Thirty Years Later
The door opens with a soft snick. Charlie holds her breath and steps across the threshold, listening.
She pushes the door shut behind her and stands for a moment in the narrow hallway, waiting.
She can’t see anything beyond the fresh white walls, the doorway to the kitchen, and a sliver of the living room up ahead.
She should call out. She should announce herself. But she can’t make the words leave her throat. Fear clenches in her chest. She drops her bag and her book, paralyzed.
But she has to know. She has to face the future, whatever it is.
Slowly, she takes the shaky fifteen steps down the hallway and peers around the corner of the wall into the living room, her heart pounding.
For a moment, despair surges up from her feet, because the living room looks exactly as it did when she left that morning.
Couch, coffee table, half-organized bookcase, oversized armchair. Nothing, and no one else—
A sunbeam slants through the window, casting a square of gold across the floor. Something shimmers. Charlie blinks, joy hitting her like a sledgehammer.
Because there in the sunbeam stands the outline of three ghosts. Her family.
They look up at her, beaming smiles on their translucent faces. It takes a second, and then she unsticks her feet, hurling herself forward to wrap her arms around them.
But her arms go right through Lucy. She feels a static pulse, but they go right through Marvin as well. It’s just Betty she can truly touch, but her shoulders, her torso, her beautiful face feel like gossamer.
“You’re here,” Charlie breathes, cradling Betty’s jaw between her palms, searching her gray-blue eyes. “You’re here.”
Betty nods between her hands, one hand curling into the bottom of Charlie’s jacket, the other reaching out to wrap her arm around the children. “It’ll take us a bit to recharge, but we made it.”
Charlie feels tears slipping down her face, but she doesn’t care. “You’re okay,” she says, breathless.
She arches up to press her lips to Betty’s. It’s mostly static, the feeling of her hand on Charlie’s back little more than a flutter. But they’re here, they’re here, they’re here.
She pulls back after a moment and forces herself to turn to the children. She’ll have time with Betty later. All the time in the world.
“Look at you two,” Charlie says, her voice trembling. “I’m so proud of you.”
Lucy beams, throwing her arms around Charlie’s waist. She can’t feel her at all, but it doesn’t matter.
Charlie crouches down and reaches out to Marvin to hug them both anyway, closing her arms around prickling air.
Betty’s hand rests on the back of Charlie’s head, carding through her curls. Her touch barely even pulls.
“Okay, I dug around in our storage unit downstairs, and I’ve got all the Christmas lights, a bunch of extension cords, and two space heaters. Let’s fire-hazard this place.”
Charlie turns her head, smiling as Sam tromps into the living room holding a giant plastic tub.
“Oops, sorry, family reunion,” Sam says quickly, already backing away. “I’ll just—”
“Hey, you forgot the electric blanket!” Beau calls, the front door slamming behind him.
Lucy and Marvin giggle, and Charlie laughs, standing from her crouch. The kids hurry over to “help” Sam and Beau, dancing around them while arguing over where to string the Christmas lights. They should probably make sure to have a set going constantly in the kids’ bedroom, and Charlie’s.
“This is going to run up your utility bill,” Betty says, her hand moving to Charlie’s cheek.
Charlie turns back to her with a grin. “I don’t care,” she says, wrapping her arms around Betty’s neck, hanging onto her as best she can.
“It may take months,” Betty cautions, gesturing to her relatively incorporeal body.
“Okay,” Charlie says easily, rising onto her toes to sip another buzzing kiss from her lips. “We’ll start our meanwhile with lights, and go from there,” she whispers when they break apart.
Betty laughs and the apartment twinkles, the Christmas lights flickering rapidly in a pile on the floor. A luminous smile spreads across her cheeks, her eyes bright as she clutches Charlie’s jacket.
“And we’ll go from there,” Betty agrees.
Charlie takes a deep breath full of the smell of lightning and the start of their happily ever afterlife.
“Welcome home,” she whispers.
Frannie’s voice warbles a little on the final line. She closes her book and looks up and out into the audience, smiling awkwardly.
The Eighty-Sixth Street Barnes & Noble event space is full to bursting—a sea of puffy parkas and big great coats.
Somehow, readings have never gotten less intimidating in front of so many people.
She hopes she hasn’t butchered the epilogue too badly.
She’s never read it out loud before, but it felt like the right passage for the celebration event.
Daisy, her favorite bookseller here, hops up onto the stage, her braids bouncing. “Isn’t she great, folks?” she calls out.
The crowd cheers, and Frannie feels herself flush up to her scalp. This part’s never gotten less strange either.
“We’re going to set up for our Q&A. Talk amongst yourselves.”
Frannie steps back from the podium, pulling her book to her chest, where it bumps against her locket and the bracelet she never takes off.
She watches the staff rearrange the little stage, replacing the podium with two padded metal chairs.
She’s handed a water and a microphone, and tries to settle herself onto the chair to the right with some dignity.
She fiddles with one of her white curls, hoping her hair hasn’t gotten too enormous.
Right now, she’s got an impressive single streak of white people keep insisting looks badass, though she’s still waiting for more of it to turn.
She tucks it behind her ear and determines not to think about how her hands look older as she places her book on her lap.
“All right, all right, settle down, Goldstein-ites,” Daisy says, her brown eyes sparkling.
Frannie groans. “Please, God, no,” she says into the microphone.
The audiences laughs, which hits them like a ridiculous wall of sound.
There’s no way all these people are here for her.
She doesn’t care that they all bought tickets, that all of them have a special edition under their chairs.
They just can’t be here for her. Three hundred people? It’s never gotten less absurd.
“So, Frannie,” Daisy says, leaning forward.
