SUNDAY, October 15—Multiple people have been reported dead at the Van Ness Winery after an altercation late Saturday night, our Eyewitness Team reports. Police were dispatched around 1:00 a.m. on Sunday morning after a 9-1-1 call from the estate’s main house, but they were delayed hours getting to the scene because of the torrential rainstorm that flooded Rte. 8 and many of the small roads leading up to the winery.
Our news team is on-site but has not been able to verify details with officials, who are still investigating the scene. It appears the damaged substation in Parnell affected power to the estate as well as a number of neighboring homes and businesses in the Finger Lakes area.
This tragedy is the latest to befall the Van Ness family, whose matriarch, investor and philanthropist Katrina Van Ness, died earlier this year of pancreatic cancer at the age of sixty-eight.
The Van Ness winery, known for producing high-quality, award-winning wines, has been owned by the Van Ness family for several generations. The family started the business in the 1950s, after selling their Arizona-based copper mining company founded by Benson Van Ness. The 985- acre winery and estate is now managed by the Van Ness siblings, who live full-time in New York City. Their family investment office owns interests in multiple different real estate holdings and industrial and manufacturing enterprises. The siblings are believed to have been visiting the estate for the weekend for a family celebration.
We will report more as details are confirmed.
THURSDAY
Two Days before the Party
LAUREN
Ever since Zach told me about The Weekend, it’s all I’ve been able to focus on. Most people would naturally be at least a little nervous to meet their significant other’s family for the first time.
But most people aren’t dating a Van Ness.
“Earth to Lauren.” Zach snaps his fingers, grinning over at me. He left work early to get on the road sooner and didn’t have time to change, so he’s still wearing his suit, purple tie slightly askew but knotted even after hours of driving.
“Sorry,” I say, tugging the ends of my hair. “Zoning out.”
“You look like I’m driving you to your death,” he says, then grabs my hand and squeezes. “Don’t worry. I promise it’ll be fun. Even if my family’s there.”
All I can see out my window are trees and fields and cows, my cell phone bars ticking steadily down. We must be close. Zach is taking care on the steep, curvy roads. One bad turn could send our car into a deep ditch or crashing into a thick tree trunk.
It’s so beautiful up there, my best friend Maisie said when I told her about the invitation. She had that wicked look in her eye. All the rolling hills. A vineyard. Starry sky. Super romantic. Perfect place to propose. My stomach flips at the thought, and I breathe in deep. This weekend is not about us. It’s a birthday party for Zach’s older siblings, Harper and Richard, the twins, an annual tradition to celebrate at the family’s winery. I can’t get ahead of myself.
We drive up a winding gravel road, through patches of dense trees. Taller ones have already gone barren for the winter, but some of the smaller trees arch over the road, their branches meeting and entangling like fingers, blotting out the remaining light.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are now approaching the famous Van Ness estate,” Zach says in a booming voice as the car’s headlights flick on. “Please, no photographs, and keep all hands and feet inside the moving vehicle at all times.”
Zach had told me the estate was large—a thousand acres— but I didn’t grasp what that meant until the tunnel of trees ends and the view opens to a sprawling expanse of green fields and rolling hills, stretching endlessly against the purple-hued sky. We cross a small stone bridge that extends over a stream, then bump along a rocky road. The vineyards creep closer to us now, eerie in their precise organization, each plant in a perfect row. We’re inching toward winter, and all the grapes must have already been picked for the season, pressed and bottled, because the vines are bare and withered.
When I first moved to New York and waited tables at an Italian restaurant, we served the Van Ness wine. I remember those dark purple labels, the name stamped big and bold on the front. A brand that said, We are too good for you. But Zach is nothing like that, like the Van Nesses you read about online. Sometimes I forget he’s part of that family in the day-to-day rhythm of our lives. He doesn’t talk about them much, offers the scantest of information, or cracks a joke, or completely changes the subject when I bring them up. All I know of them is from the press, fleeting and superficial, like the pages of a glossy magazine, but hazy enough that I can imagine slicing open my finger on the sharp edges if I’m not careful.
“Tell me about them,” I say now, when there’s no evading the topic.
He glances over at me. “My family? What more do you need to know?”
“I don’t know. How can I win them over so they all love me forever and ever?” I say, trying to hide my nerves.
He laughs. “They’re impossible to win over.”
“Oh perfect,” I say. “That makes it easy then.”
“Nah, they aren’t that bad. They’re…particular is all.”
We head up a slight incline. To the right, there’s a gravel path marked Private—Staff Only. We pass it and stop in front of a large metal gate. Zach rolls down his window, fetches a key card from the glove compartment. “We had this installed years ago for extra security,” he says. Once the machine reads his card, the gates swing open soundlessly. I turn to watch them rotate back and slam into place.
As we round a corner, I finally catch a glimpse of the house, a stone mansion, stoic on the hill. The long driveway curves up to an overhang in front, flanked by a series of round potted trees.
“Here we are,” says Zach as we pull up. He shuts off the car, taps the digital clock on the dashboard. “And on time for dinner, too. Elle will be pleased.”
My stomach does another flip.
Breathe deep.
Project confidence.
They’re going to love you.
I get out. The air is chilly—it’s dropped at least ten degrees since we left the city. I wrap my arms across my body.
The massive wooden front door opens, and an older man walks out, gray hair and beard, a deep purple polo shirt with the Van Ness logo stitched on the pocket, two flutes of sparkling wine in his hands.
“Bill! You are the man.” Zach trades him the keys to the car for the glasses. “Lauren, Bill and his wife Linnet have been taking care of the estate—and us—since I was a snotty-nosed kid.”
As Bill heads for the trunk to unload our baggage, I survey the house. My eyes follow the three short steps up to a wide entryway with pillars, to the archway above the door, and then outward to the wings on either side. Greenery climbs up the stonework between the windows, and I imagine Bill must trim it often to keep it so nice. I touch a pillar next to me and feel its cool smoothness.
“Where’s everyone else?” Zach asks Bill. For him, this is business as usual. I doubt he even notices the grandness anymore.
“Oh, they’re around,” he says. “Miss Elle says dinner at 6:30, and you can all meet in the library.”
I smooth down the gold silk top Zach picked out for me, hugging and hiding in all the right places, like expensive clothes do. What would my parents say if they saw me? They would never guess I’d be weekending with a famous family like this. They never thought I’d make it in New York, thought I’d come crawling back begging to return to my night shift writing obituaries at our small-town paper.
But I’m never going back.
I take a sip of the sparkling wine. The bubbles pop, cold and hard against the back of my throat.
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“That’s her,” the driver yelled to the three men waiting in the rear of the transit van.
He pointed a gloved finger in the direction of a slender woman walking along the sidewalk up ahead.
“You sure?” a gruff voice asked. “It’s pretty dark out there.”
The driver was very sure. He’d watched carefully as his target walked with purpose in her high heels. He recalled her appearance an hour earlier as she made her way up a stainless-steel pole before slowly, seductively descending.
“Yeah, man,” he replied. “You don’t forget a pretty little ass like that in a hurry, even from this distance.”
He was confident their mark was completely oblivious to her impending fate. She stopped suddenly, searching for something that was seemingly wedged in her clutch bag; the streetlamps and neon shop signs illuminated the glitter in her hair. The driver lifted his foot slightly from the accelerator and dipped the headlights as he continued to stalk his prey. Meanwhile, his colleagues slipped black balaclavas over their heads and adjusted their bodies into position—one knelt with his hand gripping the door lever, ready to open it on command; another held plastic restraints, and the third clasped a hunting knife with a serrated blade.
“Ready?” the driver asked. They grunted in unison.
The van sped up, but not so fast as to throw the hunters from the positions they’d rehearsed earlier that day. Then, as it pulled up alongside the woman, the door flew open and the first of her assailants sprang out.
The man with the restraints was the first to reel backward into the vehicle as a bullet from her revolver tore its way through his shoulder blade, taking fragments of collarbone with it.
For a split second, the flash from the gun’s muzzle illuminated the van’s interior as she pinpointed two more would-be assailants poised to drag her inside. Twice more she pulled the trigger; twice more she heard the men screaming. The driver remained rooted to his seat, baffled by how off-kilter their mission had suddenly gone. They had been so confident of its success that there was no Plan B.
“Go, man, go!” yelled a desperate voice as another bullet found its target.
Tires squealed as the van lurched forward, veering across the median and then crisscrossing back toward the sidewalk.
A combination of adrenaline and fury propelled the woman to kick off her heels and run after it, firing twice more and shattering its rear windshield. The vehicle clipped an LA Times newsstand, hurling newspapers into the air; they fell like large chunks of confetti.
She fired one last time, but the van had already corrected itself and sped off out of range. Then she watched in horror as that final shot sent a stranger up ahead, carrying a backpack, sprawling face forward onto the pavement.
Time froze as the consequences of her last reckless bullet resonated.
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On Asher Lane, some secrets are worth killing for……
CHAPTER 1
A fat, heavy tear trickles down my cheek when I yank the final hair from my left areola, and it’s not even twelve seconds after I exchange my tweezer for the disposable razor I grifted from Reggie’s top drawer that blood is gushing down the inside of my thigh. I pause at the shocking appearance of crimson and immediately wonder if this laceration is punishment for being impatient or an indictment of my anti-feminism. Part of me thinks hustling to shave the stray hairs that still stubbornly sprout along my bikini line, despite the six agonizing laser removal sessions I’ve suffered through, is a reflection of how deeply I’ve internalized the particular brand of misogyny that says any hair below the brows on a woman is gross and revolting, and the fact that I’m doing this for a man, not myself, is in itself gross and revolting. I’ve also already chugged sixteen ounces of pineapple juice this morning, for obvious reasons.
The other part of me thinks it’s complete bullshit, that being hyper hygienic and having a general disdain for visible body hair is simply considerate, because feminism and a preference for hairlessness shouldn’t be mutually exclusive. I don’t actually think Reggie has ever noticed the hairs on my tits, or even the splattering on my toes that I compulsively remove once a week,
so in a way maybe I am actually plucking the hair from my nipples for my own aesthetic appreciation, not because of the patriarchy, and my feminism is not actually in jeopardy at all.
My dad used to get on me all the time for fixating on tiny, inconsequential details, a habit I no doubt inherited from my mom. But I really am torn about whether I should be judging myself or just owning the part of my personality that is unapologetically vain as I glance at my phone again to see if Reggie has gotten back to my three where r u and did u leave yet and you’re still coming, right? texts, which is what I was doing when I slashed myself in the first place.
There is no reply.
No ellipsis to show he’s typing.
