Chapter 5
The rest of the weekend passed in a haze of two birthday parties, two tennis lessons, and one playdate.
Without a moment to think, Harper’s deadline galloped ever closer.
And now it was Sunday night. Five days left.
Even if I could come up with a viable idea in time for Harper, how would I then manage to turn it into an entire novel when I could barely carve out the time to shower?
While Lucy changed into her princess nightgown and I cleaned up after her bath, it felt like I could see the end of my literary road.
I shuddered at the notion of never again experiencing the triumphant feeling when the wisp of an idea had blossomed into a story compelling enough to earn an inch of real estate in a bookstore.
And from there, on into the busy and varied lives of people far and wide, into their bedrooms, their airplane carry-ons, their beach bags, and as gifts they bestowed on friends.
I still wanted to write, but could I ever get over my fear of publishing?
“Mommy, I’m ready for stories,” Lucy called out from her bedroom.
I walked into the room to find her kneeling in front of her pink bookshelf with books scattered all around her.
“What’s it going to be tonight, Jellybean?” I prayed she wouldn’t again point to the Disney princess anthology that she’d selected every single night for the past six weeks. “How about we try one of these library books?”
“Will you make up a story?” She crawled into my lap with her blankie and gazed up at me with big, adoring eyes.
Most writers probably made up stories for their children all the time.
Not me. Although I was nearly certain it would be harmless because my issues seemed to be with stories that found their way into the world via publication, it wasn’t a risk I was keen to take.
On the other hand, this was my golden opportunity to break the Disney princess bedtime-story curse.
“OK, I’ll do it,” I said, “but I need your help. Is the main character a person or an animal?”
“A princess,” Lucy said.
Silly me. “What instrument does the princess play?”
“The nose flute,” Lucy answered with alarming speed.
“I don’t know what a nose flute is, but it’s your story.” I stifled a grin. “OK, last question: What special power does the princess have?”
“Princesses don’t have special powers, Mommy.” Delivered like a true princess expert.
I stirred her selections together and summoned ideas. After I switched off the overhead light, we snuggled up in her bed, complete with light-pink sheets dotted with fuchsia princess crowns and yellow wands. I settled on Lucy’s favorite, Sleeping Beauty, as the basis for my tale. “Ready?” I asked.
“Ready!” Lucy said.
I took a deep breath and dove in. “The king and the queen had a son—the prince—whom they loved more than anyone in the whole wide world. The prince was an excellent nose-flute player. One day the king and the queen hosted a concert so all the people of the realm could listen to the prince play, but they did not invite the wizard.”
“That’s not nice, Mommy,” Lucy said.
“You’re right, we should always be inclusive. The wizard was so hurt he became angry. Before the concert, he cast a spell on the prince, who fell into a deep sleep in the castle.”
“The wizard should use his words if he’s mad,” Lucy said.
“We should always use our words.” I ruffled her hair.
“The king and the queen did everything they could, but the prince wouldn’t wake up.
They were so sad. In fact, everyone was sad because they missed the prince and his beautiful music.
” My eyes welled up as I thought of Sam.
“A few kingdoms over, a young princess was learning to play the nose flute.”
“Is that me?” Lucy asked.
“Of course.” This made Lucy giggle. Quite possibly my favorite sound in the entire world.
“Ever since the princess started playing the nose flute, she’d heard stories about a prince and his amazing nose-flute skills.
The princess was determined to wake the prince from his deep sleep.
So one day she set off on her favorite pink unicorn.
When they reached the kingdom, the princess tried to wake the prince, but he wouldn’t budge.
The princess began to play her nose flute.
The king and the queen rejoiced in the music, and then suddenly, the prince’s eyes opened.
The prince and the princess became best friends, and for the rest of their lives, they played the most joyous music for kingdoms near and far. ”
Lucy’s lids were heavy as I concluded the story, but she wriggled onto her side and held my face in her chubby hands. “Mommy, that was the bestest story ever.”
A good review still gave me shivers. But it was Lucy’s blissful smile as she drifted off that electrified me.
