Chapter 4
Two hours into my first attempt to write at the fancy desk in front of the distractingly beautiful picture window, I realized
the space wasn’t working. At all.
I stared at my laptop screen, the nearly blank document taunting me with my complete lack of progress. Outside, the stream
sparkled in the sunlight, as if mocking my creative drought. A chipmunk darted across the grass and paused, staring straight
at me through the window, like it had better ideas than I did.
“You got a story pitch, buddy?” I muttered.
And then I saw movement in my peripheral vision—someone walking up the gravel path to my cabin.
A sharp knock startled me, followed immediately by a cheerful, singsongy “Hellooo in there!”
I got up, already bracing for the kind of interaction I wasn’t in the mood for, basically any human interaction. Opening the
door, I came face-to-face with a young woman wearing bright yellow leggings and a black T-shirt that read: Write Like You
Mean It. She seriously looked like a bumblebee.
“Hi! I’m Taylor. Taylor Wilson.” She thrust her hand forward with the kind of energy that made me want to lie down out of sheer exhaustion.
“I’m one of the volunteers at the center.
I was asked to stop in and make sure you didn’t need anything.
” She didn’t wait for a response before adding, “And I was glad to do it. You’re Alex Wesley, right? The Alex Wesley?”
I blinked at her, unsure how to answer. Did “the” imply fame or infamy?
“I read your book Baking at Dawn last year,” she continued, her voice bubbling over like a shaken soda.
“It was so good! So smart and funny, and realistic. I’ve read a bunch of your books.
When I saw your name on the cabin registry—well, I had to come say hi.
You have no idea how excited I am that you’re here! ”
Taylor peeked over my shoulder into the cabin. “Are you working on something new? Are you plotting? Revising? Oh, gosh, I’m
sorry. Am I interrupting? You’re probably in a flow state right now, right?”
I smiled but stepped slightly over to block her view. What was she expecting to see in my cabin—words? “I’m trying to get
there.” I dropped my eyes to her T-shirt again. “Are you a writer?”
Taylor looked down at her shirt. “Oh no. I mean, I’d like to be, but no. I’m a teacher. I tutor at the center.” She hitched
her thumb in the direction of the building. “High school and middle school students. There’s a literacy program.”
I nodded, remembering the framed newspaper articles on the conference room wall that I’d read last week at Gabe Scott’s author
talk. “I’ve heard.”
Taylor smiled. “Anyway, this campus is gorgeous, and big. If you need someone to explore with, I’d love to show you around,
or maybe we could just go for a walk.”
“A walk,” I repeated, because my brain needed an extra second to catch up.
“And—if you’re up for it—maybe we could talk about a few of your books. Like a personal book club meeting.”
“Oh, uh . . . we’ll see,” I said noncommittally. I needed every second here to make a new book.
Taylor nodded, undeterred by my lack of enthusiasm. “Okay, well, I’m going to hold you to the walk, at least. I’ll let you
settle in.”
Taylor buzzed away, leaving me convinced that this week would probably be filled with interesting surprises—people and things.
The next two days passed in a frustrating haze of false starts. Walks around the property didn’t help. Sitting on the screened
porch with a cup of tea didn’t help. Meditating by the stream—briefly, before a mosquito tried to carry me off—definitely
didn’t help.
By the end of the third day, I finally had a breakthrough. A spark of inspiration hit me, and I pounded out the beginnings
of a rough outline for a new story. It wasn’t perfect, but it was something. For the first time in weeks, I felt a flicker
of hope.
And then my phone came alive in the ringtone that belonged to Beck.
“Hey, Mom,” I answered, excited to tell her my progress.
“Leah fell this morning and broke her leg.”
A pinch of panic shot through my chest before my brain could hear the words. “What? Is she okay?”
“They’ll cast it when the swelling goes down.” Beck sighed. “But she’ll be fine.”
An actual cast, not one of those boot things. This was serious. “Where did she fall?”
“You know that plank on the third step in the back?”
I knew it well, and that it needed to be repaired. We managed to maneuver around it so well that it had fallen way down on the house’s to-fix list. “Eh,” I groaned. “How is she? Can I talk to her?”
“She’s out. She has good drugs.”
“Do you need help? I can come home.”
“Absolutely not. When she wakes, she’ll go back to eating my blueberries just like she was before she fell.” Beck paused.
