This Heart Of Mine

by Susan Elizabeth Philips

  Two miserable weeks later Molly stepped from the elevator onto the ninth floor of the Michigan Avenue office building that held the offices of Birdcage Press. She retied the cardigan around the waist of her red-and-white checked gingham sheath and made her way down the corridor to Helen Kennedy Schott’s office. Molly had long ago passed the point where she could turn back, and she only hoped the concealer she’d dabbed under her eyes hid the shadows.

  Helen rose to greet her from behind a desk cluttered with manuscripts, galleys, and book covers. Even though the weather was muggy, she was dressed in her customary editorial black. Her short gray hair lay neatly against her head, and although she wore no makeup, her nails shone with slick crimson polish. “Molly, it’s wonderful to see you again. I’m so glad you finally called. I’d nearly given up trying to get hold of you.”

  “It’s good to see you,” Molly replied politely, because no matter what Kevin said about her, she was, by nature, a polite person.

  A strip of the Chicago River was visible through the office window, but the colorful display of children’s books on the shelves drew Molly’s attention. As Helen chatted about the new marketing manager, Molly spotted the bright slender spines of the first five Daphne books. Knowing that Daphne Takes a Tumble would never join them should have felt like a stab in the heart, but that part of her was too numb right now to feel anything more.

  “I’m so glad we’re finally having this meeting,” Helen said. “We have lots to talk about.”

  “Not so much.” Molly couldn’t prolong this. She opened her purse, drew out a white business envelope, and set it on the desk. “This is a check reimbursing Birdcage for the first half of the advance you paid for Daphne Takes a Tumble.”

  Helen looked stunned. “We don’t want the advance back. We want to publish the book.”

  “I’m afraid you won’t be able to. I’m not making the revisions.”

  “Molly, I know you haven’t been happy with us, and it’s time to sort this out. From the beginning we’ve only wanted what was best for your career.”

  “I only want what’s best for my readers.”

  “We do, too. Please try to understand. Authors tend to look at a project only from their perspective, but a publisher has to look at the larger picture, including our relationship with the press and the community. We felt we had no choice.”

  “Everybody has a choice, and an hour ago I exercised mine.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I published Daphne Takes a Tumble myself. The original version.”

  “You published it?” Helen’s eyebrows shot up. “What are you talking about?”

  “I published it on the Internet.”

  Helen erupted from her chair. “You can’t do that! We have a contract!”

  “If you check the fine print, you’ll see that I retain the electronic rights to all my books.”

  Helen looked stunned. The larger publishing houses had plugged this hole in their contracts, but some of the smaller presses like Birdcage hadn’t gotten around to it. “I can’t believe you did this.”

  “Now any child who wants to read Daphne Takes a Tumble and see the original illustrations will be able to do it.” Molly had planned a big speech, complete with references to book burning and the First Amendment, but she no longer had the energy. Pushing the check forward, she rose from her chair and walked out.

  “Molly, wait!”

  She’d done what she needed to, and she didn’t stop. As she headed for her car, she tried to feel triumphant, but she mainly felt drained. A college friend had helped her set up the Web site. In addition to the text and drawings for Daphne Takes a Tumble, Molly had included a page that listed some of the books various organizations had tried to keep out of children’s hands over the years because of their content or illustrations. The list included Little Red Riding Hood, all the Harry Potter books, Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, Harriet the Spy, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, as well as the books of Judy Blume, Maurice Sendak, the Brothers Grimm, and Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl. At the end of the list, Molly had added Daphne Takes a Tumble. She wasn’t Anne Frank, but she felt better being in such wonderful company. She only wished she could call Kevin and tell him that she’d finally fought for her bunny.

  She made a few stops to pick up supplies, then swung onto Lake Shore Drive and headed north to Evanston. The traffic was light, and it didn’t take her nearly long enough to get to the moldy old brownstone where she now lived. She hated her second-floor apartment with its view of the Dumpster behind a Thai restaurant, but it was the only place she could afford that would take a dog.