It suddenly seemed so obvious: What if I wrote a book with a happy ending?
I felt like an idiot for not thinking of it sooner, but then grief probably wasn’t the most fertile ground for optimism.
The only flaw—OK, maybe not the only flaw—was that happy endings were more of a romance thing, which was a genre I didn’t have a clue how to write.
I was a literary fiction writer. Would I be ridiculed for going from literary to romance?
Then again, why should I care when all I wanted to do was write? I threw on my pj’s. I opened a new Word doc. If happy was all I could stomach, then happy it would need to be. And for the first time since Sam died, I wrote and wrote.
It was 4:00 a.m. when I finished sketching out my idea, and I knew it had legs.
I could always tell when I’d hit on something promising because it invaded my thoughts like a zombie virus and made my hands tingle, as though the entire story were contained in the fat pads at the tips of my fingers, straining to escape like a bull in a bucking chute.
This was a concept unlike anything I’d ever written in my life.
It would be happily ever afters all around—designed not to tempt fate, but to trick it.
I felt lighter just thinking about it.
On the off chance my writing The Long Way Home had been the cosmic hand that set Sam’s death in motion, then perhaps if I wrote a happy story, it, too, might end up coming true.
Did I really believe this could happen? Sort of?
Maybe? What was the worst that could happen?
No one was dying in this book. Or being erased.
Quite the opposite, in fact. If Harper blessed my proposal, I would have the permission I yearned for—permission to fantasize about Sam coming back to me, and even meeting his daughter.
Permission to marinate in all things Sam, which always felt taboo in Rebecca’s presence, allergic as she was to my overt displays of grief.
Before I could lose my nerve, I drafted a brief email to Harper introducing this surprise turn in my career path and attached the proposal.
My eyes were gritty with lack of sleep and it was still dark outside, but it was already breakfast time on the East Coast. I imagined Harper starting her week by checking her email and perusing my proposal over coffee while I caught a couple of precious hours of sleep.
As my hand hovered over the “Send” button, I recalled the excitement of launching my first book.
I’d been on top of the world. A debut author!
A starred review from Kirkus! A (modest) book tour!
Sam had returned to the tennis tour the morning after my launch party, but we WhatsApped every day.
He was so proud, demanding I describe every detail of each bookstore reading, down to what I’d been wearing, which usually devolved into a very different type of conversation.
But then, like the parable of flying too close to the sun, it all came crashing down two months later.
I had to acknowledge this was also what had happened in the nightmare that was still spooking me.
Was that only a bad dream, or was it a warning?
My finger trembled on the mouse. The last time I wrote a book, my husband died.
I still lived in the wreckage of that tumble from grace.
I surveyed the small guesthouse in which Lucy and I had lived for the whole of her life.
My eyes snagged on Sam’s lucky bamboo plant, which he’d had since senior year of college and I’d kept alive in his absence.
My chest constricted. It was dizzying to think about writing again.
Dizzying in the best—and worst—ways imaginable.
Because what if this time it was Lucy who somehow paid the price for my career?
I took a deep breath. What would Frannie say?
Probably that I’d more than satisfied whatever debt I owed to the universe and that I was overdue for some good luck of my own.
Maybe that was true. After all, I’d already withheld a completed manuscript from publication.
I worked hard at a job I didn’t love. Every day, I strived to be the best mom possible.
I even continued to live with my in-laws, in part because sharing Lucy with them helped fill the hole in their hearts left by Sam’s death.
Would it be too greedy to reach for this one small personal win?
One cheerful three-hundred-page story to wash away the sadness?
My heart fluttered. I imagined seeing my married name—the name I shared with Sam—on a book in a bookstore window.
I pictured the impossible: Sam sauntering through the front door again.
Now that I had this tiny taste of hope, I would simply die without it.
I sent the email.
When my alarm chimed three hours later from under my pillow, I rocketed to sitting and whipped my head around, groggy and disoriented, with a sinking feeling that I couldn’t quite pinpoint. At least until my eyes lit on my monitor and a shock of regret zinged through me.