She’s known Daisy for ten years and dozens of book events. She still looks just as eager as she did for their first event together, nothing but a few extra lines by her eyes and a different style of braids to show time has passed at all. Even the deep-green polo shirts have prevailed.
“So, Daisy,” Frannie parrots, trying to settle in.
“Happily Ever Afterlife is thirty. Years. Old.”
Frannie winces while the audience cheers. “And I don’t look a day older,” Frannie says, relaxing a little when Daisy giggles.
“You look fantastic, as does the book. Doesn’t it, folks?
” Daisy asks, lifting her copy of the celebration edition to the audience.
It’s a gorgeous hardcover reprint with silver gilt edges.
Inside, there are custom end papers with a drawing of the Dakota Building.
There’s something different to look at in every window.
Frannie stares at the cover of Daisy’s copy.
Laying on the black lacquer desk from Henry’s storage closet is the first edition of Happily Ever Afterlife, with two hands resting on top of it, one pale, one translucent.
The pale wrist wears a bracelet similar to the one Frannie’s toying with, the mismatched beaded bracelet Bridgette and Elsa gave her for their very first Christmas together.
Henry apparently sent Hereafter a photo of her old desk to use for the new cover without asking her.
He’s in Milan for a book tour, or she’d be chiding him about it later tonight.
Her hands fuss with the battered first edition in her lap, with the simple Dakota Building cover with three ghosts peeking out from the windows over the entrance. Annotated by her family, it’s the only one she ever reads from.
“All right. All right. So. We’re here to talk about this fabulous book and your magnificent career,” Daisy says, raising a hand to get the audience to settle.
No one ever told her that if you get big enough, your book events can feel like rock concerts. She can’t even tell if Gretchen and Brad made it, or if they’re still stuck editing their latest episode in their studio downtown.
“Because it would be chaos otherwise, we had everyone submit their questions ahead of time,” Daisy continues.
Frannie nods, tearing her eyes from the crowd to meet Daisy’s. Just focus on Daisy, and she’ll be fine. “Sounds great.”
“Okay. First one, it’s a ringer,” Daisy says mischievously. Of course it is. “Shelby—is Shelby here?” she asks, looking out into the crowd.
“Here!” someone calls from the far back.
Frannie squints toward the back of the room, making out a woman in her midthirties with black hair. She waves, and Shelby waves back.
“Great. So. Shelby wants to know: Looking back on your long career—‘of which you’re still very much in the middle,’ thanks, Shelby—how do you feel about your debut novel being a romance with such a fantastical happily ever after? And if you were writing it today, would you end it the same way?”
Frannie keeps her gaze settled somewhere over Shelby’s head. She runs her thumb over the diamond pendant on her bracelet. “I’ve said this many times in interviews, and I’ll keep saying it—because it’s a business, right? My publisher demanded a happily ever after, and changed the title.”
“A reminder for those in the crowd who don’t know, what was the original title?” Daisy interjects.
“In the Meanwhile,” Frannie says, glancing at her and chuckling when she wrinkles her nose.
“To my eternal chagrin, Happily Ever Afterlife was definitely the right call. As was the ending.” The audience laughs, and Frannie looks back out toward Shelby.
“I resisted a little in the beginning, but I think they were absolutely right. Tragedy has its place, but we come to these books for the happy endings, right? Because the promise of the happy ending, even a slightly fantastical one, is what keeps us going.”
She thinks Shelby’s nodding. Certainly half the audience is.
“So you’d keep it the way it is, if you were writing it now?” Daisy asks.
Frannie glances down at her book. “I would. Look, real life is seldom so fantastic. Real people don’t go around meeting ghosts, and falling in love with them, and saving them. But isn’t it wonderful to live in a world where they do, just for a few pages?”
The audience claps and Daisy laughs. “We think so! So, you believe in happy endings in general?”
Frannie’s fingers tighten around the spine of her book. “I absolutely do.”
Daisy grins and shuffles her notecards, beaming out at the audience. “I do too. Now, Hailey wants to know …”
Hours later, Frannie steps out into the cold December night, a bag full of swag over her shoulder, and her battered copy of Happily Ever Afterlife still clutched to her chest. She waves at Daisy and her merry band of booksellers, still cleaning up the store well past closing.
They wave back and Frannie sets out on foot, heading toward Central Park.
Two weeks until Christmas, and the city is alive with cheer, even at ten PM on a Thursday.
Every stoop on Eighty-Sixth Street seems to be decked with twinkle lights.
Garlands, bells, and poinsettias line every window.
Inflatable snowmen, like the one on her roof, sway in the light breeze.
She can hear carolers a street or two over, along with a few disgruntled neighbors yelling for them to shut up.
When she reaches Central Park West, there are still street vendors selling roasted chestnuts, and she can see horse-drawn carriages still circling the park. Flurries start falling as she passes Eightieth Street. It’s peaceful, and slowly, her adrenaline winds down.
Big book events have never gotten less stressful.
Sitting in the living room with her laptop, pouring a world in her head onto the page is easy.
She loves her readers, and she loves the booksellers in New York in particular, she does.
But public events have never been comfortable. It’s always a lot to face on her own.
But by the time she reaches the intersection at Seventy-Third Street, her breath has returned to normal, the stress sloughed away. Her nose is a bit numb, and her hair is covered in snowflakes. She waits at the light, staring at the Dakota Building.
It looks just as haunting tonight as it did thirty years ago. She’s not sure there’s anything more magical than nighttime snow in Manhattan, particularly right here, looking up at that building beneath the golden streetlights.
She bounces in place, trying to stay warm.
The streetlight flickers rapidly above her just before the crosswalk sign changes.
The pages of her book crinkle in her gloveless hand, and Frannie smiles.