Chapter 11 Roan
ROAN
“Unicorns training to be space cadets?” I echo, just to be sure I really heard what I thought she said.
Taylor nods, still looking at her hands. But because I’m getting to know her better, I’m willing to bet that there are tears welling in her eyes and she’s about two seconds from hurling herself into the back room, claiming she has a few more books to shelve.
“That’s awesome,” I tell her honestly.
That snaps her eyes up to meet mine, and I see the tears I suspected in her beautiful brown eyes.
I immediately want to burn down the world of anyone who would make her feel that way.
“I think it sounds really cool,” I tell her honestly. “I’m tired of having to skim through fairytale retellings to see if they’re appropriate for my ten-year-old—and plenty of them aren’t. Bring on the space unicorns.”
“Really?” she asks, sniffling a little.
“Absolutely,” I tell her. “And besides, didn’t the president of your company have to sign off on this? They must have thought it was a good idea.”
“Well, he was traveling,” she says, looking unhappy again. “He was wrapped up and didn’t want to hear a book pitch. He told me that if I loved it, I should buy it. And he told the lawyer to write up whatever I wanted.”
“He really believed in you,” I say, nodding.
“I’d found some commercially successful titles for him already,” she says, nodding.
“Anyway, I sat down with the author and her agent and bought it all—ebook, print, audio, translations, film and TV rights, everything. I just knew this was going to be the next big thing, and if Wish Tree Press was really going to back Starhoof, then we needed to know we had everything we needed to bring it to the world in every possible format, and earn back our investment.”
“Wow,” I say. “Was it expensive?”
“Yes,” she says. “But it was fair. And Angeline, the author, she was so happy. Once the contract was signed, she fell into her agent’s arms crying. It was a huge moment for all of us.”
I nod, picturing it, three dedicated women knowing they were about to bring something wonderful into the world. It seems like a good thing to me. But I also know that this particular story doesn’t have a happy ending—at least not for Taylor.
“I was so happy,” she says. “It was an unorthodox choice, but I just knew it was going to hit right with readers.”
I brace myself for whatever is coming next.
“When my boss got back and saw what I’d bought and how much I’d spent, he was furious,” she says, shaking her head.
“And the rest of the office was in stitches that I’d bought the biggest stinker at the fair.
It was bad enough to get laughed at, but when he called me back to his office, he just looked betrayed. ”
Her eyes are haunted now as she speaks. Publishing contracts and space unicorns might seem unimportant to a lot of people, but this was Taylor’s whole world, and I can feel her pain in every word.
“He said I might have ruined the company,” she goes on flatly. “He said they could have gotten ebook and paperback rights on three commercial manuscripts for what I’d spent on that one unproven piece, and that he’d trusted me to have Wish Tree’s best interests in mind.”
“Oh, Taylor,” I say, wishing I could take away the pain she must feel just remembering.
“And then he let me go, of course,” she says. “But he said he’d probably be letting everyone go soon, since there was no way he could recoup what I spent on Starhoof, let alone make enough profit to pay the bills.”
“That sounds kind of extreme,” I offer.
“He’s right,” she tells me. “I swung too hard. There’s a reason those fairytale romances with the girls in pretty dresses do so well. Everyone loves them. Who would love a story about unicorns in space?”
“I guess you’ll find out,” I say, nodding to her phone.
“Oh,” she says. “Right. Well, they aren’t putting anything into it—no advertising, no asking other genre authors to read it and say nice things, no blog tours, no radio ads, nothing.
Angeline is a debut author, so she has no existing audience to tap.
It’s just been dumped online with millions of other books. The cover isn’t even that good.”
She holds up her phone to show me the blandest looking cover I’ve ever seen. It’s pale blue with slightly less pale blue font. It looks more like a 1950s cookbook than a young adult adventure.
Taylor’s face is so sad—it’s like she can’t decide which to feel worse about, the author whose work is about to be buried under a million other books, or the company she clearly loves that she thinks she ruined.
“I’m sorry, Taylor,” I tell her. “For you, for the author, for your boss. He should have let you pitch the book.”
“He trusted me,” she says, shaking her head. “And I betrayed that trust. I knew it was an unusual choice. I should have insisted that he call me back. But… I was afraid someone else would buy those rights while I argued with him.”
She chuckles now at the idea that anyone else would have bought the book she loves so much, but her smile is bitter. I hate the idea of any kind of bitterness in this young woman who approaches everything with an open heart.
“Taylor, if you believed in that book, it has to be a good one,” I tell her firmly. “Whether it’s a commercial hit or not, isn’t it good that it’s out there for readers to find?”