“You’ll have more time than you want with her. She can’t travel for weeks.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, guilt already creeping in because my aunt was hurt, but the thought of her and raging Henry
staying for weeks was not a pleasant one. “I hate that she’s not going to be able to run the streets with you.”
“Same here,” Beck said, though her tone implied the exact opposite. My mother liked to get out, but it was a different kind
of getting out than her sister preferred. Beck wanted to shop for art supplies and yarn for hours. Aunt Leah liked thrifting
for clothes and shoes.
“I’m getting a call from the pharmacist. I need to get her other prescription.”
The line went dead. I didn’t even get to tell her about my progress. I’d text her later.
I fixed my gaze on my laptop screen; the document was still open and waiting. I only had four days left here. Every second
counted, but first, business. I scrolled my email looking for a promotion I’d received from my marketing contact at my publishing
house. I put it on my calendar, lest I forget and be in trouble for not promoting the books I currently had.
I ran into the email from Ancestry. I’d forgotten it. I clicked on the link to go to the website and reread Joy’s note. According
to Ancestry, we had a six percent paternal match, which was a first cousin once removed, or a half cousin.
“Hmm.” This was interesting. I didn’t have other first cousin matches, and even among all the second cousin matches, all were maternal. Joy and I were certainly close relatives.
This made me think about the family on my mother’s side—the folks right here in South Carolina that I didn’t know. We never
visited for holidays, weddings, birthdays, or any other special occasion. If my kin had them, we weren’t invited to the family
reunions. I once asked Beck about it, and she said her father fell out with his brother over land and it split the family.
We were cleanly sliced away, never to be associated with again. My grandmother had been an orphan. Sometimes I thought about
how lonely that was, but then I grew older and I realized family squabbles happened and often peace wasn’t restored until
someone died, taking their grudge with them, and another had the kind of intentionality to get back together. Aunt Leah was
curiously quiet on the entire subject. But now there was Joy on my dad’s side.
Subconsciously, I was fighting to remember him. I’d carried an impression of a memory or a dream my entire life. It was all
sensory: touch, smell, and hearing. I was certain that slip of a memory was about him.
It included the tickle of a leaf from a nearby tree. The waft of something sweet and musky. A hand gripping mine before it slipped away.
Then there were sounds: metal clicking. A woman sobbing. And a voice yelling, “Stop all that. This is going to get worse.”
An adult voice, but not Beck’s. Not her cadence, or at least I didn’t think so. I wasn’t sure.
I asked Beck if it was a memory of my father. She insisted it was not. “You were barely three years old the last time you
saw him, Alex. Memories don’t go back that far.” But there was something in Beck’s voice that would not comfort or convince
me in the way Beck’s assurances usually did. I was remembering something, and my entire soul told me it was important.
I replied to Joy’s message, telling her I’d love to compare notes, and gave her my personal email address so we could cut Ancestry out of the middle of our communications. An hour later, I received an email from her:
Alex,
I’m packing for a work trip. I don’t have great internet where I’m going. I’ll be in touch when I return.
Joy
So much for the distraction of finding family. I got back to my writing.
It was late, and I’d already tucked myself under a throw on the couch with a cup of chamomile tea, debating whether I should
try writing more or call it a night. My laptop sat closed on the coffee table, daring me to open it. Instead, I sipped my
tea and told myself I was taking a productive pause.
I had worked through most of the outline for the story idea I’d come up with. The next step was to work on character sketches.
I did that with pen and paper. I picked up the notepad next to my laptop and wrote, “Figure out what she wants.”
She because my female character was still unnamed. I had to figure out what she wanted so that, like any writer worth her salt,
I could take it away. I needed to figure out what she wanted, because for the first time in twenty-nine books, she might be me. I had no idea about her or myself. I flung the notepad across the coffee table and watched it slide to the end.
Then came a knock on the door. Suddenly, being in a cabin in a wooded area did not feel like the right thing.
I was a city girl. I slid the throw off and tiptoed to the door.
I knew better from horror movies not to put my eye near the peephole, so I stepped to the window next to it and pulled the curtain to the side.
Standing in the amber glow of the cabin’s outdoor light was Gabe.
He was dressed casually—jeans and a fitted black T-shirt that somehow managed to look both effortless and meticulously curated.
His hands were stuffed into his pockets, and he glanced back toward the trees like he wasn’t sure if he should have come.