I sigh because I can’t remember the last time my thigh has felt even a trickle. Granted, the deep red liquid heading toward the marble tile is vastly less pleasant than the warm ropes that Reggie sometimes sends down my adductor, or wherever I request, but it’s warm and sticky just like it, and in the most bizarre way, watching it drizzle down my skin turns me on a little. After checking my phone again to no avail, I bandage the nick on my leg and toss the razor, assuming Reggie is already packed in a subway car like a sardine. He is not ghosting me. He is not cheating on me. He just doesn’t have reception and can’t write back yet.
Another thing my dad is constantly grumbling about, usually while he scans the days’ headlines in the Star-Ledger I bring him every Sunday, is how highly intelligent people can convince themselves of really dumb shit. So there’s that.
I look myself over, naked except for the fresh bandage and the glint of gold around my neck, and wish I could see myself the way Reggie sees me. I notice the flaws first. The blemishes. The discoloration. The faded scars I still have from childhood. He notices everything he likes and never has time to consider that I could even potentially see a single flaw in my own body because his hands and mouth are always busy pawing and sucking before he has the chance. Well, that’s how it used to be. Before Goldstein & Wagner claimed his soul. Now I think his perpetual delirium from the lack of sleep gives him a soft-focus gaze and that’s why he thinks I’m so hot.
Most of my dresses are of the silky, shapeless variety, but the one I pick for tonight is also obscenely short, more reminiscent of a chemise than a dinner garment, something I would never wear out alone. But whatever I wear has to pull its weight tonight. My period is two days away and Reggie squirms even at the idea of a speck of blood. I’m virtually celibate five days every month because even bloody hand jobs freak him out, but he does run to Duane Reade without complaint whenever I’m almost out of tampons and always grabs the right box depending on my flow, so it balances out. He’s put in at least ten hours at the firm today, but I’m totally down for doing all the work to get us both off, so yes, this is the dress, and I’m going to make sure he orders something light with plenty of green on his plate so he doesn’t get the itis on the ride back to my place.
Still, as much as I am craving tongue and hands and a long, indulgent dicking down to sustain me while my ovaries wreak havoc, I would happily handle it myself once he’s asleep and take a couple hours of slow, deep conversation instead. A little shit talking, but mostly watching him eat, and laughing the way we used to back when we first met, when he was finishing the last leg of law school and had a fraction of the responsibilities he does now. I try not to romanticize the days when we were fresh and new, because it was fresh and new and so of course it was fucking romantic, but I’m human and can only look back on the inception of our relationship through a halcyon lens.
My apartment is a microscopic studio in a freshly gentrified Bed-Stuy, all I can afford on my own with my salary, which, five hundred miles toward the center of the continent, could get me a mortgage on a cute starter home. It can feel claustrophobic with more than two people inside it at once, but when it’s just me here, it’s perfect. The galley kitchen is at the front and my bed is made semiprivate by the two white open-shelf bookcases I have packed with too many books, some vintage with gorgeous, battered spines, most pre-loved before I got my hands on them. Reggie thinks I have a problem since I’ve lost count of how many I have and because I have dozens more books littered around the four-hundred-square-foot place. He had the nerve to toss around the h word once. I deadfished him that night, and he never used it again. Though if I’m being objective, there is barely a flat space that isn’t occupied by at least one paperback, but that’s only because I am an actual slut for an aesthetic floppy copy of almost anything. Reggie doesn’t get it. He thinks hardbacks are supreme, and I think it’s tied to the fragility of his masculinity somehow, especially since he’s barely a recreational reader, which makes his opinion hardly justified. Then again, I’m a fiend for his dick when it’s floppy too, so maybe I’m the one with a complex.
I run through my standard series of poses using my floor-length mirror to check how far I can lean over without flashing my nipples or my ass, and frown at my visible panty line. They’re seamless, allegedly, but I can see the faint indent where they grip my skin beneath the delicate fabric of my dress. I step out of them and shuffle through my top drawer for a much less conspicuous thong, but then shut it empty-handed and decide that it’s fine, Reggie has had a long week and it’s only Tuesday. I’m sure he’ll appreciate the surprise.
I’m ten pages away from knocking another contrived, predictable thriller written by a man that swears the narrative is feminist but comes off glaringly misogynistic off my TBR by the time I hear the jingle of Reggie’s keys outside the door to my unit. I toss the book aside without dog-earing my current page, though I feel an instant pang of regret and swing my legs off the arm of my couch as I reach for my phone to see what time it is. It’s been two hours since I gashed my leg. I wait for the door to fly open and brace myself to be seen, for his jaw to drop when he sees me.
But nothing happens.
Reggie doesn’t push in. I don’t hear that jingle anymore.
Before I fully convince myself that I’m suffering from hallucinations courtesy of my surge of pre-menstruation hormones, I straighten out my dress and cross the space to glance through the peephole and be sure. Reggie is on the other side, head bent over, his thumbs beating away at his phone’s screen, whatever email he’s writing taking precedence over our date. Envy erupts like a geyser inside me.
It’s hard to stay pissed at him once I swing the door open and look him over without the distorting view of the peephole. His shirtsleeves are rolled up to his elbows, revealing his forearms that are corded with thick veins, the left one covered in a massive tribal tattoo I still don’t know the meaning of. So slutty of him. His tie is loosened around his neck, but not all the way undone, and I can still smell the remnants of whatever soap he showered with this morning.
“Hey.” He hasn’t looked up yet. “Sorry I didn’t hit you back. I was swamped.”
I don’t reply, will not dignify anything he says with a response until he properly acknowledges me and all the work I put in to look edible for him tonight. He finally hits send and lifts his chin, a guilty smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. I don’t know why, with all this pent-up anticipation, his double take at my dress still makes me blush, and I sort of resent that part of me. Though, at the same time, it feels good to be taken in like this.
“Thought you said seven thirty,” I say, fighting to not sound too accusatory, but it’s not much of a battle since the way he’s checking me out is softening me right up like a stick of butter in a microwave.
His eyes are moving quickly, like they are being pulled downward by some invisible force. “This new?”
He reaches for my amorphous dress, his touch rough enough for me to worry about the preservation of its barely-there straps.
“Figured you’d like it,” I say.
I would have much preferred an immediate and sincere apology for keeping me waiting, but I relinquish my simmering irritation and let him feel me up as I lean in to give him a kiss. He settles a hand on the small of my back, definitely wanting me closer, wanting more, but I pull away before he gets too distracted by the dessert and no longer has an appetite for the meal.
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More specifically, she’d had one (or three) too many the night before. So instead of falling asleep on her bed, she was lying on the couch with a paperback book as a makeshift pillow. Her legs were tucked up in the fetal position inside her billowy dress. And as she licked her lips, she tasted vodka and fried chicken, which she didn’t remember drinking or eating.
She attempted to open her eyes, but her lashes stuck together from the makeup she’d forgotten to remove the night before. With the help of her index finger and thumb, she managed to peel one lid open. White-hot summer light poured in through the arched living-room window and her mint green walls, a color she’d specifically chosen for its soothing properties, were mockingly chipper.
But even more unsettling was the book on the coffee table directly in front of her, Whisked Away. Sophie’s first published book. She closed her one good eye and wished she’d never opened it.
Her mom had always dreamed about Sophie filling an entire bookshelf with all her titles, the years of working multiple day jobs while tinkering on romance books finally worth the struggle. But, as it turned out, Whisked Away would be Sophie’s one and only book. Had she known she’d be a one-hit wonder, she wouldn’t have ordered the little placard for her writing desk: Ask Me about My Tropes.
The worst part was that she had sold a follow-up book—or, at least, a pitch plus the first three chapters—but she hadn’t been able to finish The Love Drought (a title so tragically similar to her own personal problems that it made her cringe). She’d been given multiple extensions but missed all of them. And, per her contract, her publisher had the right to terminate their deal if those deadlines weren’t met. But no matter how many drafts she started, Sophie couldn’t find her way to the happily ever after that all romance books promised and that she loved.
The phone call with her agent started with We need to talk… and ended with You have six weeks to finish this book or your contract, plus the advance, will be taken back.
She’d spent most of that advance, though, along with the royalty checks that grew smaller and smaller as interest in her last book waned. She needed money from turning in the next book if she wanted to continue paying for things like food or a place to stay.
She should’ve seen the implosion coming. Her horoscope had warned that the entire month of June would be bad for important communication. But the damage was done: Sophie was a romance author with writer’s block, and in six weeks’ time, she’d lose her publishing deal.
So she’d done the only thing she knew would make her feel better: called Poppy. And her best friend had suggested a night out at their favorite downtown karaoke bar to drown away the loud whir of failure.
She cautiously sat up, then settled her feet into the woven jute rug. Her legs were as firm as Jell-O when she stood. Still, she managed to make it to the hallway mirror, where she saw that her normally side-swept curtain bangs had morphed into Medusa, snakelike tendrils across her forehead, and she had more flakes on her face than her pet goldfish had in his bowl.
She cringed. Rain Boots. Her goldfish was twelve years old and the longest relationship she’d ever had. She planted her hand on the wall for support and shuffled over to her bedroom where a large glass fishbowl sat on her bedside table. Rain Boots swam in the exact middle and blinked at Sophie with large accusatory eyes.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Sophie croaked out. “I know we have our bedtime routine, but Mommy got horribly drunk.”
She tapped the glass with her index finger and waited for a response, but none came. Eventually the silence broke when her doorbell loudly ding-donged and caused her to jump in surprise. The next, and bigger, surprise came when she made her way to the front door and saw her landlord waiting on the porch.
Dash Montrose wasn’t a tall man, but he had presence. Part of that was because he always seemed to be fidgeting—tapping his fingers, shifting his feet, or pacing slightly—but also, he had thick arms with swirling, inky-black tattoos.
It’s not that Sophie had stared at those arms in prior instances but…well, yeah, she probably had.
Still, her first instinct was to hide behind the couch because what the hell was Dash doing there? She and Dash lived next door to each other, but they were not close. In fact, Dash hardly ever acknowledged her existence. He lived in the large house tucked behind her bungalow, but he was always walking away in some kind of a hurry. If she waved, he only ever nodded back. She didn’t think he was intentionally being a jerk, but he clearly had no interest in interacting with her. They hadn’t spoken actual words to each other in at least a few months. She Venmoed him the rent, and sometimes he left a thumbs-up in response. That was the extent of it.
But there he was, in jeans and a T-shirt. What could he want? Did he somehow know her funds were about to run out and he was preemptively evicting her? Sophie avoided confrontation at all costs, but she couldn’t run away from him, not when his face was pressed against the window of her door and he was peering directly at her. She clutched her arms across her chest, extremely aware that she was still dressed in her clothes from the night before, as she made her way to him.