  She tried not to think about her little condo, where strangers had already moved in. Evanston didn’t have many loft conversions available, and the building had a waiting list of people anxious to buy, so she’d known it would sell quickly. Even so, she hadn’t been prepared for it to go in less than twenty-four hours. The new owners had paid her a premium to sublease while they waited for the final paperwork, so she’d had to scramble to find a rental, and here she was in this dismal building. But she had the money to repay her advance and settle her bills.

  She parked on the street two blocks away because her Slytherin landlord charged seventy dollars a month for a parking spot in the lot attached to the building. As she climbed the worn steps to her apartment, the El tracks shrieked just outside the windows. Roo greeted her at the door, then scampered across the worn linoleum and began to bark at the sink.

  “Not again.”

  The apartment was so small that she had no place for her books, and she crawled over the packing boxes on her way to the kitchen sink. She gingerly opened the door, peered inside, and shuddered. Another mouse quivered in her Hav-A-Heart trap. The third one she’d caught, and she’d lived here for only a few days.

  Maybe she could get another Chik article out of this—”Why Guys Who Hate Small Animals Aren’t Always Bad News.” Her cooking piece had just gone into the mail. At first she’d called it “Breakfasts That Won’t Make Him Puke: Scramble His Brains with Your Eggs.” Just before she’d slipped it into the envelope, she’d come to her senses and substituted “Early-Morning Turn-ons.”

  She was writing every day. As devastated as she was about everything, she hadn’t given up and gone to bed the way she’d done after her miscarriage. Instead, she was facing her pain and doing her best to live through it. But her heart had never felt emptier.

  She missed Kevin so much. Each night she lay in bed staring at the ceiling and remembering how his arms had felt around her. But it had been so much more than sex. He’d understood her better than she’d understood herself, and he’d been her soul mate in every way but the one that counted. He didn’t love her.

  With a sigh that came from the bottom of her being, she set aside her purse, slipped on the gardening gloves she’d bought along with the trap, and warily reached under the sink for the handle on the small cage. At least her bunny was hopping free and happy in cyberspace. Which was more than she could say about the rodent.

  She let out a squeak as the frightened mouse started scampering around the cage. “Please don’t do that. Just be quiet, and I promise I’ll have you in the park before you know it.” Where was a man when you needed one?

  Her heart contracted in another achy spasm. The couple Kevin had hired to take over at the campground would be in place by now, so he was probably back in town partying with the international set. Please, God, don’t let him be sleeping with any of them. Not yet.

  Lilly had left several messages on her answering machine wanting to know if Molly was all right, but she still hadn’t returned them. What could she say? That she’d had to sell her condo? That she’d lost her publisher? That her heart had suffered a permanent break? At least she could afford an attorney now, so she had a shot at being able to get out of her contract and sell her next Daphne book to another publisher.

  She held the cage as far away as she could and retrieved her keys. She was on
her way to the door when the buzzer sounded. The mouse had given her the heebie-jeebies, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

  “Just a minute.”

  Still holding the cage at arm’s length, she stepped around another book box and opened the door.

  Helen charged inside. “Molly, you ran out before we could talk. Oh, God!”

  “Helen, meet Mickey.”

  Helen pressed her hand to her heart, the color bleaching from her face. “A pet?”

  “Not exactly.” Molly set the cage on a packing box, but Roo didn’t like that. “Quiet, pest! I’m afraid this isn’t the best time for a visit, Helen. I have to go to the park.”

  “You’re taking it on an outing?”

  “Releasing it.”

  “I’ll—I’ll come with you.”

  Molly should have enjoyed seeing her sophisticated former editor so discomposed, but the mouse had discomposed her, too. With the cage held far from her body, she led the way outside and began winding through the back alleys of downtown Evanston toward the park by the lake. Helen, in her black suit and heels, wasn’t dressed for either the heat or stumbling around potholes, but Molly hadn’t invited her to come along, so she refused to take pity.

