Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Amelie
Tucked away in the little wooden cabin in Big Sur, California, Amelie could pretend Christmas wasn’t coming.
Outside, the river rushed and bubbled past, and the trees and grass were green and warm-looking, resplendent beneath a cerulean sky.
Amelie, in her dark blue flannel and a pair of sports shorts, drew her hands over her head and stretched her back over the top of the chair.
She’d been here at her computer for the better part of eight hours, perfecting the edits for her most recent novel. She was done. She had to be done.
She sent the newest draft to her agent with the following email: I think this is it. Let me know what you think. Can’t wait to send it to publishers!
Amelie got up and rummaged around her kitchen for something to celebrate with.
Technically, it was a sublet, so most of the products weren’t hers.
Someone had stocked up on beans, corn, and other canned goods that were months past their due date.
Perhaps the same person had bought the expensive-looking whiskey, which was stored on the top shelf.
Surely, the owners wouldn’t notice if she poured herself a small amount?
She did that and took the glass onto the porch to breathe the fresh California air and toast to herself and the career she felt sure would find her.
Amelie had been living in Big Sur for the past four months.
For money, she did odd jobs—waitressing at the little diner down the road when they had shifts to hand out, gardening, and babysitting rich people’s children.
She was thirty-seven but prided herself on not being too good for anything, provided it paid a living wage.
Her entire MO was to make enough money to live and have enough time to write.
Since she’d graduated from college fifteen years ago, it had been more or less this way. She wasn’t too tired for her vagabond lifestyle yet. She had something to live for: the words on her page.
The whiskey was too strong for Amelie, who only ever had the odd glass of wine with friends. Friends was a loose term, as well. Amelie rarely stayed in a place long enough to form lasting relationships.
A California condor swooped overhead and disappeared over the treetops.
Amelie’s heart was in her throat. They hadn’t had birds like this out in Michigan, where she’d grown up.
They hadn’t had cars either. She’d had to learn how to drive at age nineteen, taking lessons from an old boyfriend before going through driver’s ed with twelve pimple-covered fifteen-year-olds.
It was eight thirty when her agent called.
“Hey! How are you?” Amelie’s voice was bright and happy. She hadn’t spoken with Penelope in a few months, not on the phone, and she was so starved for human connection that she would have talked to anyone right now. But she liked Penelope. Penelope had given her a chance when nobody else would.
“Hey,” Penelope said. “I’m fine, you know. Getting ready for Christmas. My kids are crazy excited. I hope you can’t hear them?”
Amelie listened hard, eager to hear Penelope’s children’s wild celebrations across the line. She heard nothing but Penelope’s empty office, probably.
“I can’t,” Amelie said. “Sounds like fun, though.”
“It’s fun. But it’s driving me up the wall,” Penelope said. Her voice was strained. “Listen, Amelie, I don’t want to beat around the bush.”
Amelie’s heart stopped beating. “Okay.”
“Thanks for sending the newest draft of your book,” Penelope said.
Amelie wanted to protest before Penelope said anything else. She tried to point out that Penelope hadn’t had time to read the whole thing. She wanted to say that if Penelope didn’t like the first chapter, she could take it out. She could take everything out. She could fix it.
But before she could say anything else, Penelope continued.
“I wanted to tell you that I’m leaving the business,” Penelope announced.
Amelie closed her eyes. A soft breeze played over her cheeks.
“It’s tough, but I have to think about the bigger picture,” Penelope was saying. “I have to think about my family, the kids. I mean, we got so close with your last few books. So close. And I’m really proud of the work we did together. I hope you know that.”
Amelie could barely hear her own voice when she said, “I do.” But did she? She felt like she didn’t know anything!
Most of all, she wanted to ask her agent why she was just telling her this now? Amelie had worked tirelessly on this newest draft, thinking Penelope wanted it ASAP. But now, she wasn’t even going to read it? She probably hadn’t even opened the document!
Amelie half blacked out before they hung up. She mumbled, “Merry Christmas,” wondering, as she said it, if Penelope would ever come back to the writing world, if she’d ever try to get Amelie back. But their conversation had an air of finality to it.
Amelie felt doomed.
She went inside and poured herself another finger of whiskey. She deserved it.
But Amelie couldn’t believe this. She’d signed with Penelope more than three years ago and thought her career would be booming right now.
She’d imagined her books in bookstores, maybe a Netflix adaptation on the horizon.
She’d imagined interviews and book tours.
She hadn’t pictured herself alone in a cabin in Big Sur, her agent abandoning her, her life on pause.
Christmas was three weeks away. Would she spend it here in the cabin, watching movies, waiting for time to pass?
And what was the point of writing anymore, anyway? She was agent-less. She had nothing.