When she opened the door, she was hit not only with the heat from the high sun above but by the sight of Dash’s wet hair slicked around his face. Water trickled down his neck and splotched his faded shirt, like he’d come straight over from a shower. Which meant a few minutes prior he’d been totally naked, covered in soap and water and…
“Hey, uh, whoa.” His voice cut through Sophie’s thoughts. When she glanced up, Dash gave her an uneasy expression, then gestured down the length of her. “What happened…”
She never left the house without a minimum of tinted moisturizer, but of course Dash came on the one day where she closely resembled a Madame Tussauds wax statue melting in the sun. Sophie gently swiped her index finger under her eye, and it came back coated in black liner. Excellent.
“Vodka happened,” she muttered.
She rubbed the liner between her fingers. Something was wrong. Mercury must’ve been in retrograde. If thirteen-year old Sophie had known that she would be renting a place from Dash Montrose—former teen heartthrob movie star turned still hunky landlord—and he was seeing her hungover…she’d be even more embarrassed than she already was. And she’d probably also be delighted. Because Sophie had maaaybe had a photo of him from a magazine cover on her wall when she was growing up. His film Happy Now? was her all-time favorite movie.
She absolutely did not have a crush on adult Dash, though. Well, he was undeniably hot. No point in glossing over that thick, dirty-blond hair, the dimple in his chin, or any of the other tatted-up details. But he was Poppy’s brother and so off-limits that Sophie had built a wall around Dash in her mind. Though bits of the wall appeared to crumble at the sight of his strong jaw and the dark circles under his eyes that made him all the more mysterious to her.
“Poppy asked me to come check on you. She said you weren’t answering your phone.” He glanced behind her, as if searching for a potential thief holding her cell hostage.
“My Poppy?” Sophie had worked at Poppy’s spa, Glow, for years—one of the many day jobs she’d had before quitting to write full-time. Though, now that she had endless writer’s block, she might have to beg for her old job back.
“She’s my sister, so she’s technically our Poppy.” His hands landed in the pockets of his jeans.
Sophie looked behind her to where the phone usually was, and blessedly, while she’d been drunk enough to use a book as a pillow, she’d been just sober enough to plug in her phone. She rubbed at one of her throbbing temples and walked over to her desk, grabbed her phone, then held down the power button and watched the white icon flash back.
As she waited for the phone to boot up, she walked back toward Dash.
“Okay, she wants me to tell you that there’s a video of you going viral?” Dash gestured to his phone, which made his forearm flex and Sophie’s eyes widen in response.
She tried to process what he’d said. She needed an intense boost of caffeine—maybe a matcha—to be able to comprehend the words coming out of his mouth. “A video?”
“I don’t know, she said you needed to see it. And that I needed to make sure you saw it.” He shrugged, but the small motion lifted the edge of his shirt up just enough for Sophie to catch a glimpse of his boxers.
Sophie didn’t want to be impolite—Dash was Poppy’s older brother, after all—but what was she supposed to do? She couldn’t so much as look at a candle shop without rushing in to buy one. Dash was the male equivalent of fresh beeswax. She was definitely staring.
Just then, her phone erupted in a series of pings, vibrations, and what sounded like one deafening goose honk. If she owned pearls, she’d be clutching the hell out of them. The screen filled with notifications—emails, texts, missed calls, and push notifications from Instagram—but she pulled up Poppy’s text conversation first.
Soph, are you up?
It’s 10. You never sleep this late.
I’m at work, ARE YOU OK
I’m sending Dash over.
YOU’RE NOT DEAD! YIPPEE!
OK, here’s the vid. Don’t freak out!
Dash’s phone pinged too, he looked down, then sighed. “Did you get it?” He sounded a little irritated.
Sophie frowned at the blurry thumbnail of a woman, but clicked the link, which sent her to the TikTok app. Then, almost immediately, she saw herself reflected on the screen. The video was taken at the karaoke bar, and Sophie was the main event. She stood onstage as the undeniable background music to Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” played. She had requested that song, hadn’t she? The small pieces of her lost-memory puzzle began to click into place.
Only, in the video, she was sobbing, with tears running down her cheeks, as she gazed wild-eyed into the crowd. Poppy ran onto the stage and attempted to coax Sophie off, but Sophie grabbed the mic and shouted, “I’ve never been in love, okay?!” Her voice so angry and vehement that she appeared to be deranged. The person holding the phone zoomed in at that exact moment to capture Sophie’s grimace as she shrieked out, “Love isn’t real!” Then Poppy yanked the mic out of Sophie’s hand and dropped it for her. End of video.
“Stop, stop, stop!” The words screeched out of her as she furiously poked the screen to try and delete the video. Then she remembered this was not her video—someone else had uploaded it. Eventually, her eyes drifted down to the caption, which read Relatable! The video had over two hundred thousand views and thirty thousand likes.
“Oh my holy hot hell.” She was a writer but could not think of any other words in that moment. Her mind raced at the thought of hundreds of thousands of people watching her have a public meltdown and liking it.
Normally, Sophie was an optimist, but after the last twenty-four hours, she was beginning to understand the appeal of pessimism. Her hand instinctively went to her chest and her fingers tap-tap-tapped at her pacemaker—something she always did to steady herself—as she scrolled through the comments and saw that not one but multiple people had recognized her.
Sophie Lyon is FUN
Sophie Lyon is secretly unhinged and it’s sending me
I hated her book, but I like this?
“Just breathe.” Then Dash’s hand was on her back, steady and warm, which momentarily distracted her, but not for long.
The heat outside had intensified to Palm Springs–level boiling and caused Sophie to break out in either hives or a rash. She furiously clawed at her throat with her free hand. She walked away from Dash and down the porch steps. Her bare feet hit the cool blades of grass in her yard, and when she looked up, the iconic Hollywood sign perched in the Santa Monica Mountains shined pearly white in the distance. Seeing those letters from her yard every morning used to make her feel closer to the success she so deeply craved, but now she felt buried under the weight of its implied expectations.
She stumbled, and Dash was next to her within seconds, holding her steady. He grabbed her elbow with one hand, and the other wrapped around her waist to cup her hip. His skin was warm against her, even through her dress. Her stomach flipped, probably from the lingering alcohol. “Sophie, you really need to sit. You look like you’re about to faint—”
The sound of her phone pinging cut him off. And when she looked down, a familiar name flashed across the screen. Carla. Sophie stopped scratching her throat. Her ex. The woman who had single-handedly led her on for close to a year. A year in which Sophie could feel herself beginning to fall head over heels, and then… Carla had ended it and dragged their relationship to the trash. Sophie stared at Carla’s name, and the text underneath, which read Saw the video… As in her ex had seen the video of Sophie having a full-on meltdown.
It was at this moment that she tilted her head back, let the punishing sun burn her eyes, and shouted as loudly as she physically could. When she eventually stopped screaming, her head felt light. The edges of her vision blurred with the realization that she had nothing left, her life was over, and she was completely mortified.
“Seriously, Sophie? My ears are ringing.”
Sophie was so focused on her own humiliation that she must’ve forgotten that Dash was right there.
“Are you on something?” Dash asked.
Sophie frowned. No, she was not on something. She may have been braless, hungover, and hanging by a thread emotionally, but what kind of an accusation was that?
And even if she were on ayahuasca and beginning to see rainbow caticorns encircling her feet—which sounded great, actually—what she did with her body was absolutely none of his business. She paid her rent on time. This was her place. He was the one who’d come bounding over, all wet and wearing a too-tight shirt, and now he had the nerve to suggest she was the one out of line?
She would tell Dash that he needed to leave. But when she opened her mouth to say as much, she felt the bile rise in her throat. Her eyes bulged wide as she closed her mouth and held back something akin to a burp. Dash clocked her panic, and his eyes narrowed. She shook her head, but there was no use. She was definitely going to hurl all over her high-school celebrity crush. And without even being able to call out a warning, she projectile-vomited all over Dash.
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I hit the brakes, my car fishtailing on the slippery road. I come to a stop just inches from the car before me.
Ah, the hazards of winter in Michigan and Detroit drivers who think snow is a reason to hit the gas.
I cock my head and see an accident just a few cars in front of me. A man is out of his car, screaming into the window of the car he hit.
Merry Christmas!
I take a breath, sip my coffee—which miraculously didn’t spill—hit my blinker and wait to merge into the next lane.
That’s when I notice it: the abandoned house I drive by every day to work.
There are many abandoned homes in many forgotten neighborhoods in this proud city whose shoulders were slumped by the mortgage crisis, layoffs in the auto industry and never-ending
winters that used to be as brutal and mind-numbing as a Detroit Lions football season. Neighborhoods stand like ghost towns, and, in winter, they look even sadder, the grass dead, the green gone, broken glass shimmering in the sun before the snow arrives to cover their remains.
This particular home is a three-story redbrick beauty that looks like a castle. The windows are broken, the walls are collapsing and yet the wooden staircase—visible to the world— remains intact. I slow down just enough every day to admire the finials, worn and shining from the hands that have polished them over the years.
There is a line of shattered windows just above the ground, and as you pass by, you catch a glimmer of red in the basement. Coming the opposite way, you swear you can see a man smiling.
I stopped years ago to investigate. I parked, careful to avoid nails, and wound my way in high heels through the weeds to the broken window. I knelt and peeked into the basement.
Santa!
A plastic molded Santa smiled at me. It was a vintage mold—like the one my grandparents centered in the middle of a wreath on their front door every year—of a cheery Santa with red cheeks, blue eyes, green gloves, holding a candy cane tied in a golden bow.
I scanned the basement. Boxes were still stacked everywhere.
Tubs were marked Christmas!
In the corner of the basement sat a sign overrun with cobwebs that read Santa’s Toy Shop!
December 1975
“They’re here! They’re here!”
My voice echoed through my grandparents’ house. I ran to the front door, grabbed the first catalog, which seemed to weigh nearly as much as I did, and tottered down the steep basement stairs. Back up I went to retrieve the next one from Mr. Haley, the postman, who looked exactly like Captain Kangaroo.
“Don’t move!” I said, disappearing and returning moments later.
Then back down the stairs I scrambled once again.
Mr. Haley laughed when I returned the final time, out of breath.
“Last one,” he said. “Oh, and a bunch of Christmas cards for your grandmother.”
I bent over, panting, as if I’d just done wind sprints on the track.
“Tired?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No! Think of what Santa carries! Not to mention what you carry every day!”
“You got me there,” he said. “Here’s the cards. I’ll see you tomorrow. Merry Christmas!”
I watched him trudge through the freshly fallen snow, just enough to dust the world in white. If there’s one thing we never had to worry about in our town of Frankenmuth, it was a white Christmas. My dad said it was one of the gifts of living in a Christmas wonderland.
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Haley!” I yelled, my breath coming out in puffs.
I shut the door, tossed the cards on the telephone desk sitting in the foyer and hightailed it back down to the basement.