  “I didn’t know you’d moved,” Helen called from behind. “Luckily, I ran into one of your neighbors, and he gave me your new address. C-couldn’t you release it somewhere closer?”

  “I don’t want him to find his way back.”

  “Or use a more permanent trap?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  Although it was a weekday, the park was filled with bicyclists, college students on Rollerblades, and children. Molly found a grassy area and set the cage down, then hesitantly reached for the latch. As soon as she sprang it, Mickey made his leap for freedom.

  Straight toward Helen.

  Her editor gave a strangled cry and leaped up on a picnic bench. Mickey disappeared into the shrubbery.

  “Beastly things.” Helen sagged down on the tabletop.

  Molly was feeling a little wobbly-kneed, too, so she sat on the bench. Beyond the edge of the park, Lake Michigan stretched to the horizon. She gazed out and thought of a smaller lake with a cliff for diving.

  Helen pulled a tissue from her purse and dabbed at her forehead. “There’s just something about a mouse.”

  There were no mice in Nightingale Woods. Molly’d have to add one if she ever found a new publisher.

  She gazed at her old editor. “If you’ve come here to threaten me with a lawsuit, you’re not going to get much.”

  “Why would we want to sue our favorite author?” Helen pulled out the envelope that held Molly’s check and set it on the bench. “I’m giving this back. And when you look inside, you’ll see a second check for the remainder of your advance. Really, Molly, you should have told me how strongly you felt about the revisions. I’d never have asked you to make them.”

  Molly didn’t even try to respond to that piece of Slytherin crapola. Nor did she pick up the envelope.

  Helen’s tone grew more effusive. “We’re going to publish Daphne Takes a Tumble in its original version. I’m putting it on the winter schedule so we have time to line up promotion. We’re planning an extensive marketing campaign, with full-page ads in all the big parenting magazines, and we’re sending you on a book tour.”

  Molly wondered if the sun had gotten to her. “Daphne Takes a Tumble is already available on the Internet.”

  “We’d like you to remove it, but we’ll leave the final decision up to you. Even if you decide to keep the Web site, we believe most parents will still want to buy the actual book to add to their children’s collections.”

  Molly couldn’t imagine how she’d been so magically transformed from a minor author to a major one. “I’m afraid you’ll need to do better than this, Helen.”

  “We’re prepared to renegotiate your contract. I’m sure you’ll be pleased with the terms.”

  Molly had been asking for an explanation, not for more money, but she somehow got in touch with her inner tycoon. “You’ll have to deal with my new agent about that.”

  “Of course.”

  Molly had no agent, new or old. Her career had been so small that she hadn’t needed one, but something had definitely changed. “Tell me what’s happened, Helen.”

  “It was the publicity. The new sales figures just came out two days ago. Between the press coverage of your marriage and the SKIFSA stories, your sales have soared.”

  “But I was married in February, and SKIFSA went after me in April. You’re just noticing?”

  “We spotted the first rise in March and another in April. But the numbers weren’t all that significant until we got our end-of-the-month report for May. And the preliminary June figures are even better.”

  Molly decided it was a good thing she was sitting down, because her legs would never have held her. “But the publicity had died down. Why are the numbers shooting up now?”

  “That’s what we wanted to find out, so we’ve spent some time on the phones taking with booksellers. They’re telling us that adults originally bought a Daphne book out of curiosity—either they’d heard about your marriage or they wanted to see what SKIFSA was so upset about. But once they took the book home, their kids fell in love with the characters, and now they’re coming back to the stores and buying the whole series.”

  Molly was stunned. “I can’t believe this.”

  “The kids are showing the books to their friends. We’re hearing that even parents who’ve supported SKIFSA’s other boycotts are buying the Daphne books.”

  “I’m having a hard time taking this in.”

  “I understand.” Helen crossed her legs and smiled. “After all these years you’re finally an overnight success. Congratulations, Molly.”

