I try to tell myself I’m exaggerating the significance of this squabble, or she is.
But all I can think is that it’s so unlike my dad, not to put my mom’s happiness first.
When it’s clear I won’t be going back to sleep, I do a quick scan of my phone, swiping away the email notifications to see if there’s a good morning text from Fisher, even though he warned me he was going to be tied up with some big project for his advisor this weekend.
My only message is from Cassie, whom I’ve hardly seen since Friday night.
I haven’t even had a chance to tell her about Blush & Bloom.
She’s always heading out somewhere or working in her room with the door closed, and from her unwillingness to talk about her date, I assume it didn’t go well.
At least, that’s what I think until I read her text, which says, simply, Gone to church.
Even though it’s only three words, I have to read it twice to process what they mean.
Not that I have any problem with her going to church.
It’s more that … well, let’s just say in all the years I’ve known her, it’s never been part of her routine.
And naturally, I suspect Bill is behind her sudden change of heart where religion is concerned.
Somehow, even though he’s a minister and the worst thing I know about him is that he’s boring, I’m wary of his influence on her.
I intended to spend my day working on the Great File Reorganization Project (finally), but now I’m unsettled again. Restless. I need to put a little space between me and all this strangeness and chaos. So I dress, grab some breakfast, and go for a drive instead.
By the time I reach my destination—the closest bookstore, albeit part of that big corporate chain, you know the one—I have talked myself into a calmer state.
My mom is just being overly dramatic. Probably hormones, or lack thereof.
And Cassie? Well, she’s understandably stressed about the future and longing for a little stability and reassurance, that’s all.
Inside, I draw a deep breath, but all the subtle bookish scents are overwhelmed by the aroma of too-strong coffee from the café that takes up almost a third of the store.
I stroll through the Fiction section and trail my fingertips along the shelves, seeking comfort.
See? Plenty of women writers. Even Charlotte Bronte. Julian Pedersen is just an ass.
I round the corner, expecting to be greeted by a display of paperbacks with cheery illustrated covers. A table with a banner saying BeeSocial Made Me Buy It. A stack of thick hardcovers with painted edges and foil-embossed titles like A Sheen of Pearl and Blade.
I collide with a solid row of bookshelves labeled “Self-Help.”
Well, stores reorganize their layouts all the time. They want to lure customers in. I wander a bit more, certain with every turn I’ll find the familiar sign that says “Romance” hanging over the largest section of the store.
At the edge of the Children’s section, in the very back, I collapse onto a tiny stool and drop my head into my hands. This time, I don’t cry. I’m pissed. (They say that anger is just another stage of grief. If so, I’m right on track.)
All the evidence points to one conclusion. Romance—as a grouping, a category, the largest and most profitable genre in the world—has vanished too.
In the world I used to know, Pride and Prejudice was the archetype, and romance novels were its legacy.
So I suppose it only makes sense that, when Pride and Prejudice disappeared, it took with it every other spunky heroine.
Erased every rich, arrogant hero who’s humbled by her.
Silenced readers’ knowing, satisfied chuckles every time two people in a story look at each other and think oh, absolutely not.
Maybe, as with the sticker on my laptop, I should’ve expected this development, recognized the connection, anticipated the result.
But when combined with all the ordinary stressors of grad school—my graduate assistantship, my dissertation, my roommate—plus whatever it is I’m doing with Fisher, the diffuse effects of the Austen anomaly keep drip-dropping into my life like scattered showers from a cloudless sky—and leaving devastation in their wake, like a hurricane.
I’d like nothing more than to reason my way out of the conclusion that no Pride and Prejudice means no romance.
I mean, Jane Austen didn’t invent the love story or the happy ending.
Long before she wrote, there were Shakespeare’s comedies and fairy tales and lots of other kinds of stories in which people fall in love and get married.
Or get married and then fall in love. And not every love story is gone.
I just saw a copy of Jane Eyre with my own two eyes, after all.
But now I find myself wondering whether the version sitting just a few shelves over contains the iconic line, “Reader, I married him.”
I’m too afraid to go look.
I’ve been so focused on the impacts of Austen’s disappearance on me—my advisor, my database, my dissertation —I haven’t really absorbed how big this thing is.
I’ve been skirting the edges of a gaping void, not just where Austen’s missing book used to be, but also where all the stories it spawned would—should—have been.