I looked at the catalogs where I’d set them on the shag carpet and ran around them in a happy circle doing a little jig.
I turned on the electric fireplace. It was so cool, fake brick, and it just faded into the Z-BRICK walls. The flames seemed
to dance, even though they weren’t real.
I went over to the card table where my grandparents played games—bridge, canasta, hearts—and I grabbed my marker from a cup.
The red one.
The one I used every year.
The one Santa would recognize.
I took a seat on the orange shag and arranged the catalogs in a semicircle around me: the Christmas catalogs from JCPenney and Monkey Wards, and my favorite, the Sears Wish Book.
The catalogs were heavy and thick, big as the Buick my grandpa drove. They were brand-new and all mine. I began to f lip through the crisp pages, turning quickly to the ones that showed all the toys, clothes and games I wanted for Christmas.
I was lost for hours in the pages, dreaming, hoping, wishing. “Yes, yes, yes!” I said, my marker in constant motion.
“Are you using a red marker so Santa will see?”
I looked up, and my dad was standing over me. He was tall, hair as fair as mine. He had just gotten off work. He was an accountant at a car dealership, and he never seemed happy when he got home from work.
Until he came down to my grandparents’ basement.
“Of course!” I said. “Finn gets green. I use red!”
“So what do you want Santa to bring you this year?”
I patted the carpet, and my dad took a seat next to me. I began showing him all the things I’d marked in the wish catalogs.
“I want this eight-room dollhouse, and, oh! this Shaun Cassidy phono with sing-along microphone and this battery-operated sewing machine! It’s the first ever like this!” I stopped,
took a deep breath and continued, “And this dress, and this Raggedy Ann doll, but—” I stopped again, flipping through pages as quickly as I could “—more than anything I want this
game called Simon. It’s computer controlled, Daddy! It’s like Simon Says, and you have to be really fast, and…”
“Slow down,” he said, rubbing my back. “And what about your brother?”
“What about him?”
“What does he want?”
“He’ll want all the stupid stuff boys like,” I said. “Stars Wars figurines, an erector set, a Nerf rocket and probably a drum set.”
My father winced at the last suggestion.
“Maybe a scooter instead,” my dad suggested. “What do you think?”
“Good idea, Daddy.” I placed my hands over my ears.
He laughed and stood up.
“Hey?” I asked. “What do you want for Christmas?”
My dad headed over to the workshop he had on the other side of the basement. We lived in a small ranch house on the other side of town that didn’t have a basement, much less any extra room. My grandparents let my father convert this space a few years ago so he could pursue a second career and his true passion: Christmas.
“You know what I want,” he said with a smile.
My dad picked up a sign and turned it my way. It was a handcarved wooden sign that read Frohe Weihnachten! Frankenmuth is a Bavarian town filled with all things German: a wooden bridge flowing over a charming river, a glockenspiel that—on the hour—played the Westminster chimes followed by an entire show complete with dancing figurines,
a cheese haus and competing chicken-and-noodle restaurants. I was named Henrietta, my father Jakob, my brother, Finn. Only my mother, Debbie, escaped the German name game with the
very American moniker.
“What’s this mean, Henri?” my dad asked.
“Merry Christmas,” I said.
“And what do I want?”
“Christmas all year long.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Just like you. Except as a grown-up.” He looked at his sign. “That’s my Christmas wish.”
For a long time, everyone thought this was just a hobby of my father’s, sort of like other dads tinkered on car engines, went fishing or coached baseball. For an even longer time, people thought my dad was nuts.
Why would a man spend all of his time creating Christmas signs in July, or designing ornaments in March?
They didn’t know my dad.
They didn’t how serious he was, that he often worked until three in the morning from October through December and countless weekends the rest of the year.
“You have a good job, Jakob,” friends would tell him. “Don’t ruin your life over some silly notion.”
But my mom and grandparents believed in him just as much as I believed in Santa.
I watched my father work. As he did, he began to whistle Christmas tunes.
The world was finally catching up with my father’s dream.
He was now creating window displays for two of the biggest stores in town: Shepherd Woolen Mill and Koch’s Country Store.
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In New York City near the southwest corner of 63rd Street and Madison Avenue, there is a restaurant called Stella’s and when everything started, I was sitting in one of its coveted lime-green velvet booths.
It was coming on ten at night, and I was drinking a lemongrass daiquiri. In all my years on the planet up to that point, I’d never touched lemongrass or daiquiris. Until that summer. That summer it seemed like it’s all I drank.
“Should I get you ladies started on a new one?” asked our waiter.
Our waiter was named Tommy, and he was a fortysomething Italian guy with slicked back hair who had the vaguely menacing solemn look of a Sopranos extra. But intimidating demeanor aside, he was always exceptionally nice to us. And when I say us, I mean my work cubicle mate, Priscilla Hutton, who was sitting across from me.
Priscilla and Tommy were actually old pals as she had been partying here at Stella’s since her Birch Wathen Lenox private high school days.
I did some high school partying myself back in my small town in Kentucky. Just never at a place that had nine-thousand-dollar bottles of champagne on the menu and a VIP room described in New York magazine as “Hollywood East.”
“The answer to that is yes, Tommy,” Priscilla said. “My friend and I need two fresh jolts stat. If that’s okay with you, Faye.”
Sometimes I wonder about that question. I wonder about what would have happened if I’d gone back to my apartment instead of accepting.
Or even more importantly, about what wouldn’t have.
“I’m game if you are,” I said, smiling.
The second drink order surprised me. We usually had only one polite drink at the end of the week here, down the street from our job, and then parted ways.
It was part of our unspoken deal. I hooked up Priscilla by handling all of our incredibly high-pressure work stuff, and Priscilla hooked me up by letting me hang out with her a little.
Even though I was totally carrying her, it was a good deal on both ends because Priscilla was gorgeous and rich and knew everyone in New York. She’d actually been in society pages like Avenue magazine ever since high school, each time tan and perfect in an effortlessly stylish outfit that she just threw on after a day spent surfing or skiing or at the spa.
Priscilla was also one of those people who had that voice, that eastern establishment rich person voice, that some call Transatlantic or Boston Brahmin or Locust Valley lockjaw. Not a ton of it, not a pretentious amount, just a sophisticated hint, an elegant tinge, just enough.
It made her sound like a young Lauren Bacall or Bette Davis or someone. I loved just listening to her. It made you feel a little special just to hear her confide in you, as if only for a few moments, you were in the privileged people club, too.
I really didn’t even know why Priscilla had applied for, let alone accepted, our summer internship. It was extremely hard work, and she was kind of a ditz, so why not just take the Instagram influencer route? I often wondered.
I think it had something to do with her father’s business, some defense contractor aerospace company in Connecticut that made airplane parts. Maybe she needed some finance experience to become an executive there? Not that she had told me any of this, but I did have internet access.
She even pretended to be my friend. She shared fashion advice with me, which was a sorely needed lesson. And she also told me all these incredible stories about her days in prep school and Yale and Palm Beach and the Hamptons.
At least at the office. When she was in the mood.
“But another?” I said as Tommy left. “That’s okay, Priscilla. I know you have things to do. I should be going.”
“No, not yet. I owe you big time, Kemosabe. If you hadn’t remembered to recheck the Westland account for me before it went to the treasury team, that Aiken would have dragged me up the stairs of the boiler room by the scruff of my neck.”
It was true. She had screwed up big time. One of our biggest hedge fund clients wanted $130 million wired into their Cayman account, but Priscilla had boneheadedly put in the account numbers of a completely different fund instead. Getting a number wrong here and there wasn’t a problem. Sending money into another fund’s account was. If it had gone through, the money could have instantly disappeared without a trace with no way to unwind it, and our client could have been out $130 million.
“Oh, that,” I said. “Don’t mention it. Anytime. I was looking for something to do anyway.”
That’s when Priscilla looked at me, and we both completely lost it.
Oh, we laughed then all right. Practically until the lemongrass came from our nostrils.
Looking for something to do, I thought, shaking my aching head.
That was a phrase I used way back in the normal life I led before I accepted the summer internship at the venerated Wall Street private investment bank, Greene Brothers Hale, nearly three months before.
Our musty-smelling windowless basement office a few blocks down Madison Avenue really did look like a boiler room or maybe something out of a Dickens poorhouse. Only with computers and phones on our cheap desks instead of dusty ledger books.
And out of these electronic torture devices, all day—for pretty much twelve hours straight from eighty-seven different pissed-off, stressed-out directions at once—came numbers.
The stress and anger directed our way was due to the fact that the numbers represented money. Profoundly massive amounts of money from hedge funds or institutional investors or just really, really rich people. This money either needed to be placed into our bank’s fat cat VIP client accounts or taken out of them and sent other places, places like the Cayman Islands or Switzerland.
You’d think this given task was simple enough like we were mere bank tellers, just moving around much larger sums.
But you would be wrong.
Each incoming or outgoing bank transfer had to be placed in its proper slot. Each one processed through a verification process wrapped in an amount of red tape to make your eyes bleed. Emails with these numbers had to go to the proper people for due diligence verifications. All in the proper order. Yesterday. Or else.
It was the volume of the orders. It was staggering. The air traffic controllers out at Kennedy airport had less to juggle.
Or maybe it was the unhinged wrath of the psychopathic traders and other finance people on the upper floors of our building who kept calling down to see if the transfers had cleared.
Where the hell was the money? they wanted to know. What the hell was wrong with us? Did they actually have to f-ing come down there?
Every morning when I sat down and looked at my newly filled inbox of waiting orders, I thought about the Greek hero, Sisyphus, cursed to eternally roll his rock up that hill.
In envy.
Was he a summer Wall Street intern, too? I would wonder.
And did I mention all of this labor and misery was being extracted from me gratis?
That was the kicker. Since it was an unpaid internship, we were only doing it for the possibility of maybe getting a full-time entry level job as a junior investment analyst.
My skin was being flayed for free.
As I sat there that Friday, attempting to cool my smoking brain with rum and lemongrass syrup, I couldn’t help feeling like I’d been duped.
Because I thought I was going to be a swashbuckling Wall Street pirate.
Instead, I’d been shanghaied and thrown into the slave galley to row.
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The best day of someone’s life is always the worst day of somebody else’s. This is especially true at a wedding—even more so when you’re separated.
Since her college graduation, Athena had been a bridesmaid in seventeen weddings. Twenty, if you count being in the house party, which Athena never did since it was the same as making it onto the junior varsity team, a consolation prize, an afterthought. Not bad, but not good enough for the big time.
For most of her twenties, she’d done the whole hog, Katherine Heigl, 27 Dresses. An overpriced and cheaply made gown for every wedding she’s been in, except for the one right after she came out, where the bride insisted Athena wear a tux so that the bride could showcase her acceptance and allyship to the one lesbian she’d ever known.