  Janice and Paul Hubert were the perfect couple to run a bed-and-breakfast. Mrs. Hubert’s eggs were never cold, and none of her cookies burned on the bottom. Mr. Hubert actually enjoyed unstopping toilets and could talk to the guests for hours without getting bored. Kevin fired them after a week and a half.

  “Need some help?”

  He pulled his head out of the refrigerator and saw Lilly standing just inside the kitchen door. It was eleven at night, two weeks and one day since Molly had left. It was also four days since he’d fired the Huberts, and everything had turned to crap.

  Training camp started in a couple of weeks, and he wasn’t ready. He knew he should tell Lilly that he was glad she’d stayed to help out, but he hadn’t gotten around to it, and it made him feel guilty. There’d been something sad about her ever since Liam Jenner had stopped showing up for breakfast. Once he’d even tried to mention it, but he’d been clumsy, and she’d pretended not to understand.

  “I’m looking for rapid-rise yeast. Amy left a note that she might need some. What the hell is rapid-rise yeast?”

  “I have no idea,” she replied. “My baking is pretty much limited to box mixes.”

  “Yeah. Screw it.” He shut the door.

  “Missing the Huberts?”

  “No. Only the way she cooked and the way he took care of everything.”

  “Ah.” She gazed at him, amusement temporarily overriding her unhappiness.

  “I didn’t like how she treated the kids,” he muttered. “And he was making Troy nuts. Who cares if the grass gets mowed clockwise or counterclockwise?”

  “She didn’t exactly ignore the kids. She just didn’t pass out cookies to every scamp who showed up at the kitchen door like Molly did.”

  “That old witch shooed them off like they were cockroaches. And forget about taking a few minutes to tell the kids a story. Is that too much to ask? If a kid wants to hear a story, don’t you think she could put down her damn Lysol bottle long enough to tell ‘em a story?”

  “I never heard any of the kids actually ask Mrs. Hubert to tell them a story.”

  “They sure as hell asked Molly!”

  “True.”

  “What’s that suppos
ed to mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  Kevin opened the lid on the cookie jar, but closed it again when he remembered the ones inside were store bought. He reached into the refrigerator for a beer instead. “Her husband was even worse.”

  “When I heard him tell the kids not to play soccer on the Common because they were ruining the grass, I figured he might be doomed.”

  “Slytherin.”

  “The B&B guests did love the Huberts, though,” she pointed out.

  “That’s because they don’t have kids here like the cottage people do.”

  He offered her a beer, but she shook her head and got a water tumbler from the cupboard instead. “I’m glad the O’Brians are staying for another week,” she said, “but I miss Cody and the Kramer girls. Still, the new kids are cute. I saw you bought more bikes.”

  “I forgot about the rug rats. We needed some Big Wheels.”

  “The older kids all seem to be enjoying the basketball hoop, and you did the right thing hiring a lifeguard.”

  “Some of the parents are a little too casual.” He carried his beer over to the kitchen table, took a seat, then hesitated. But he’d already put this off long enough. “I really appreciate the way you’ve been helping out.”

  “I don’t mind, but I do miss Molly. Everything’s more fun when she’s around.”

  He felt himself growing defensive. “I don’t think so. We’ve had lots of fun without her.”

  “No, we haven’t. The O’Brian boys keep complaining, the old folks miss her, and you’ve been grouchy and unreasonable.” She leaned against the sink. “Kevin, it’s been two weeks. Don’t you think it’s time to go after her? Amy and Troy and I can take care of the place for a few days.”

  Didn’t she realize he’d already thought about this from a hundred different angles? There was nothing he wanted more, but he couldn’t go after her, not unless he wanted to settle down forever as a married man, and that was something he couldn’t do. “It wouldn’t be fair.”

  “Fair to whom?”

  He poked at the label on the bottle with his thumbnail. “She told me… She has feelings.”