Chapter 40
Eighteen Months Later
When my publication date for Call of the Void arrived three months ago, my publisher held a packed-to-the-gills launch event back at the Abbot Kinney Modern Events Center, featuring a no-guardrails interview with the NPR culture editor.
As I was taking the stage that night, it occurred to me that I wasn’t nearly as anxious as I’d been for the launch of Love You to Mars and Back.
Of course, I would probably always be a little nervous about publishing a new work; it was in my DNA.
However, I was grateful for this new sense of peace, which I’d come by the hard way—by confronting my demons, traumas, and grief under the able care of Dr. Field.
It also didn’t hurt that the book was already being heralded as an instant bestseller.
But there was an additional factor keeping the public-speaking butterflies at bay that evening.
A few hours before the launch event, as I was waiting for Lucy’s tennis lesson to end, I’d received an invitation to attend the worldwide movie premiere of Love You to Mars and Back three months hence.
From the moment I received that invitation, I’d been consumed with one question and one question only: Could I find a way to attend the premiere and bask in my Hollywood glory moment—without running into Max?
The three months sped by, until three months hence was suddenly tonight.
In the intervening ninety days, I’d changed my mind about attending no less than twice a day.
Beyond the overriding “how to avoid Max” question, anxiety plagued me on many levels.
For one, it was a black-tie premiere, and the last time I wore a full-length gown and high heels was the day I got married.
Would I turn my ankle on the red carpet or trip on my own hem with TMZ there to memorialize my gracelessness with a video clip?
Would I speak to a reporter with a bacon-wrapped fig stuck in the small gap between my front teeth?
Minor concerns, but still. For another, the room would be filled with Hollywood royalty, which was intimidating to say the least. Sure, I was a writer, which gave me license to not be the prettiest girl there, but how could I expect to stand in the same room as Caitlin Cabot and feel anything but dull in comparison?
Not to mention that I was petrified of being asked what I was working on next.
For the last nine months, ever since copyedits were completed for Call of the Void, I’d been suffering from a ferocious case of writer’s block.
My manuscript for Call of the Void had been completed before Sam died, and was thematically based on our love.
In writing Love You to Mars and Back, I’d set out to test my fear that what I wrote came true by trying to magically bring back some version of Sam.
In short, everything I’d written for the last decade had been based on, or because of, Sam.
Now that I felt free to write about literally anything, I could think of absolutely nothing.
I needed a new muse, but my mind was blank. The plight of a broken writer.
In the plus column, I had a whole arsenal of secret weapons with me tonight.
As we walked through the theater lobby, Frannie’s arm was looped through mine for support.
Behind us were Lucy and my mom, who Lucy now referred to as Professor Nana, along with Harper, Noah, Pax, and Penelope.
My mom couldn’t seem to get enough of Lucy these days and had made a special trip down from the Bay Area for the premiere.
My dad was a no-show, as usual, because despite this night’s resemblance to fantasy, I wasn’t living in a fantasy world.
A greeter directed us toward the front of the theater.
We walked through the doors to find the massive screen lit up with the movie-poster scene of my nightmares.
My legs stopped working, and my heart nearly did, too.
Frannie let out a soft whistle. The half-cocked grin, dripping with admiration and desire, on Max’s enlarged face as he drank in Caitlin Cabot’s big soulful eyes, was the same one he’d often shone on me before the dream of an “us” fell apart.
With herculean effort, I tore my gaze away, but it was as though a fog had engulfed me.
All the big feelings I’d had for him, and the horrible, embarrassing months that followed, washed over me like a wave, covering me with goose bumps.
Lucy, now seven going on seventeen, must have sensed I needed a pep talk.
She sidled up to me and said, “Mommy, I think Daddy would have been really happy today.” Her voice vibrated in my ribs, which were covered by only the barest layer of blush-pink silk.
I’d gone all out with my gown. Feeling as beautiful as possible was the best armor I could think of to get through tonight.
I pulled Lucy in for a sideways hug. “Almost as happy as he was when he heard your heartbeat, Jellybean.” It was a truth that still had the power to level me.
“Here come Grandma and Grandpa!” Lucy waved excitedly.
I turned to see Rebecca and William coming down the aisle toward us, William guiding Rebecca with a hand around her waist. As I thought of the distance they’d traveled the past year and a half—the distance we’d all traveled—a smile crept onto my face.
For a few months following the dramatic shattering of our family, I’d continued to resist Rebecca’s overtures, intent on nursing my wounds and punishing her.
But Lucy missed her grandma terribly. Eventually, I could no longer avoid the conclusion that Lucy deserved all the love she could possibly have in her life.
Rebecca had made some massive errors, for which she still apologized on a near-daily basis, but there was never any doubt in my mind that she would lay down her life for Lucy.
When I’d informed William about this new arrangement, he was still seething over Rebecca’s betrayal, but he’d given me his blessing as long as I left him out of it.
After several months of freezing Rebecca out of his life, during which time they sold their business, William began to thaw.
First, he agreed to let Rebecca move out of the Airbnb she’d been renting and into the guesthouse.
It was this shift that enabled all of us to congregate on Saturday afternoons at the neutral territory of their pool, where Lucy’s delirious cannonballs and epic games of Marco Polo helped us learn how to coexist again.
Over lemonade one afternoon, Rebecca shared she’d been making progress with her therapist, and wondered if we’d consider joining her for family therapy as well. William and I agreed to participate.
In the beginning, I believed this exercise in healing was solely for Lucy’s benefit.
But the more the three of us learned to be honest with each other and ourselves, the more I came to appreciate that each of us had been operating from a place of deep, unresolved grief.
Whereas mine had led to self-blame and magical thinking, William’s had led to an unhealthy obsession with tennis.
And Rebecca’s particular brand of guilt-ridden grief had blinded her from seeing how she’d allowed her one unfortunate, hotheaded moment with Sam to turn into a continuing tragedy for us all.
Even once I understood this on an intellectual level, it took a while for forgiveness to come.
But in the end, we were a family, and all families were flawed.
With Sam’s optimistic spirit never far from our minds, we all made a choice to move forward with love and grace.
It wasn’t easy, but it was right—and worth it.
As for my own love life, I knew after the humiliating Max debacle that I would never settle for love without the essential combination of a deep wellspring of mutual (and verifiable) trust and magnetic attraction.
I’d been lucky enough to experience both with Sam.
Max only got credit for attraction—and maybe a little extra credit for his excellent bantering skills.
I had started dating again, although not on the apps.
Never on the apps. Not after all those horrifying stories from my readers.
All potential romantic partners had to be personally known by trusted people in my life.
Hot ER Doc, a.k.a. Noah, anointed himself Frannie’s chief of staff on project Find Thea a Boyfriend.
Nearly every weekend, Frannie and Noah dragged me out on double dates with fully vetted doctors, nurses, and software engineers.
At Rebecca’s insistence, she and William started babysitting Penelope, Pax, and Lucy most Saturday nights.
Their warmth and enthusiasm for my attempts to date, even though it meant moving on from their son, were touching, although so far none of these dates had come close to warranting a third.
Still, I was grateful for their acceptance—it was easily the best gift they’d ever given me.
It was an added bonus for all of us to see Noah’s kids blossoming under the watchful eyes of more loving adults.
And my new favorite pastime, hands down, was bearing witness to Frannie’s growth, as her busy brain worked in overdrive to rewrite the unhealthy programming of her childhood, giving her space to believe she might one day be the excellent, loving stepmom she never had.