She nods slowly, but she doesn’t look entirely convinced. And I don’t know what else to say.
“Anyway,” she says, wiping the tears from her cheeks and shaking her head as if to clear it.
“Now you know everything. I’m the kind of person who can have her dream right in the palm of her hand and throw it away.
I lost the trust of the person who believed in me most. And I guess I’ve lost trust in myself too. ”
“I’ve done the same,” I say without thinking about it.
Her eyes meet mine and she leans toward me, her own troubles forgotten.
“How?” she asks me. “When?”
“I’m not a complicated man,” I tell her.
She looks like she’s going to smile at that, though I have no idea why.
“All I ever wanted was to grow trees and have a family,” I tell her.
“I was born into the farm and I knew Erica all my life. We made a few mistakes, and Meg came along before we really meant her to. But that was just fine by me—marrying young and getting started on a family right away was all I’d ever wanted. ”
Taylor nods, looking like she gets it. That’s a funny attitude for a city girl whose whole world was her career. But Taylor’s nothing if not sympathetic. Maybe it’s from reading all those books.
“Anyway, I thought things had fallen into place,” I go on.
“And when Erica talked about wanting to leave Angel Mountain, see the world, and have a life, I figured it was a pipe dream. I actually started setting aside a little something whenever I could—figured I’d take her on a vacation when I had enough. Mom and Dad would have watched Meg…”
Just talking about it reminds me of how blind I’d been at the time, and I wonder if Taylor thinks I’m dumb as a rock.
She doesn’t say a thing though, just listens, her brown eyes so serious.
“Well, she didn’t want a vacation,” I say, with my own bitter smile. “When Meg was two, Erica finally left us to work as a waitress at a bar in Philly. She cut us off completely, doesn’t even visit or call.”
“I’m so sorry,” Taylor says softly.
“If she’d gone to Europe and run off with a French guy or something, it would have been a lot better,” I admit out loud for the first time.
“Why?” Taylor asks.
“Because she would have at least been running to something,” I say. “But she just went to have a worse life than the one she had here. She was running from me, and my farm, and my old-timey dreams.”
“I don’t know,” Taylor says, frowning. “It sounds to me like she was running to something.”
“To what?” I ask. “A bug-infested Philly apartment with two roommates? A dead-end job in a dive bar?”
“Freedom,” Taylor says simply. “A life on her own terms, by the work of her own hands, even if it’s not much.”
I think about that for a minute, and weirdly I kind of get it.
“Look at it this way,” she says. “Someone from this town could easily go to law school, right? Earn a lot of money? Live in a mansion?”
“With land prices in the Poconos how they are now?” I ask. “Maybe a small one?”
“Well, would the guy in that small mansion look at someone like you and say that you’re not living any kind of life?” she asks me. “Toiling away on a farm in the middle of nowhere?”
“Maybe,” I say, shrugging.
“And what would you say to him?” she asks.
“I’m doing what I want to be doing,” I say immediately.
She nods, and leans back, not saying I told you so. Just giving me space to reframe the last eight years of my life.
“I see your point,” I tell her after a moment. “I do.”
She smiles.
“I’ll always wish I’d understood her better when she was my wife,” I admit. “But I’m trying to make better decisions now, be there more for the people I want to have in my life.”
Her smile softens as she looks away.
And it hits me that I’ve shown up for Taylor in ways I never would have thought I was capable of after Erica.
I should tell her that—tell her what she means to me.
Or maybe I’m just being silly.
“Taylor?” Meg calls out from the front of the shop before I have a chance to decide.
Taylor is on her feet in a heartbeat, but Meg skids to a halt in the aisle between shelves before we even have time to leave the table.
“There you are,” Meg says happily. “We did get Chinese food.”
“We sure did,” Taylor says, grabbing Meg’s hand and leading her to the third chair, the one that’s between us. “I hope you don’t mind that we already got started. Your dad set aside a plate for you big enough to give you a bellyache.”
Meg giggles in delight at that idea and for a second I can picture this same scene unfolding at our own kitchen table, the three of us sharing a real life together, not the pretend one we have at the bookshop.
Taylor catches my eye as Meg sinks her chopsticks into a mountain of lo mein.
Taylor still seems fragile to me—young and recently disappointed by the world. But I know from what she’s done here that she’s stronger than she looks. And right now, there’s hope in her beautiful eyes, and something else that looks a lot like tenderness.
It would be the simplest thing in the world to tumble head over heels for her.
My heart thumps helplessly in my chest as I try to think of any reason why I shouldn’t just let myself fall.