The Young Adult Writer #2
Back in the drawing room, the grandfather clock finally strikes half past twelve, the sound little more than a whispering chime . . . but it gives Millie a bad feeling. Her therapist says she has a habit of catastrophizing, but the thing is, sometimes she’s right.
Like the day the cops came to the door.
She knew, between the moment they knocked and the moment she answered, that her world was about to slide off its axis. She has the same bad feeling now, the second stretching long before Eleanor says the words, and it snaps.
“Arthur Fletch is dead.”
The words land as heavy as the mallet on the gong, rolling over all of them, leaving a stunned silence in their wake. Malcolm squeezes Sienna’s shoulder, his face a rictus of shock.
Cate’s hands go to her mouth
Millie sucks in a breath.
And Jaxon laughs.
The group turns on him, horrified.
“No, I get it,” he says. “This is one of those murder mystery deals.”
A strangled chuckle escapes Millie’s throat, a wheeze of relief. Of course, that’s what this is. Some kind of game, a bonding activity, where they’ll get clues, and work together to find the killer. Maybe it’s her. Or maybe she’ll be the one to solve the crime, and—
And this is the part where she notices no one else is laughing.
Sienna and Malcolm both look stricken.
Cate looks like she wants to crawl inside her emerald cardigan and disappear.
Kenzo’s frowning thoughtfully.
Priscilla has her arms folded and her head bowed.
And when Millie looks back up at Eleanor, her mouth is set, her expression severe.
“I’m afraid,” she says, “this is not ‘one of those murder mystery deals,’ Mr. Knight. Arthur Fletch is, in fact, dead. He drowned a month ago, taking his daily swim in the East Bay.”
Jaxon’s face falls, replaced by a grimace exactly like the emoji that Millie’s mother used to think meant Nice teeth!
Which would be funny, any other time, but now Millie feels her eyes brim with tears.
She doesn’t want to cry—she never wants to cry—but tell that to her body.
Her emotions have always been big, and loud, and overwhelming.
One of her boyfriends literally broke up with her because he said she felt too much.
“You’re like a ten,” he’d told her, which she’d taken for a compliment until he explained that he wasn’t talking about hotness.
Sienna reaches out and gives Millie’s back a tentative rub as her husband says, “I have a question.” Eleanor gestures for him to go ahead.
“You say Fletch died a month ago, but we received our invitation three weeks ago.” Malcolm looks around at the others for confirmation.
“That’s when you all got the email too, I take it? ” Nods all around.
“Yeah,” Jaxon chimes in. “Besides, Arthur Fletch is a freaking legend. If he were really dead, the press would be all over the story by now.”
Eleanor nods, clearly expecting the question.
“An unfortunate but necessary subterfuge, I’m afraid.
Arthur’s passing will of course be announced to the press in due course.
But before it comes to light, well, there are some .
. . loose ends that must be tied up first.” She hesitates for a moment before gesturing to Rufus. “Mr. Beaumont, would you . . . ?”
“Ah, yes. Thank you, Eleanor.”
Rufus steps forward, steadies himself, and then begins.
“Even though I only became his editor a few months ago, I’ve been following Arthur Fletch’s career for more than a decade.
He was a titan. For the last thirty years, his name has been synonymous with the best the genre has to offer, and the Petrarch series represents a culmination of his efforts and, if you believe Arthur’s own statements, his last work of fiction. ”
He smooths the pocket square.
“As I’m sure you’re all aware, the fifth and final installment of that series is set to hit shelves later this year.” Millie nods along with the others. You’d have to be living under a rock—on Pluto—not to know that.
“However,” he goes on, “you’re probably not aware that Arthur tended to view deadlines more like suggestions.
Over the last few years, I’ve been told, wresting the finished drafts from his hands had become an increasingly difficult process.
” He manages a wan smile. “And I fear it was only getting worse. These past few months my poor assistant, Holden, has been on the phone nearly every day, trying to get an update.”
Eleanor clears her throat. “Yes, Rufus, I think this group knows the eccentricities of authors better than most.” That’s what she says. But her look says Rein it in. “The point—” she prompts, and he picks up the cue.
“The point is, Arthur assured me it would be a truly mind-blowing finale. A worthy conclusion for the indomitable Julia Petrarch. But as for the exact details, well, he kept those to himself . . . and then . . .”
Understanding ripples through the room.
But it’s Jaxon who says the words out loud. “Oh my god,” he mutters. “You’re saying he didn’t finish.”