Even if there are still love stories out there, it’s clear what was once dominant is now, at best, niche.
Finally, I understand why I haven’t been able to find Bridgerton on the TV. Why no streamer is serving up 24/7 holiday rom-coms. Why … oh, God. Why Cassie hasn’t mentioned her paper in the last week, hasn’t started packing for the conference where she’s scheduled to present it.
Because there is no paper. She can’t write one on something that doesn’t exist.
When she acted like she’d never heard of the Hallmark Channel, it wasn’t an act.
And Blush & Bloom didn’t become a cosmetics store because small businesses have to change to survive, but because there are no paperbacks with brightly colored covers to sell. Nothing promising a few hours of escape and a guaranteed happy ending.
I’m still crouched on that child-size stool, head in hands, trying to gather the strength to go home, when I hear a familiar voice. Cautiously, I open my eyes, lean forward, and peer around the nearest bookshelf, not sure whether I’m more afraid of being wrong, or being right.
Because that sure sounds like Julia Pedersen.
And it is! She’s there, on the other side of a bookshelf barrier, gesticulating with her slender hands as she talks with another woman about her age.
My chest starts to ache, like my heart has expanded to a danger point.
I lean a little further, drawn to her, fighting down the urge to run over to her and say hi.
Because good God, what would I say after that?
We’re strangers now. I don’t really know this woman at all.
Her clothes are different—no more flowy skirts—and her hair is styled in a sleek bob, with not a trace of gray.
Further confirmation that in this universe, Julia Pedersen—or whatever her name is here—is a fundamentally different person who did something else with her life.
I hope whatever it is, it’s made her as happy as teaching women’s literature did, though she doesn’t exactly look it.
I’ve been sitting here mourning the loss of stories. But what about everyone who had a hand in telling them? What happened to the writers, most of them women, who wrote those books and those screenplays? What happened to the artists who designed covers and the actors who brought characters to life?
I hope against hope that every one of those people found another way to foster their passion and creativity, that I’m not—we’re not—living in a world absent all that positive energy and art.
Maybe this Julia sighting ought to be comforting, proof that those writers, actors, artists, and so on, could be out there pursuing other lives too. Good lives. Fulfilling lives.
Most of them.
Probably.
This is, naturally, the exact moment at which the tiny stool on which I’m perched tips a little too far forward, and I go toppling onto the floor, landing on my still sore knees.
Both Julia and her friend turn to look at me.
“I’m fine,” I reassure them as I scramble to my feet.
“I was, uh, just down here looking for a book for my niece,” I say, though I don’t have a niece.
“I hope this is a good one.” As I grab a random title from the shelf behind which I’d been spying, I make eye contact with Julia for just the briefest moment and offer a weak, nervous smile, which she acknowledges with a cool sort of nod.
Do I feel better for the encounter? Or worse?
I hurry toward the front, depositing the book about a frog and duckling on top of a stack of punny-titled mysteries. This may be the first time I’ve ever left a bookstore empty-handed, but I need to get some fresh air. Now.
In my car, which is parked facing the window of the café, I sit for a moment and try one of those deep-breathing techniques that never really works and watch the soothing, ordinary bustle inside, the barista making some complicated drink and the guy sitting at one of those little bistro tables reading, and—
Wait. That’s Geoff. As in “family emergency, should be in England” Geoff.
I blink and look again, but nothing about the scene has changed. And I’m well past the point of trying to convince myself I’m imagining things.
Well, Pedersen—Julian, that is—only said Geoff would be away from class for a couple of weeks. He didn’t say where he was going. Not my business, anyway. Even if it does seem a little strange to see him here, it’s hardly the strangest thing I’ve seen today.
I reach to turn on the car, then grab my phone instead.
Hey, how’s your big project coming?
I’m gratified by how quickly the Fisher is typing … bubble appears.
Done, actually.
I was just about to text you.
You free for dinner?
Yes
Great! Come by my house whenever you’re hungry
Be there soon
I pull out of the bookstore parking lot at a speed that borders on reckless. I don’t know if what I’m feeling is hunger—at least, not in any conventional sense.
What I do know is that Fisher Davis is the only person I’m close to who never read Pride and Prejudice. When he first admitted it, I was horrified, but now his ignorance of my favorite book has an unexpected appeal: at least he can’t be affected by its disappearance.