Now, at thirty-three—her Jesus year, as her mother so constantly reminds her—Athena drives down a Floridian highway full of billboards advertising Heaven and Hell to be a bridesmaid in her eighteenth wedding. Her longtime family friend, Daisy, is getting married in Watercolor, Florida, a sprawling beachside resort with large, spaced-out, two-story vacation homes, each painted in a distinct pastel color, like, as the name suggests, a watercolor palette. The wedding party had made their mantra for the weekend: Best Wedding Ever in the History of Weddings.
Athena knew that, for her, this could never be true. The best wedding Athena had been in was her own. To Sydnee. The great light of her life.
It was nothing like the other weddings, with their churches and their pomp and circumstance. It was small and full of lights that twinkled from tree branches and wrapped around columns on the back porch of Athena’s parents’ house. They didn’t need a priest, they had their best friend, Deacon, marry them, and he recited Dickinson instead of Second Corinthians, and they danced on the grass in bare feet until the neighbors complained about the noise. There was no prayer, but they still felt blessed.
It was the happiest day of Athena’s life.
Now, after six years, they are divorcing. The papers are due in the mail next week. They have been separated for eight months, and soon it will be official.
Divorce does not suit Athena. She’s been too busy burying herself in work to do anything about it. It’s as if she believes that sorting through the fragments of Emily Dickinson’s envelope poems in her tiny, dimly lit cubicle at the University of Houston can help heal her heartbreak without her ever having to face it straight on.
There’s always a snag, though, some little reminder of Sydnee, who never particularly liked literature. She did, however, love Athena and how much she loved Dickinson, so she had a few favorite poems of her own: Split the Lark—
and you’ll find the Music—was a much-loved line between the two of them.
“I like the way it sounds,” Sydnee explained. “It’s weird. Twisted.”
“Unnecessary bloodshed, uncanny music,” Athena said after they first moved into their house in Montrose when they settled down in Houston, a few months before their marriage. Athena was organizing her books and flipping through the pages of the poet’s collection. “I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of her.”
“And me?” Sydnee rested her head in her hand, her hair swaying to one side, a curtain of darkness.
“Maybe after seven lifetimes, I’ll start to get bored,” Athena said, and Sydnee smiled, and they came together like Athena thought they would continue to do for the rest of their lives.
When she comes across the line, or anything similar (I split the dew—But took the morn), her heart cleaves, an open wound. She tries to hide from it, but it always finds her eventually. Not even her most sacred pleasures are safe from the pain of separation.
As Athena drives, she imagines her mother would tell her to snap out of the past and keep her eyes peeled on the present. It’s your Jesus year, Thene, she could almost hear her mother saying through a jaw tensed with superstition. Her mother is obsessed with the concept and terrified of it, too. Thirty-three was Jesus’s age when he was crucified, betrayed by his friends, strung up for all the world to see. It feels like a warning to her. Nothing good can come from thirty-three. And your Jesus year? her mother would say. It’s trying to kill you.
Athena grips the steering wheel tight, closing her eyes for a moment, exhaling, before jolting back into awareness as she swerves slightly into the other lane.
Not today, Jesus year.
A gulp of coffee. A turned-up stereo. Athena slaps her cheek and drives on. In the rearview mirror, the horizon blares bright and blue with the high noon sun doing its best to heat up the unseasonably chilly November day. If the cold stays at bay, it’s going to be a beautiful weekend for a wedding.
After half an hour of nothing but pine trees and billboards, Athena finally exits the highway, passes the Publix, and finds herself in the strange, beautiful, pristine, idyllic world of Watercolor, Florida.
Athena and her brother used to join Daisy’s family on their weeklong trips to the resort during the summers in middle school and high school. It hasn’t changed much since then. It’s expanded, but otherwise remains timeless. People cruise down the paved roads in their three-row golf carts or beach cruiser bikes with baskets on the front, going from their homes, to the Publix down the road and to the beach club across the highway. The sidewalks are manicured and lined with pine trees and magnolias, the needles and leaves of which are finely collected on the sides of the paved walkways, never a twig out of place, giving the residents and guests a taste of nature without all the messiness it brings.
Back then, Athena loved the sun-soaked days at the beach, salt water settling into her hair, making it coarse and curly and wild. They spent summer nights riding up and down the streets on their bikes, going on ice cream and soda runs until their stomachs got sick. Life was simple then. Athena had been happiest here, after days spent diving into the crashing waves, riding their force toward the shore, her belly scraping the shallow sand once the wave died out and deposited her back where she belonged.
It’s November now. Too cold for waves, and she’s too old to ride them, anyway. Her back might tweak or her knee might shift in the tide at the wrong enough angle, leaving her sore for weeks. The world had seemed so open when she was young. She realized now the scope was much smaller. Caution cursed her every step because she had known consequences and understood they could come when you least expected it.
Athena’s father used to say that age gave you double vision. You see the world both as it is and as it was before. It’s like your friend says, he’d say, always referring to Emily Dickinson in this way, “the past is such a curious creature!”
She wonders what her father would think now. About Daisy’s wedding, about her own divorce. He’s been dead three years, and still, every day, she wonders what he’d say. Three years of questions. Three years without answers.
Athena blinks away the thought as she turns off the 30A highway into the massive, sprawling beach resort, circling past the bustling beach club before finally finding the towering town house where Daisy and the other bridesmaids will spend the night after the rehearsal dinner and then spend tomorrow getting ready for the wedding. It’s blindingly white, exactly like the row of townhomes it stands beside, with two decks that overlook the white sand beach and emerald coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Behind it, the midafternoon waves swell and crash onto the coast, the sun starting to sparkle in the water. All nature, no artifice.
Once she cuts the engine, Athena slowly gets out of the car, relishing her last moments of silence before the chaos of the wedding begins. The air is thick with humidity. She savors the smell of salt air and pine needles, happy to have the sun on her cheeks. She’s spent so many hours inside her office and classroom these past eight months. She hadn’t realized how much she missed the world—the natural, reviving tonic of fresh air and warmth.
“There she is,” a voice calls from the front door. “The divorcée.”
Deacon steps out from the house, an enormous grin stretched across his face. Tall, lean, and shirtless as always, he leans against the doorframe, two cups of coffee in his hands, his board shorts sagging slightly. He sets the coffees down and tugs up his shorts before walking over to Athena, his arms outstretched. His blond hair sticks up straight at the back, like he’s just woken up from a nap, and he traces the now faint and faded scars underneath his pecs, a habit he’d kept up for over a decade since he got them. Athena embraces her best friend, burying her face in his chest, the tufts of blond chest hair tickling her cheek.
“So,” Deacon says, pulling her away from him so that he can look at her. “How is the divorcée?”
“I told you that’s not funny yet.” Athena smiles despite herself.
“I guess I’ll keep doing it until it is,” Deacon says as he takes her arm in his. “Come on. I’ll show you to your designated chambers.”
They walk through the house, steering clear of the rest of the bridesmaids for the time being, and make their way to Athena’s room, which has one tiny twin bed.
“Doesn’t seem like Daisy has any faith that you’ll be hooking up at this wedding,” Deacon says, gesturing to the bed.
“What else is new.” Athena sets her bag down at the foot of the bed before taking the hot cup of coffee from Deacon. It’s strong, with a hint of vanilla and cinnamon. “What are the other dudes doing?”
“Getting ready for the rehearsal dinner.” Deacon checks his watch. “Still got a few hours, but Chad wants to experiment with gel in his hair. Doesn’t want to take a chance in case it’s terrible—which it will be—and he has to start over.”
“At least he’s thinking ahead,” Athena says. She pulls out her suit for the dinner and tugs at her messy bun. “Wish I could just gel this mess. My hair is driving me bonkers.”
“Shave it off,” Deacon says, digging through Athena’s bag. He removes a pair of her white sneakers and tries them on. “Can I borrow these tonight?”
“I can’t shave it, I have an egg-shaped head, we’ve discussed this,” Athena says. “And no, I’m wearing them.”
“More like a bowling pin.”
“Any cone-shaped object will do.” Athena points at the bridesmaid dress she will wear tomorrow. The lavender silk will hug every curve and constrict her breathing so badly she worries it will induce a semi—panic attack. “Wish Daisy would have let us choose our dresses.”
“She’s an influencer, Athena,” Deacon says, running the fabric of the dress through his hands. “The only thing that matters are the pictures, tagging her designer sponsor and making sure that everyone seems the same, and by same, I of course mean not quite as good as Daisy.”
“So I’m getting punished because she has half a million followers she needs to impress?”
“Dude, you’re going to look good, a real heartbreaker.” Deacon walks around in Athena’s sneakers, checking them in the mirror. “I’ll catcall you when you walk down the aisle if that makes you feel better.”
“Exactly what I need at all times, a mobile fan club, thank you very much for understanding.” Athena points at the sneakers and gestures toward her suit, trying to get him to take them off. “What about you? You getting ready with us tomorrow?”
“Bride’s orders.” Deacon nods as he takes off the shoes and puts them under Athena’s suit. “She wants me by her side every step of the way. Until the actual wedding. A guy standing with the bridesmaids would ruin the aesthetic. At this wedding, gender is very much a binary.”
“Why push boundaries when you could just reinforce them, right?” Athena says.
“Well, she’ll have plenty of pictures to post for all the trans awareness, appreciation, whatever-the-fuck hashtag weeks they come up with.”
“Gotta feed the followers.”
“Name of the game.” Deacon rubs his forearm slowly, tracing the tips of his fingers over his bluebonnet tattoo. “Talked to Sydnee recently? We’ll see her tomorrow. At the wedding.”
A jolt rushes through Athena. It happens every time she hears her name. When they first started dating, she’d get a similar flood of electricity. It is still a marvel: the dread, excitement, giddy joy contained in one name. The thought of her face is instinctual. The dark hair, curly when left untouched, hanging just above her shoulders. Her easy smile, her eyes, green unless in sunlight, when they transformed into an almost translucent blue. Her hands were always in motion, when she talked and when she was silent, where they’d move from the back of her neck to the front of it, fiddling with the crucifix necklace she wore every day, a reminder of her family and the Catholicism of her youth. She called it a bad habit, but Athena had always known that the comfort of home could take many forms.
“We’ve talked a bit,” Athena says, trying to play it cool. “You know lesbians and their exes. Always staying best friends.”
“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter.” Deacon opens his mouth to say more, but hesitates, tugging on the thin wisps of hair at the end of his chin instead. “I gotta shave or Daisy will kill me.”
“What is it?” A flush of panic heats through her. She’d dreaded this possibility so much it almost felt prescient, like she could sense Sydnee’s shifting heart, moving on from her to someone else without having seen her since she asked for the divorce. “She’s dating. Her. Isn’t she?”
