Chapter 33 #2
The clock struck midnight and I checked the publisher’s website and socials for its statement about the fraud perpetrated on me.
I did as Harper had instructed and uploaded my statement to the necessary platforms. Then I slammed my laptop shut and prayed again that neither statement would garner much attention.
When I woke up the next morning, I refrained from checking for any fallout before breakfast. I was getting Lucy ready for tennis camp when Rebecca stopped over and offered to drop Lucy on her way to work.
As the club was on my way to work, too, I promptly declined.
That was when she cast a sympathetic glance my way and suggested that perhaps I take a few days to work from home, “just until the hullabaloo dies down.”
So there would be no miracles. I was on my way to being publicly outed as a fool. “It’s that bad?”
She winced. “It’ll die down—you’ll see. These things always do. It’s a slow news day, so you know how that goes. These kinds of stories have a rhythm. You just need to bide your time until the tide turns.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. I didn’t even want to know what was being said by which outlets, which gossip sites, not to mention my fellow publishing professionals. “OK, I’ll stay home. Thanks, Rebecca.”
And so I did. And lord help me, I tried to stay deep in the work bubble. But the black hole drew me in nonetheless.
By the time Wednesday rolled around, I was a mess.
The first piece of bad news was that Max’s stoner roommate had outed his identity in an interview with TMZ.
So far, Max himself had been true to his word and refused to comment.
Although I had less than zero faith he would continue to keep his trap shut, for now I would take the one small win.
Still, the social media buzz was brutal, made worse by his headshots now popping up everywhere.
Among the more ego-destroying comments: Come on, it’s obvious.
The dude’s so freaking hot and she’s a 7—basic at best. Either she knew it was a ruse and went along with it, or she’s one batty betty.
And that was before mainstream media outlets caught wind of the story and started competing for the most clever headlines for their think pieces, like: Happily-Ever-After Writer: Wacko or Wily?, Send Her to Mars and Don’t Come Back, and The Spectacular Implosion of Love You to Mars and Back.
But the worst thing of all was Sam’s lucky bamboo, which was looking less lucky by the minute.
Over the last few days, it had drooped and turned an unmentionable shade of brown, and nothing I’d done to change its fortune seemed to be helping.
I’d watered, fertilized, watered again, blown it gently with a hair dryer in case I’d watered too much, even sung to it, but it all seemed to be for naught.
As a last-ditch effort, I followed a YouTube video on pruning bamboo plants, hoping an aggressive haircut would be the magic solution.
Frannie arrived earlier than scheduled for my therapy appointment, and it was a good thing she did, because I hadn’t showered since the last time I saw her, three days before.
She took over, marching me through the steps of basic personal hygiene.
Shower. Deodorant. Blow-dry hair. Brush teeth.
And then she led me to the car and, eventually, walked me into the therapist’s office.
She introduced herself to Dr. Field, who did exist, and then metaphorically stripped me naked: “This is my best friend, Thea. I love her but she’s a mess.
She’s a writer whose husband tragically died six years ago, and she’s a single mom.
She’s turned down multiple massive offers to publish a fantastic manuscript she’s been hiding from the world because she’s convinced herself that what she publishes comes true.
Please, I’m begging you to help her.” She nodded and took a few steps toward the reception area before turning back.
“Oh—and please make sure to ask her about her most recent book, which she wrote to manifest her own happily ever after. Also, the fake astronaut she fell in love with.”
“I did not fall in love with him!”
“Sure, Thea. Keep telling yourself that. I saw the way you looked at him.” And then Frannie spun around on her heels and left me alone with this stranger, the person who I was supposed to tell my deepest, darkest fears.
Five feet tall and a hundred pounds at most, Dr. Field had piercing brown eyes and a warm smile.
She also looked to be about my age. From our email correspondence, I’d imagined her as a late-fifties menopausal woman with thin, graying hair and a large rear end.
But this woman could easily be my mimosa buddy in some parallel life.
Despite liking her immediately, that didn’t mean I was prepared to bare my soul to her.
I sat down on the love seat opposite her chair, noted the boxes of tissues on both end tables, and figured either I could take control of this expensive chat or she would.
Maybe this wouldn’t be so awful. Maybe I could pretend we were on a platonic Hinge date and this was our first get-to-know-you meetup and all we needed was an icebreaker to get us through it.
“So, uh, Dr. Field? I was hoping we could talk about the idea of coincidence today. Like, how do people make sense of really strange coincidences? You know, like, are they fate or destiny? Or is there some invisible hand behind them? Or are they truly chance events? That sort of thing.”
“How about if we work our way back to metaphysical questions after we talk about you for a little while?” She leaned forward expectantly and opened a notebook—and all of a sudden, this did not feel like champagne brunch.
My eyes scanned her office and looked out the third-floor window for any clue on how to proceed.
A clock on the wall told me I’d used up approximately three minutes of our fifty-minute session.
With Frannie working downstairs in the lobby, there was no escape.
“What do you want to know?” I averted my eyes.
“Well, maybe we could start with your husband’s death?” she prompted. “I’m sure it’s a fraught topic, but sometimes I find it’s easier to dive right into the tough stuff.”
Easier for you, maybe.
I shrugged. “There’s not much to say. I had a husband. His name was Sam. I was pregnant with our daughter. He died the same way a character in my first book did. End of story.”
“Can you talk a bit about the aftermath of that? It must have been incredibly difficult to be pregnant and grieving.”
“That’s a pretty open-ended question.” I felt my inner child poised to barge into this session like bees at a summer picnic.