Rufus looks to Eleanor, who draws herself up even taller as she stares at each of them, one by one. “Today is a sad day,” she declares. “Arthur Fletch was one of a kind.”
“Hear, hear,” says Malcolm, raising an imaginary glass. Eleanor continues as if she hasn’t heard him. “But it is also an exciting day. For all of you.”
“He didn’t finish,” Jaxon says again, a strange electricity in his voice. Millie frowns at him, confused.
Eleanor sighs. “Arthur’s deadline was two years ago.”
“Eighteen months,” corrects Rufus, ducking his head under her withering stare.
“And no, Mr. Knight,” continues Eleanor, “he did not complete the book. But he did email me the unfinished manuscript the night before he died.”
“That’s not suspicious,” murmurs Kenzo.
“He sent me his work in progress every night,” she continues.
So Fletch didn’t actually write his books on a typewriter. Millie had just assumed the guy was too old to figure out computers.
“It started as a way to save a copy, after his hard drive crashed back in 2011,” explains Eleanor. “But in recent years it became a method of accountability. And a fortuitous one it turned out to be. For you.”
Millie can still see the giant foyer, the stained-glass portrait of Petrarch herself glowing behind Eleanor’s silver hair, but her mind is racing now. She can practically hear the cogs turning in the other writers’ heads.
“Fletch was remarkably consistent in terms of word count,” continues Eleanor.
“He despised authors whose books got longer and longer—bloated, that’s the word he used—as they became more and more successful.
Each and every Petrarch book ended up within a couple thousand words of 100K.
The manuscript he sent to me the night before his death stands at 90K. ”
Ten thousand words? That’s nothing.
Millie’s standard is three thousand a day, rain or shine, but once, on a horrible deadline, she clocked a whopping seventeen thousand.
Her hands hurt from typing and she could hardly bear to look at her screen the next day, but she still got those three thousand in, even if there were more typos than usual.
It’s extra sad, really.
He was so close to the end.
“Which brings us,” says Eleanor, “to the reason you have all been invited here this weekend . . .”
It’s impossible to tell whether her pause is a sign of hesitation or a flair for the dramatic, but Rufus sees it as a green light to jump in.
“We’re giving one of you the chance to finish Arthur Fletch’s final book . . . to complete Petrarch’s arc . . . to write The End!” he says with a flourish.
The way he holds that pose, he’s clearly expecting applause, or at the very least a Whoop! or a Whoa! Some burst of enthusiasm.
Instead, he gets Millie, who raises her hand and says, “Like, ghostwriting?”
Kenzo inclines his head. “Why would we do that?”
The editor’s flourish collapses.
Priscilla snorts under her breath.
Eleanor pinches the bridge of her nose. “Because, Mr. Gray. The author who wins this job—and have no doubt, you will be competing for it—will be generously compensated. You won’t have your name on the book, of course, and no one can know you had a hand in finishing it, but you will receive the remainder of Arthur Fletch’s substantial advance, as well as a three-book deal with Mr. Beaumont and Merriweather Press. ”
Millie’s mouth has gone dry.
She wasn’t allowed to read Fletch’s books, growing up.
To be honest, she hadn’t read any of them until the invitation came.
But she’d had three weeks to correct that problem, and plowed through all four Petrarch novels before she got on the plane.
Jaxon teased her for it when she told him on the boat.
“You gave yourself homework? Did you think there’d be a test?”
Now Millie has to bite her bottom lip to keep from smiling.
This is her chance.
To salvage her career, to redefine herself. A fresh start. A fresh genre.
Who knows, maybe if she wins, Eleanor will poach her from Dan, and then—
“Why us?” A small voice. A big question. Cate tugs at the hem of her cardigan as soon as the words are out.
Eleanor inclines her head. “Why you?” she echoes.
“Besides the fact we all queried you at some point,” says Sienna.
Jaxon looks around. “It’s obviously because we’re talented,” he offers, at the same moment Kenzo says “disposable.”
Millie flinches. Eleanor doesn’t. Her mouth is set in a tactful smile.
“Miss Newhouse,” she says, addressing Cate, “you are a promising young writer with uncharted potential. I’ve told you before, you remind me of a young Arthur Fletch.
” Patches of red bloom on Cate’s cheeks, but before Millie can succumb to a fresh swell of bitterness, Eleanor goes on.
“And the rest of you, you’ve all proven that you have the necessary chops for this job.
You’re good at what you do. Not just good, you’re among the very best. And yet none of you have received the recognition you deserve. This is your chance.”