“I thought you weren’t on social media anymore.”
“I knew it,” Athena says, kicking herself for talking through lawyers instead of staying in the loop. There is no dignity in silence. Knowing is always better than being blindsided. “I knew it was more than just sex.”
“I don’t think it’ll last…” Deacon trails off. He bites his lower lip. “It’s hard.”
“Staying faithful shouldn’t be hard.”
“I mean for me.” He clears his throat, his voice dropping in the hollow sort of way that means he’s telling the truth. “Y’all are both my friends…”
“Let’s just not talk about it,” Athena says quickly, going back to her suitcase and unpacking her pajamas. She gets up and puts them in the mahogany chest in the corner, her back to Deacon.
Athena is not willing to listen to other people talk about how her divorce has affected them. It is her pain, her isolation. She doesn’t want to be miserable, but she’s settled into her misery in such a way that it’s now become a part of her. Every step she takes is steeped in the stuff. No one can top her in terms of agony. Her father is dead. Her wife left her. There is nothing else that matters.
Deacon clears his throat. She senses his frustration, but does nothing to ease it. It’s not his fault that her marriage ended. Outside of her mom and brother, Deacon is the only person she’s willingly let into her life during this period of upheaval. He’s shown up for her. During their weekly meetups at their favorite pub, he chomps on fries as she regales him with all the reasons she should have seen the divorce coming. He never complains. He rarely talks about himself. He sits, and he listens, and Athena does nothing to change that. She does wonder, sometimes, when she’s alone and she can’t sleep, why he doesn’t stop her, why he always sits and takes it, all her anger, and all her frustration, and all of her grief. It’s a purgatory with an open exit that he never seems to take.
“Put down the coffee,” Deacon says before Athena can reflect further. “And get your tennis shoes.”
“What?” She puts her suitcase under the bed and clutches her coffee closer, not ready to leave so shortly after her arrival.
“We’re going for a run.”
“The rehearsal dinner’s in a few hours.”
“Just a quick one.” He fishes through Athena’s bag to find her running shoes and throws them at her. “Come on. Lace up. We need it.”
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The fluorescent lights blinked on in a domino effect, one after the other, a faint buzzing sound filling the room as I stood squinting in the unnatural light.
I inhaled, taking in my small slice of heaven within the storied walls of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. The long room with its high ceiling, soothing taupe walls, and wood floors—weathered in spots from years of conservators standing and pacing as they labored over the works of great minds—brought a sense of peace as soon as I stepped inside.
The museum had been my happy place since I was a little girl, when my mother would walk with me from our baby blue–painted row house on Capitol Hill, her slender fingers wrapped around my pudgy ones. We’d wander past sprawling parks, melancholy monuments documenting history, to the austere but magical facade housing wonders my six-year-old eyes could barely comprehend. By the age of eight I knew all the regular exhibits like the back of my hand, and waited anxiously for the monthly newsletter that arrived in our mailbox, telling us what traveling exhibits we could expect next. It was one such exhibit, a gallery of gowns worn by British royalty, that had burrowed itself inside me in such a way that a dream was born.
“I’m going to work here one day,” I’d told my mother, pushing back a strand of dirty-blond hair as I stared up at a jewel-colored gown once worn by Queen Elizabeth the Second.
I was twelve.
I wanted to exist within these walls. It was my church, and I believed in its teachings wholeheartedly. I had drunk the water. Read the great books. And prayed to the gods of knowledge and creativity. I wanted to be part of whatever it took to bring history to life for others. And for the past nine years…that’s exactly what I’d done.
I stared at the scene sprawled out before me.
“Sanctuary,” I whispered, tucking a blond-highlighted strand of hair behind my ear.
Gleaming table after gleaming table sat covered in silk, satin, lace, and velvet. Gowns and dresses and blouses previously only seen on movie screens and in photographs now lay delicately in wait of tending to, their sparkle and sinew in contrast to the stark lights and tepid surroundings. Mannequins, my constant companions, stood at the ready, waiting for their moment.
Thread in every color imaginable, like a rainbow of rotund spool soldiers on a rolling rack, waited to be chosen. Needles in pincushions, strips of bias tape, shimmering appliqués, ribbons, seam rippers, clear drawers filled with buttons and clasps and snaps, and boxes upon boxes of straight pins, their colorful heads a happy bouquet of tiny plastic globes, were scattered across every surface, peeking from where they’d fallen to the f loor, rolled beneath furniture, and stuck—I bent to pull a pink-headed pin from the rug beneath my feet—in a variety of inconvenient places.
The door clicked open behind me and I smiled.
“Good morning, Sylvia,” a familiar voice said.
“Morning, Lu,” I said to the one member of my team who, like me, couldn’t wait to get to work.
Every day, my friend and fellow fashion-obsessed cohort, Lu Huang, and I arrived within minutes of one another, and a full half hour before anyone else. Working as conservators for the museum was a coveted get for us. A dream job that every morning caused us to rush from our respective homes, grabbing an insufficient breakfast on our way out the door, and wondering hours later why we were so hungry. We lost track of time constantly, surviving on coffee and bags of chips from the vending machine, and leaving friends and family waiting on us as we turned up late to holiday parties, dinners, and events we’d implored others to attend but couldn’t possibly get to on time, and having forgotten to blend the concealer we’d hurriedly dotted on in the train, with paint under our nails and bits of thread or glue on our jacket cuffs.
In Lu I’d found not only the perfect work companion, but a kindred spirit. Over the nine years we’d worked together, we’d enjoyed laughing over our shared love of no-nonsense ponytails, and waxing poetic about old films and vintage fashion. We sat in her living room or mine, rewatching the movies that had shaped us and sharing stories of our schoolgirl walls plastered with images of iconic women of the silver screen, while our schoolmates favored posters of half-clothed men. So, when the idea for the newest exhibit started floating around our superiors’ offices upstairs, we’d spent many a night poring over which films we’d choose if asked, and then deliberated, scrapped, and chose again until we had the perfect array.
Out of curiosity, we began to inquire with movie studios about the costumes we’d be interested in displaying, running into new obstacles with each call we made. Several times we chose a beloved film only to find half the costumes had been lost in a fire, were part of a decades-long legal battle, or were just plain lost—a travesty over which we consoled ourselves with a huge plate of nachos and a pitcher of margaritas. Eventually, the decisions about which movies to include boiled down to three simple things: Where were the costumes we’d need? Would they be available to us for the time required? And what kind of shape were they in?
Once we’d gotten the green light that the exhibit was on, we finalized our list, made the calls, gathered confirmations, and began the design for the wing the costumes would be shown in. And then we waited, barely able to contain ourselves as one by one the garments that would be featured in The Hollywood Glamour Exhibition arrived.
We chose two movies per decade, going back one hundred years to the 1920s. Every piece that had been worn by the female lead was sent to us from studios, museums, or estates. Once in our possession, my job as costume curator, along with my staff of seven, was to remove each gown or outfit from its protective garment bags or boxes, and go over it with a fine-tooth comb, looking for tears, stains, missing buttons, and the like. We’d been working for months. Some of the more intricate gowns needed extensive rebeading or sequin replacement, and many of the older pieces needing patching inside to hold the outside fabric together. In two cases we’d had to sew exact replicas of the linings, and then carefully fit them inside the original, giving it something to cling to, extending its life.
A pantsuit from the forties had lost an outside pocket and matching the fabric had been hell. The brim of an iconic straw hat that belonged to another outfit had been scorched by a cigarette and needed to be patched. Each garment presented its own set of unique problems, and we were giddy as we worked to solve each puzzle.
With our intention for each item to be viewed from all sides, it was crucial they looked as flawless as possible. Thankfully, my team were experts in their field, and excited at the opportunity to handle costumes worn by some of the most famous women in film history.
“Can’t believe we’re down to the final film,” Lu said, running a finger over a strip of fringe hanging from a black evening gown. “I think this batch is my favorite.”
I nodded, taking in the room of costumes from the 1928 film The Star. Each piece had been worn by the iconic Greta Garbo and was the epitome of elegance and class. And a notable diversion from the designer’s usual style.
“It’s so odd Cleménte changed her MO for this one film,” I said, tilting my head as I took in the distinct wide neckline featured in each of the eight pieces. Even a blouse and jacket had been designed to show off the actress’s collarbones. The pieces were alluring, but Cleménte had always been known for a more modest style.
Michele Cleménte had been a well-known designer in the ’20s and ’30s, her signature style demure, with higher necklines and longer hems. But for this movie, she’d completely diverged.
“It is strange,” Lu said, frowning. “The studio must’ve wanted something exact.”
“Then why hire her?” I asked. “Not that she didn’t do a lovely job. The clothing is exquisite. I’d wear them all now.”
“And look fab doing it.”
I felt myself blush with pleasure at the compliment. Being tall and willowy had its advantages. Unfortunately for me, I had neither the opportunity nor the bank account to wear clothes as fine as the ones before us.
“Thanks, Lu,” I said, bending to peer closer at the large white beaded star on the white satin gown that was to be the centerpiece for the entire show.
Aside from the star, the rest of the fabric had been left unadorned, letting the beaded element shine before one’s eye went to the skirt, which fell in soft overlapping layers to the floor. It was a stunning piece of art. But a confusing one. Because it
had no resemblance to any piece ever sewn before by Cleménte. At least not any piece I’d seen in my years of studying the different famous designers. It didn’t have her specific way of hand sewing or her distinctive technique of tying off a knot, or even her tendency toward geometric shapes. But it was the neckline that really threw me off. Cleménte had preferred to leave a lot to the imagination. It was her calling card during a time when everyone else was showing more skin. And yet for these, she’d completely gone off-script.
The rest of the crew arrived at nine on the dot and the quiet of the room rose to a dull roar as individual desk lights were turned on, loupes donned to scrutinize the tiniest details, and we all began to sew, glue, and chat our way through the day.
“Syl?”
I glanced up and winced as my back protested from having been bent over a table for the past hour. Lu stood, her coat over her arm, by the door. Everyone else had vanished.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Nearly seven.”
“Shit. How does that always happen?” I pulled the loupes from my head.
“You happen to be in love with a dress,” Lu said. “That’s how.”
“Story of my life.”
“Explains so much.”
“Does it?”
“I mean, it definitely explains why you haven’t had a date with a real live human in a while. Only—” She gestured to the mannequin beside me.
We laughed. She wasn’t wrong.
Lu was the only person who truly understood me. The only person besides my sister who I’d ever allowed to see inside my guest room closet where dozens of scavenged vintage dresses, trousers, jackets, and hats hung, waiting to be delicately cared for like the ones I lovingly handled at work.
“You gonna stay?” Lu asked, watching me as I looked back at the dress spread out before me.