That night, when Amelie drifted off to sleep, she dreamed of Willa.
In the dream, Amelie and Willa were in Big Sur together, screaming at one another without understanding what the other was saying. It was like neither of them spoke English anymore, nor the other’s language. Willa’s face was blotchy with anger, and Amelie’s body was shaking.
When Amelie woke up, she was covered in sweat.
It was three thirty in the morning. She got up and went to the fridge to pour herself a glass of lemon water.
She wondered if the whiskey had caused her strange dream, then remembered the call with Penelope, when she learned she didn’t have an agent anymore.
It crashed in on her. She sat at the edge of a kitchen chair and sipped her water, gazing at the black forest out the window.
She hadn’t had a Willa dream in months.
Realizing she didn’t have her phone, Amelie searched the cabin, throwing blankets and pillows to the side until she found it between the cushions on the sofa. She lit it up, hoping to distract herself with something until she found her way back to sleep. Cat videos. Hair tutorials. Whatever.
But what she saw on the screen made her panic.
She had three missed calls from Willa and two text messages.
WILLA: Where in the world are you, even?
WILLA: Call me.
Amelie’s chest and cheeks filled with sweat. Gripping her phone, she went back onto the porch and sat in the chill. She kept checking to make sure the messages and calls were real.
Her dream now felt like a sign. Like she knew Willa needed to talk to her.
She remembered back in elementary and high school, when they’d felt such a strong connection to one another that they often hadn’t needed to talk to know what the other was thinking.
Other kids on the island didn’t question it. They called it their twin thing.
Over the years, Amelie had put aside her ideas about twin connections. She and Willa were too different now. Their lives had nothing in common.
Why had Willa reached out? Amelie searched her mind for answers.
Was there something wrong with their family?
Was someone sick? Willa and Amelie were approaching forty, which meant that everyone else was much, much older, so anything was possible.
Her pulse quickened, and tears sprang to her eyes.
But still, she could do nothing. She felt frozen.
For the first time in a few years, Amelie googled her sister’s name: Willa Caraway.
The search results were all about Willa’s work in advertising, the commercials she’d directed, and the ad copy she’d written.
She had an official-looking website, featuring a glossy and very current photograph.
The picture looked like Amelie, of course—but like Amelie if she’d gone into the corporate world and bought herself a bunch of lady suits.
Amelie couldn’t remember the last time she’d blow-dried her hair or shaved her legs.
Willa would be horrified at the state of Amelie’s eyebrows.
How Amelie missed her sister!
Amelie darkened her phone and closed her eyes. It was four thirty, and she knew that sleep wouldn’t find her again.
Out of nowhere, she remembered Willa on the last day.
They were on the ferry, leaving Mackinac Island forever. They hadn’t spoken all morning and were sick to their stomachs, their hands wrapped around the railing, watching their island get smaller and smaller on the massive lake.
Willa had said, “I’m going to do everything I can to put this behind me. I don’t want this to haunt me forever. I don’t want to have to think about it every single day of my life.”
Amelie’s eyes had smarted. She’d wanted to say, What do you mean? We’ll never be able to get away from this. This is our identity now.
Back then, Willa and Amelie had had to scramble and create dreams for themselves, dreams that had nothing to do with Mackinac Island. Amelie had decided to become a writer. Novels, screenplays, whatever. She’d do it all, as long as it was creative. And Willa had mentioned directing, making films.
Amelie was surprised that Willa had turned her back on film.
She’d thrown herself completely into making commercials and advertisements, selling things to people who didn’t need so many things.
Amelie hadn’t turned her back on her writing.
But it seemed like the writing world was turning its back on her.
She knew she needed to call Willa back. She spent all morning trying to find the strength to reach out. But the universe had other plans for her.
The person who owned the cabin where she’d spent the past four months called to say she needed her place back sooner rather than later. “I know we said nine months, but my boyfriend and I broke up, and I need to come home,” she said, her voice wavering. It was clear she was on the verge of tears.
Amelie stood in stunned silence, realizing that the haven she’d found for herself was suddenly no more.
“I’ll give you your December rent back,” her landlord promised. “And your deposits, of course. I really am sorry. I hope you’ll find somewhere to be by Christmas.”
Amelie told her landlord she’d pack up and leave immediately.
It was time to leave Big Sur. Perhaps it was time to get out of California as well.
As she shoved her suitcases in the trunk of her clunky Cadillac, she tried to memorize every tree along the edge of the cabin and the specific language of the bubbling river.
But she knew that once she turned down Highway 1 and sped out of Big Sur, her memories would begin to drift out of her.
Mackinac Island was the only place in the world emblazoned in her memory. She would never be able to let it go.