Chapter 7 #2
“If I had, would you have come around?” I raised my eyebrows.
“If I’m being honest, probably not.”
I could hear defeat in Rebecca’s voice, so instead of screaming, Exactly! like I wanted to, I claimed my victory with a nearly imperceptible nod.
“I don’t suppose there’s anything else you want to share? Perhaps a plan to bring home an elephant or maybe a potbellied pig?” Rebecca said with an exasperated smile.
I froze. Did she suspect I was writing again?
Maybe this was one of those in for a penny, in for a pound situations.
I opened my mouth to tell her about the new book I was planning to write when an ambulance siren started wailing in the distance.
It felt like a warning, and a reminder of all the pain my last publishing effort had rained down upon us.
On the plus side, this announcement would make an unfortunately named dog seem beyond trivial.
But what if I told her and she objected?
Then I would have to choose between openly defying her or doing it behind her back anyway.
Setting aside that I was a grown woman who shouldn’t have to ask anyone for permission to pursue her chosen career, neither option was likely to be a win for family relations.
Maybe it was cowardly, but I chose to heed the warning. “Nope,” I said.
As I walked back to the guesthouse, I was already second-guessing my decision.
I loved our unconventional family unit and truly didn’t want to hurt anyone.
But I sometimes felt like a teenager bristling over a curfew.
Anyway, this could all be moot. What was the point of upsetting Rebecca before there was something concrete to share?
I still hadn’t landed on a larger-than-life hero. Maybe I never would.
I swung open the front door and, as I did a thousand times a day, wished Sam were here.
Maybe Rebecca did have a point about me being a little stuck in the past. But if Sam were here, he would love Lucy, and our dog would definitely have a better name.
We wouldn’t still be living with his parents.
He would tell me to stop perseverating and go write this book. But he wasn’t here.
Instead, Sam’s bright-blue eyes and gleaming smile greeted me by way of the five-by-seven framed photo on the entry table. I bent over and momentarily succumbed to the urge to lose myself in his assured gaze.
Sam, could you please just give me a sign?
After William and Lucy left for her tennis lesson, I stayed behind to clean up and take a quick shower.
When I emerged from the bathroom, a strange crackling noise greeted me.
As I approached the living room, I discovered Sam The Dog with his legs splayed behind him Superman-style, and his teeth gleefully crunching something.
He’d devoured his kibble breakfast before I left him to shower, so whatever he was eating now was, by definition, not sanctioned.
In the space of a heartbeat, I imagined having to tell Lucy that her new puppy had tragically died of an intestinal obstruction.
I dropped to the floor and frantically tried to pry open his jaws.
He resisted mightily, making multiple attempts to swallow the object of his affection.
When he started to gag, I scooped a finger through his needle-toothed mouth.
What emerged were the remnants of one of Lucy’s LEGO people.
I was turning over the unidentifiable figure in my hand, wondering which LEGO world would be forever shorthanded, when Sam The Dog barfed.
And there, in the middle of the small bilious pile, was the answer to my question: a NASA space helmet from the International Space Station Frannie had given Lucy.
Which meant that the mangled plastic figure I held in my palm was an astronaut.
Wait, an astronaut? Wasn’t an astronaut someone who could easily get lost for several years before returning to his regularly scheduled life?
Holy crap. This was so perfect I couldn’t believe I’d overlooked it.
Wrinkling my nose, I reached into the vomit puddle to pluck out the helmet and then sanitized it in the sink.
Then I positioned the helmet on top of what remained of the astronaut’s head, snapping it into place with a satisfying click.
In that moment, I knew there was no way on earth (pun intended) I could attribute this bizarre turn of events solely to coincidence.
I mean, the-animal-recently-named-after-Sam presented me with the hero of my new novel?
A hero whose essential characteristics would, despite Frannie’s admonitions, be molded in Sam’s image?
Notwithstanding that Sam The Dog had done this in perhaps the second most disgusting way possible, the facts remained.
I’d begged for a sign from Sam only minutes earlier.
This had to be Sam weighing in, urging me to write this novel. Telling me everything would be OK.
I set the astronaut on the drying rack and cleaned up the rest of Sam The Dog’s mess.
Then I gave him a belly rub to end all belly rubs.
Tomorrow, I would start this book. As my writing brain chugged to life after a long slumber, a feeling of exuberance overtook me.
I couldn’t wait to inhabit this wonderful fantasy world.
Before bed that night, I stood in front of the mirror and made a solemn promise that I would not open the door to doubts until the draft was done.
Every morning thereafter, at 4:00 a.m., I woke up to my phone alarm vibrating under my pillow, grabbed a cold-brew coffee from the fridge, and worked in bed until Lucy and the puppy woke up.
During the day, any moments I had between meetings or client work, I was writing.
I allowed the Packers to run roughshod over Lucy’s extracurriculars.
Yes, I worried Lucy was playing too much tennis for such a young child, but there was no denying it was free babysitting and I could ratchet it back after I had written this book.
I did insist that at least two days a week be something other than tennis.
Every week, at Friday-night family dinner, Rebecca glowed in her assessment of how hard I was working for the agency, and William relished his newfound role as primary afternoon caregiver as he happily cut back his hours at the office.
To throw Rebecca a bone, I stopped saying I missed Sam as my weekly thorn and came up with innocuous ones, like getting a parking ticket or going to the dentist. Each night, Lucy and I snuggled in bed after bath time, reading, taking turns telling stories from our days, and giggling.
After three-plus months of researching, plotting, and writing, and two months of revisions, I had my draft.
Both the process of writing the story and the final product were every bit as exhilarating as I’d hoped.
My astronaut was named Zach. He was romantic, intelligent, accomplished—and imbued with all the best of Sam.
His quirky humor and mannerisms, the deep and gentle tone of his voice, his killer body, and best of all, his wholehearted love for me.
And by me, I obviously meant my protagonist, Tallulah.
All of which brought me to a decision point.
I could still bury the book. I could tell Harper the story hadn’t panned out after all. Or, I could give it to her and face the music, which, at least as far as Rebecca was concerned, would be less uplifting Mozart sonata and more dissonant Schoenberg chaos-symphony.
In an act of either supreme bravery or unparalleled stupidity, I chose door number two.
Harper read the entire manuscript in one day and called to let me know that she loved it, and would send it off to editors right away.
And then we waited. And waited. At first the passes trickled in.
Then they were a deluge. There were sixteen variations of “not a fit for our list” and “afraid I have to step aside here.” We were down to the last two editors on Harper’s pitch list when we got our yes.
It was a meager advance from a niche publisher, but it was an offer.
And really all I wanted was to publish a book and not have anything horrible happen.
So I agreed to the deal and received a fast-tracked publication date twelve months in the future.
The publisher retitled the book Love You to Mars and Back, and I resolved to finally come clean to Rebecca and William.
It took only another nine months and two weeks.