I rubbed my eyes and stared at the tiny white beads I’d been replacing. We’d named the dress The Diaphanous Star, and I’d been carefully sewing on one bead at a time for the past two hours. It was a delicate task as the fabric they clung to was nearly one hundred years old. I had to work slowly and thoughtfully to keep from shredding it.
“Yeah,” I said, rotating my head. “I want to get this star done. How’d you do today?”
I glanced over at the black evening gown she was working on.
“I’m close,” she said. “You can barely see the snag in the back now, and I should be able to replace the bit of fringe that’s missing tomorrow.”
“Perfect,” I said, reaching over to wake my laptop and clicking on the calendar. “We are ahead of schedule, which bodes well should we have any catastrophes.”
Lu knocked a small wooden box holding scissors inside it.
“Don’t jinx us,” she said and then waved. “See you B and E.”
“See you B and E,” I said.
B and E. Bright and early. We’d made it up one day after the youngest woman in our group rattled off a bunch of acronyms as if the rest of us should know what they mean. We used it constantly. She didn’t think it was amusing. This of course made it that much funnier.
I pulled my loupes back down and resumed placing the beads that formed the shimmering star. Thirty minutes later I sat up, set the magnifying glasses on the table, and arched my back in a well-deserved stretch.
“Okay, you,” I said to the dress. “Time to get you on a mannequin.”
Sliding my arms beneath the gown, I lifted it carefully and carried it to the far end of the table where a mannequin with roughly Greta Garbo’s 1927 torso measurements stood in wait,
minus its arms which would be attached once I got the dress on it.
Unfortunately, the wide neckline made it hard to secure.
“You’re pretty,” I muttered, trying to keep the dress from slipping to the floor while I reached for one of the arms. “But a pain in my ass.”
I clicked an arm into place, moving the capped sleeve over the seam where the appendage attached to the shoulder, and making sure the hand was resting just right on the mannequin’s hip. Satisfied, I reached for the other arm and did the same on the other side.
“Not bad, headless Garbo,” I said, straightening the gown and smiling at the beaded star glimmering under the lights.
I grabbed my notepad and made my way around the dress, writing down problems that still needed to be addressed. Loose threads, the unraveling second tier of the skirt, and a bit of fabric that looked like it had rubbed against something and was scuffed. There was a stain on the hem in back, and one of the capped sleeves sagged, leading me to investigate and find a spot inside where the elastic was stretched out of shape.
My eyes moved along every inch of fabric, bead, and thread, my fingers scribbling notes as I took in what was easier to see with the dress hanging rather than sprawled on a tabletop. As I scrutinized the neckline in back, I noticed the tag was exposed and reached up to tuck it in. But as I pulled the material back, the tag fluttered to the floor.
With a sigh, I bent to pick it up. I could leave the fix until morning, but as I had nothing but an empty apartment waiting for me, I began the task of detaching the arms of the mannequin and sliding the dress back off and onto the table.
“Always something with you ladies,” I said, grabbing a needle and thread. “Can’t complain, I guess. Hottest date I’ve had in a while.”
But as I turned my attention to the spot the tag had fallen
from, I frowned and pulled the dress closer, peering at a small, elegant stitch no longer than the length of the tag that had covered it.
“Is that…”
I grabbed my loupes and looked again, the stitching now magnified and leaving zero doubt that beneath the tag, in white thread and a beautiful freehand stitch, was a name—and it wasn’t Cleménte’s.
Sitting back, I removed my glasses and stared at the gorgeous dress with its beautiful wide neckline and capped sleeves, the beaded star, the tiered skirt that was so unlike Cleménte in style, and wondered aloud to the empty room—
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Hidden away in an old, dilapidated Victorian home, the Dresden witches have been making their prized candies for years. Their secret ingredient would make most people squeamish, but for Lollipop it’s just another typical day at home. Lolli spends her days making candies and longing for her classmate Stella. As her infatuation for Stella deepens, Lollipop begins to question her loyalty to her family. Will she choose love or will she do anything it takes to preserve the Dresden legacy at any costs? Does she have what it takes to be the next head witch or will her powers never be strong enough?
Stella Morris has recently moved to Arcana, California after a tragic incident involving her mother. Stella is both beautiful and popular, but she harbors a darkness in her that threatens to make her whole world come undone.
This coming-of-age queer romance is drenched in blood and sugar.
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It’s funny/not funny the things you remember about the worst day of your life.
It was a hot, humid, hazy, August afternoon.
We had hot dogs and baked beans for dinner. Later, I had a cosmic orchestra of gas and flatulence. Mom thought it was hilarious. Palmer accused me of being a show-off. He wasn’t entirely wrong.
Afterward, as we did every Sunday night, we watched The Ed Sullivan Show.
I drifted off to sleep as rain pelted the roof. The sky blinked off and on like a flashlight. The roar of thunder filled all the empty spaces.
My brother Palmer—forever thirteen—shook me awake, his hands red and sticky. I thought it was from a cherry ice pop—but I know now it was blood. Our mother’s blood.
“Hide, Brooks.” Palmer took in a huge gulp of air. “You know where. And don’t come back, whatever you do. The monster. He’s in the house.”
I ran up to the dunes at Ditch Plains Beach as fast as my stubby legs could carry me, soaked and chilled to the bone.
A week later, I woke up in a hospital bed. A nurse jabbed me with something.
My father gripped my hand. “You’re all right, son,” he whispered. “It’s over.”
But of course, it wasn’t. And I was far from all right. I didn’t know it then, but I do now. You have no idea how deep the rot goes until you bite into the apple and see a wriggling worm.
CHAPTER ONE
Sheldon Adler, my agent at Crown-Hawkins and my brother from another mother, is late as usual. No fucking surprise there. When you’re meeting Sheldon, you have to tack on an hour at least. I’m at our usual table at La Bonne Grenouille, the best little French bistro in Manhattan that no one has ever heard of, sipping a glass of ice-cold watermelon seltzer. Sheldon has been my literary agent—no, make that literary savior—since he read my first published short story that didn’t involve erect penises in The New Yorker. He contacted me out of the blue and suggested Hey, why don’t you write a book and I’ll sell it? I wrote Fallen Angels in twenty-four days in a drug haze. When it was finally published, it sold less than two hundred copies, but Sheldon was so fucking proud you would’ve thought it sold two million. I resigned myself to being a failure. Months later, the book was plucked out of obscurity by the senior literary critic of The New York Times and nominated for a Pulitzer. A tabloid dubbed me “The Heroin Hemingway.” The name stuck, even though I’ve been sober and drug-free for more than twenty-five years.
Sheldon got me my first million-dollar advance. He’s the wolf that other wolves hire, and his reputation is well-earned. My biggest supporter, he stayed with me through the lean, mean years when I wrote truly terrible books. Despite my abysmal marital track record, I’m extremely loyal. I wouldn’t dream of leaving Sheldon and believe me, other agents have tried to poach me. And unless I did or said something unacceptable that blew up on social media—which is why I don’t have any social media accounts—Sheldon wouldn’t kick me to the curb or toss me under the bus. All my skeletons are out there. Well, most of them.
A portly man with a vague resemblance to the great Mafia chronicler Mario Puzo, Sheldon huffs his way to our table. I can’t say it to his face, but Sheldon needs to lose forty—make that fifty—pounds, if not for himself, then for his young children. I’m sixty-five and I can still fit into the jeans I wore when I was nineteen. It takes discipline and willpower, of which I have plenty to spare.
After we order and exchange our typical innocuous pleasantries about the weather, politics, and soccer, for we’re both rabid fans, Sheldon downs a gin and tonic. It’s his first of the day and not his last. “Brooks, how is the book coming along?” he booms in a guttural Brooklyn accent that has other diners turning their heads.
“Great,” I reply cheerfully. “It couldn’t be going any better.
Gold, pure gold.”
He tilts his head. “Cassie says you haven’t been sleeping well.”
Cassie’s my third and—if I have anything to say about it—last wife. She interviewed me for a puff piece and months later, when the pregnancy test was positive, I knew I’d met my Waterloo, no thanks to Abba. An abortion was out of the question. Now we have two children under six, our lives are a merry-go-round of sweet chaos. Last fall, I had a vasectomy so there will be no more miniature Andersons polluting the planet.
I finish my seltzer and signal for another. “You know I never sleep well when I’m writing. I do my best work after midnight.” In the old days, that didn’t necessarily apply to writing.
The waitress delivers our meals: me, a grilled chicken Caesar salad with extra feta, and Sheldon a porterhouse with crispy julienne potatoes and parmesan creamed spinach. I eye his steak with unconcealed envy, but Cassie’s always after me to eat healthier. I sigh and add more dressing to my salad. Cassie would be pleased.
“Yeah, I know. You have the constitution of fucking Secretariat. You did drugs with Keith Richards and Lou Reed.” Sheldon cut into his steak; it’s not just blue, it’s bloody raw. Just looking at it makes me queasy. “But this is different. You’re writing about your goddamn family.”
“I can be objective.”
Sheldon puts his fork down. “Not about this, Brooks. Come on. The cold-blooded executions of your mother and brother—”
I suddenly lose my appetite. Sheldon means well. Cassie does, too. But this quasi-intervention is the last thing I need. “Sheldon, you know as well as Cassie that I had no choice. I wasn’t going to let that fucking guttersnipe drag my mother through the mud.” The fucking guttersnipe in question is Marshall Reagan (no relation to the former president), a douchebag posing as a journalist. His brand is writing scandalous, unauthorized biographies of the rich and famous because he knows he can get away with it. No dirt, no sleaze, is beneath him. And when he can’t find anything salacious, he makes shit up and pulls it out of his ass like saltwater taffy.
“You don’t know that.”
“Oh, but I do know. I know exactly the angle he’d take. That my mother was having an affair with Julian.” Julian Broadhurst, born in Lancaster, England, in 1942. An artist who was supposedly the protégé of Peter Max. Julian had long blond hair and drove a robin’s-egg-blue Aston Martin. Palmer and I loathed him. “And when Mom wanted to end it, he killed her. But that wasn’t enough, fuck no. When my brother tried to protect her, Julian killed him, too.” I shake my head, the bile percolating like a fresh pot of coffee. “My mother was brilliant. Graduated from Mount Holyoke with honors. And she was utterly devoted to my father. To us. The idea that she’d have a summer fling with that bohemian scumbag—” I choke on the words (or is it a sliver of chicken that went down the wrong pipe?). “And you know damn well that when that cocksucker Reagan’s done tarring and feathering her, he’ll start in on my father, who has been nothing less than a fucking saint. Saint Bernard.” I rap my fist on the table. “It’s fucking ludicrous.”