“Fair,” she said, nodding. “Let’s dial in on your mental health in the months afterward.”
“Well, it wasn’t great,” I said in a sarcastic tone.
“I was upside down with grief and anxiety. There were some internet trolls who tried to connect me to Sam’s death because of my book, which was horrible.
Obviously the conspiracy theories were totally debunked, but do you have any idea what it’s like to know there are people out there who’ve decided you’re evil and that you’re responsible for causing your own greatest pain?
To feel guilt and shame for something you didn’t do? ”
“Did that feeling go away eventually?” she asked.
“Yes and no,” I said honestly. “It definitely faded. I still sometimes have to remind myself there was no way I could have known back when I’d conceptualized that story that I’d actually been imagining and writing details that would end up describing my own husband’s death.”
“Did you ever believe your novel caused Sam’s death?” Her perfect eyebrows lifted a millimeter, more an invitation than a command to answer.
“Yeah, like I said at the top of the hour. I have some questions about where coincidence ends and other explanations begin. Maybe we can talk about that now?” I could feel myself shutting down.
She sat there quietly, her big brown puppy dog eyes sizing me up.
I looked away. “Fine. Did I believe it? Again, yes and no. Do we ever know the truth about the mysterious workings of the universe? What I did know for sure was that I had written in great detail about a husband getting hit by a car while out on a run after an argument with his wife, and then my own husband was killed in the very same way.”
“And what do you think now?” she asked.
“Now? Now I think I have a decent job, and a five-year-old daughter, and a dog, and a public humiliation problem—and a full bladder.” I looked at the door. “Where’s the bathroom? Am I allowed a bathroom break?”
“Of course, Thea.” She gestured toward the door. “It’s right outside.”
It was getting to be a bad habit of mine, this stalling in bathrooms. But I took as much time in there as I possibly could without creating legitimate concern that I had drowned in the toilet.
When I returned, Dr. Field said, “What kind of dog do you have?”
“Dog?” I echoed. “That’s what you want to talk about?”
“Thea, it’s not a trick question.”
“Sorry. He’s a beagle. A really cute one.” Please don’t ask his name.
“Oh, how sweet. I love beagles.” She smiled and leaned back. “What’s his name?”
Shoot me now.
“His name is Sam The Dog.” As her smile twisted into a grimace, I quickly raised a hand. “Before you think anything too awful, you should know that my daughter named him after her late father when she was three and a half. She was very stubborn about the name, so it stuck.”
“I see,” she said. “Can we talk a bit about this other manuscript Frannie mentioned?”
I was starting to feel a bit uneasy. Though Dr. Field was a young and fresh-faced counselor, she was questioning me like a seasoned pro. “There’s not much to say. It’s about a family dealing with the aftermath of their child getting kidnapped.”
“And you’re worried about your daughter getting kidnapped if you publish it?”
I shrugged. “Look, I know it sounds bad, but there’s more to it.
I turned down the first offer when I was pregnant and newly widowed.
It simply wasn’t a theory I felt compelled to test. Bad karma.
Besides, it was only one manuscript that took me six months to write.
I could always write another. And I did .
. . eventually. It was no big loss.” As I said it, I remembered Frannie had blown my cover story to hell.
Her eyes widened, no doubt thinking of those large advances. Oh, how I longed for the days when only Harper knew the size of the deals I was turning down. “And it’s been, what, over five years now,” she continued. “And you’re still saying no?”
“My agent and I have discussed it from time to time.” I congratulated myself for another basically truthful but unrevealing answer. Was I getting good at this?
“Let’s switch gears and talk about the astronaut thing Frannie mentioned.” It felt like her strategy was to keep me so off-balance that I would share intimate details without stopping to think about it. But I was onto her.
“Which part?” I stalled. “The fact I was bamboozled into thinking I’d met an astronaut on the very day my romance novel about an astronaut was published?”
“I was thinking more about the reasons you wrote that book, which, and here I must confess, I read and loved.”
“Thank you?” I said lamely.
“So did you really believe, like Frannie said, that you were writing your own happily ever after?”
“It would be more accurate to say I didn’t not believe it.”
She screwed up her face. “What does that mean, exactly?”
I gave her my steadiest gaze. “It means that if it happened, so be it. But I can’t deny it felt safer putting happy karma out into the world.”
We continued like this for another half an hour or so, with Dr. Field asking questions while I bobbed and weaved like a heavyweight boxing champion.
Until, at last, Dr. Field glanced at the clock.
“Well, that seems like a great place to end today.” She flipped open her paper calendar, which I had to respect as a writer.
“I have another opening on Monday at two p.m. if you’d like to continue. ”
Although she said it in the most straightforward way possible, I couldn’t help hearing it as an invitation to attend my own execution.
This therapy business was for the birds, but Frannie was unlikely to let me off the hook this quickly.
Could I stand to suffer through another few painful sessions? I nodded uncertainly.
“Thea, can I say something?” She didn’t wait for me to answer.
“I have a very busy practice. I’m practically overflowing with patients who are working very hard with me to improve their states of mind.
You, on the other hand, don’t seem to be the most willing of participants.
So I’m going to need you to think hard over the next few days about whether you’re willing to really commit to this process.
If the same pattern continues on Monday, I’ll have no choice but to request you step aside for another client willing to do the work. ”
With a grimace, I tried to picture how Frannie would react to me getting fired by my therapist. “I’m sorry. I hope you won’t take my attitude personally.”
“I won’t,” she assured me. “But let’s try for a little more openness next week?”
“I’ll try,” I said.
It was obvious to us both that I wasn’t making any promises.