Sheldon nods, sympathy oozing from every pore. “All I’m saying is that you have a lot on your plate. The book. The next book. Your father’s gala. You’re writing a speech for that, right? Jesus fucking Christ, Brooks. You’re not Superman. It’s bound to take a toll on you.”
“So, what are you suggesting? I can’t return the advance. It’s already spent.” Six million gone in a heartbeat. Lawyers. Trust funds. The new house in Water Mill. And I was finally able to get my ex-wives off my back with a tidy lump sum. For the first time in years, no alimony to shill out every goddamn month. All thanks to Sheldon, who hadn’t budged an inch during the multi- house book auction. He earned his commission ten times over.
“No one’s suggesting that. That’s crazy.” Sheldon’s halfway through his steak. “But we can ask to push the deadline back by a couple of months.”
“No.” I’m a stubborn son of a bitch. If there’s one thing I’m known for, it’s living up to my contractual obligations. I’ve never missed a deadline. I could be fucking pushing up daisies and I’d still deliver.
Sheldon sighs. “Why are you being so goddamn obstinate?” “I’m well into the book now, it’s just a matter of research.” “Really?” He gives me a side-eye. “Cassie says you’ve barely written the first chapter.”
I’m annoyed. Mostly because Cassie’s right. “It’s all in my head, Sheldon. Don’t worry.”
“Well, I do. Worry, I mean.” Sheldon furrows his bushy eyebrows; he looks like a caterpillar on meth. “I know how good you can be, Brooks. But you push yourself way too hard.”
I make a half-hearted stab at my chicken. He could’ve added— but tactfully didn’t—that he also knows how bad I can be. My books still sold phenomenally well, even that fucking godawful picture book Rocco the Stinky Raccoon, nominated for a Caldecott. I was ecstatic when it didn’t win.
By the time we say our goodbyes, it’s three o’clock. If I hurry, I can see the kids for a minute before they’re trundled off to gymnastics or karate or whatever activity Cassie has planned. Mark loves Star Wars and Hulk. Audra’s obsessed with unicorns. I buy them far too many toys. I love my children desperately, but I don’t pretend to understand them. That’s Cassie’s deal. She’s the hardass. I’m the marshmallow man.
We live in the Dakota on the UWS (upper west side) close to Central Park. Our apartment has a bird’s-eye view of the park. The Dakota’s where John Lennon was shot. We still have tourists who make pilgrimages. I wasn’t there the night it happened, but I’d like to think I’d have stopped Mark Chapman in his tracks. I’d bought into the Dakota with the advance I’d gotten for Fallen Angels. I never would’ve been able to afford it otherwise. That book’s the gift that keeps on giving. It’s been optioned by movie production companies at least a dozen times but it’ll never get made. I’ve reconciled myself to that.
“Daddy’s home!” I shout as I enter the foyer.
The kids always run to see what I’ve bought. Today I have a Baby Yoda electronic gizmo for Mark and a big unicorn doll for Audra. But no excited squeals greet me. Instead, there are two packed suitcases by the door. I walk into the living room and marvel once again at our panoramic views of Central Park.
Cassie, her eyes red, sits on the sofa.
“Bad day with the kids, baby?” I bend down to kiss her. She turns her head. This isn’t a good sign.
“Where are the munchkins?” I toss my suit jacket on a chair. “With my sister in Providence.” Her voice is flat.
I’m surprised. Tammy’s coming down on the weekend. Why would she have come early and taken the kids?
Cassie stares at me. If her eyes were bullets, I’d be a corpse. “Dr. Schultz’s office called. They said you missed your six-month check-up.”
Dr. Schultz. Shit. I try to act casual but my heart thumps like a boom box. I can talk myself out of this one. I’ve done it before. “Damn, I guess I forgot to give them my new cell number. I’ll call in the morning, they’re probably closed now.”
“Kind of like how you forgot to tell me about your vasectomy?” Her voice rises an octave.
I cringe. I’m in for it now. And I fucking deserve it. “I’m not stupid, Brooks.”
No. That’s one thing Cassie isn’t. She’s brilliant in every respect, far more than I could ever hope or aspire to be. I’m painfully aware that I’m the reason she hasn’t gotten the jobs and accolades. I’m the anchor that weighs her down. “We talked about it, Cassie.”
“No. You talked about it. Not me. Not ever.” Cassie’s so mad her body trembles. “Who else knows?”
“Dad.”
“Of course. I bet he was thrilled.” My father wasn’t in favor of this marriage. It was nothing against Cassie. He’d been against all my marriages. When I told him Cassie was pregnant, he was apoplectic. You can’t be serious, he said. You’re too old to be a father. And too fucked-up, he could’ve added. But he eventually came around.
“Who else?”
“Nobody. I mean, nobody important,” I stumble. “Look, I’m sorry.”
“Sorry that you had it done or sorry that I found out?”
The truth was both, but I’d done enough damage for one evening. “Baby, I admit, it was a stupid thing to do. I wasn’t thinking clearly. But you know, maybe not going to the check-up was a good thing. Maybe it didn’t take. And if it did, I can get it reversed. If they can reattach a penis, they can fix this, right?” I nervously chuckle. That’s my default posture. When in a difficult situation, I make a feeble attempt at humor. Usually, it worked. Not this time.
“I’m going to stay at Tammy’s. I don’t know for how long.”
I try not to make a face and fail. Tammy hates me. Well, maybe hate is too mild: detests, loathes, abhors. Tammy would revel in this. “Please, honey. Don’t do that. We can work this out.”
Cassie holds up her hand. “Since you began this book”—the book she and Dad were vehemently against from the start, probably the only thing in the universe they agree on— “you haven’t been the same.”
“That’s not true,” I protest.
“It is true even if you don’t want to admit it. You got the book advance and then a vasectomy. And you don’t see that’s a huge problem? What about last night?”
I give her a look. “What about it?”
“I found you in Audra’s room at two in the morning. Over her bed holding a baseball bat.”
What? I shiver as if I’ve fallen through a river of ice. Water fills my lungs, and I can barely breathe. “That’s preposterous!” I gasp.
“Muttering about monsters. And it wasn’t the first time.” She shot me a look I knew all too well from my boarding school days. I hated it then and I hate it even more now. “You almost had me convinced that writing about what happened to you would be a catharsis. Exorcizing old ghosts and demons. But the opposite is happening, and it scares the shit out of me. It kills me to say this, but I have to protect the kids and I’m not sure they’re safe around you right now.”
Cassie’s words hang in the air. Jesus fucking Christ. Talk about a gut punch. The kids aren’t safe around me? I adore Mark and Audra. I’d die for them in the blink of an eye, with no hesitation. I cut Mark’s umbilical cord. I spent weeks in the neonatal unit with Audra. I changed diapers, I rocked them to sleep, they lacked for nothing materially. “You don’t mean that,” I retort. “You’re upset and angry about the vasectomy.”
“That’s a separate issue. But fuck yeah, I’m angry. I’m fucking livid.”
No one says “fuck” quite the way Cassie does. To my shame, I feel myself getting hard. Embarrassed, I cover myself with a sofa pillow and hope she doesn’t notice.
She does and averts her eyes. “This is a problem, it’s a huge fucking problem. This is beyond my field of expertise, Brooks. I’m a freelance editor, not a therapist.”
“Therapists,” I jeer. I’d had my fill of them. Never again. They’re the modern-day equivalent of leeches. “I sleepwalk. You knew that from day one. I never hid it.”
“This is more than sleepwalking. I want to help you, but I can’t if you won’t admit it’s a problem.”
“And your way of helping is talking to Sheldon?”
“Not just Sheldon. I spoke to Bernard, too. He’s worried about you. He’s noticed the change in you, we all have. Your father and I, we’re never going to be best friends, but I’m telling you, we’re united on this.”
My throat tightens as if someone’s wrapped a cord around my neck. I’m that eight-year-old kid shivering in the dunes, peeing on myself. “It’s been a rough winter. When I’m writing I can be an ogre. Maybe this vacation is what you and the kids need. The kids—” I stop myself. “I’ll call them in the morning. Better yet, why don’t I drive you there and I can tell them goodbye in person.”
Cassie picks up her handbag, the one I gave her last Christmas. A trendy, expensive designer label. To me they all look alike, so I asked the saleslady to give me the most popular one. I take that to mean Cassie isn’t entirely through with me yet. My marriage hung on this fucking bag. That’s how desperate I am. “I can drive myself.” Of course she can. We got his and hers matching Priuses with the book advance.
Cassie walks to the front door.
I follow and sniff her perfume like a love-sick puppy. “It’s getting late. Why don’t we order a very expensive meal, chill out with an old Bogie movie, and you can leave first thing.” I smile, in full Errol Flynn rogue mode.
Determined, she shakes her head. “You can’t fuck your way out of this one, Brooks.” She slams the door behind her so forcefully that my framed certificate from Caldecott falls off the fucking wall.
Immediately, my cell phone buzzes. I ignore Dad’s call. I’m not in the mood for another St. Bernard lecture on what a fucking mess I’ve made of my life. It’s suddenly very hot in the apartment. Or is it me? I tell Alexa to lower the temperature by five degrees, her calm demeanor a stark reminder of how quiet the apartment is without the kids screaming in the background. He pulled my hair! She grabbed my crayon!
I go upstairs into my writing lair. I must compartmentalize what just happened, otherwise, my head will detonate into a thousand pieces. Cassie and I have weathered worse. She’ll come back. She has to. I’ll call Dr. Schultz and fix this mess. For now, I must work on Dad’s speech. I pull out the desk chair and find it’s already occupied by one of Audra’s unicorn dolls.
Dad’s receiving a prestigious humanitarian award from the United Nations. Now pushing eighty-two or eighty-six depending on how many martinis he’s drunk, he’s evolved into an elder statesman on retainer as a crisis handler/negotiator. He advised LBJ on Vietnam. Nixon, too, although Dad couldn’t stand the prick. Dad begged Ford not to pardon Nixon because the voters and history would judge Ford harshly. Dad was right. Clinton made him a Special Envoy to Sarajevo. GW Bush called on him to head the 9/11 Commission, but Dad declined due to other “commitments”. Obama had him on speed dial. Dad has brokered peace agreements between nations and factions that were considered impossible. No one deserves this award more. I’ve been allotted roughly fifteen minutes to tell the world how I feel about him. I’d need fifteen years.
I touch a computer key. In Google Drive, the opening lines to my father’s speech flash on. “My beloved father, Bernard Stewart Anderson, is a generous, kind, honorable, decent man who embodies everything fine and good in this world. A man who has earned the respect of world leaders no matter their political persuasion. A man who goes out of his way to help the weak and oppressed. And he’s also a man who bore the ultimate tragedy with dignity and grace. No one knows Bernard Anderson better than I, his surviving son.”
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The Inkblotters 