The Accidental Bestseller

by Wendy Wax

  They were sitting, once again staring out at the view, when Melissa and Dee came out carrying a tray of cheese and crackers and some other predinner nibbles.

  “Did you tell her about Thanksgiving?” Melissa asked her brother as they settled themselves.

  Kendall’s sense of well-being evaporated. She hadn’t yet figured out how to pull off Thanksgiving without either being forced to sit across from Calvin over turkey and stuffing and pretend all was well or tell the truth to her children, who might look like and think of themselves as adults, but who were certain to be shaken by the news.

  She was so busy casting in her mind for potential options—could she get Calvin to declare a truce in honor of the holiday? Would he come and pretend there was no Laura? What were the chances she could make it through the first course without plunging the carving knife into his tiny Grinch-like heart?—that she at first missed Jeffrey’s stammered statement.

  “What?” she asked. “What did you say?”

  He looked to Dee for moral support and then repeated himself. “I hope you and Dad won’t be upset, but Dee’s parents invited me to Savannah for Thanksgiving.”

  “Oh.”

  “And I’m planning to go home with Todd,” Melissa added. “Will you and Daddy be all right on your own?”

  If she had been Catholic she would have been shouting, “Hallelujah!” As it was she was so flush with relief she could barely find her voice. The children interpreted this as disapproval.

  “If it’s a problem, Mrs. Aims, I’m sure my parents would understand.”

  “Yeah,” Melissa added. “I could go to Todd’s over spring break instead.”

  “Oh, no. No, I won’t let you do that.” Kendall found her voice and hurried to reassure them before her escape hatch slammed shut. “I have so much work to do it would almost be a relief not to worry about Thanksgiving this year.”

  “But you will have one, right?” The idea of it not existing, even if they weren’t going to be there, seemed to upset both of them. Which reinforced Kendall’s decision not to trouble the children with the divorce for as long as possible.

  “Don’t you worry about a thing,” Kendall said. “You go and enjoy yourselves. Your father and I will do exactly as we please on Thanksgiving.” This, happily, was completely true. They just wouldn’t be doing it together.

  Kendall smiled at her children and the lovely Dee and intentionally changed the subject. For now, half-truths and sins of omission seemed the lesser of evils. She only hoped that if her prevarications were ever discovered, Jeffrey and Melissa would understand that she’d had their best interests at heart.

  Mallory returned to New York full of apologies and eager to deliver them, only to find the intended recipient gone and the brownstone empty.

  Chris’s note, which she found propped against the toaster, was short and to the point; a client had asked him to supervise a project in Phoenix personally, and he had accepted. Perhaps some time apart for reflection would be good for both of them.

  Now as Mallory roamed the silent rooms of their home, she saw his hand everywhere: in the gloss of the hardwood floors that he’d refinished himself; in the dark sheen of the dining room wainscoting that he’d rescued from a nearby demolition and artfully installed; in the window seat in her office underneath which he’d carved a bookcase for her favorite oversized tomes. Everything he’d designed and/or installed was both functional and beautiful in a subtle and undemand ing way, very much like Chris.

  In her study, Mallory dropped onto the velvet-covered window seat and stared out at the walled garden, yet another of Chris’s creations. The house settled around her, the silence so profound that she could count the number of cubes disgorged by the automatic ice maker. The muted sounds of traffic from Sixth Avenue were much too distant to include her. Chris’s absence carried an accusing silence all its own.

  The great irony of course was that the words, and her command of them, which had deserted her so capriciously, had returned. Each time she sat to write Miranda Jameson’s part in Kendall’s story, they gushed out of her and onto the screen in a steady, eager stream. She had not yet found the courage to go back to her own work in progress, but the fact that she was writing at all was a relief she desperately wanted to share. With Chris.

  Moving to the computer, Mallory held her breath while she scrolled through her inbox. There were numerous entries from her agent and her editor, which she could tell from the subject lines she didn’t want to open. She also saw updates from Faye, Tanya, and Kendall, which she’d look at shortly. The head of her fan club, her publicist, and her masseuse had all sent her e-mails. But there wasn’t a single missive from her husband.

  Mallory picked up the phone and debated whether to call him. But she’d already apologized to Chris via voice mail, e-mail, and text message. It didn’t look like she was going to get to do it in person.

  After another fruitless, pathetic turn through the house, Mallory stopped in the kitchen, where she spent several minutes contemplating the blank stainless-steel face of her refrigerator. A load of ice landed in the bin and she counted four cubes. A new number flashed into the minutes’ column on the digital clock above the microwave.

  The last time she’d felt this alone had been the day after her high school graduation, the day her mother, who had hated being poor even more than being without Mallory’s father, had chosen to follow him into the hereafter.

  Somehow she’d clabbered together a series of student loans to get her undergraduate degree at Boston College. Her graduation gift to herself was a new name and a new city.

  Her first job in New York had been as a receptionist for a brokerage firm, which had exposed her to a series of “high-net-worth individuals” who reminded her of her father—none of whom wanted to leave his wife for her, but all of whom helped her enjoy a lifestyle well beyond her means.

  A decade and a half out of school she had nothing but a co-op she couldn’t afford and a salary that never made it to the end of the month. The clients who’d panted after her began to pant after younger women. The specter of poverty loomed, calling to mind her father’s demise and striking fear in her heart.

  And how did she deal with it?

  She read novels. One book after another, sometimes at the rate of one a day, for a solid year. An acceptable form of escape that didn’t leave a hangover. She read every author she could get her hands on who wrote a strong female protagonist who triumphed in the end. Patricia Cornwell, Nora Roberts, Terry McMillan, Sue Grafton, Sandra Brown, Olivia Goldsmith; she read them all and more, haunting the library and the used book stores until the day she realized that what she really wanted to do was write a novel. And what set her apart is that she actually did.

  She was thirty-six when she started her first manuscript; thirty-seven when she met Chris and finished the book; thirty-eight when they got married.

  She’d been almost forty and desperate to make something happen when she attended the WINC conference where she met Faye, Tanya, and Kendall. And during her agent appointment, on the strength of the one book she’d actually written, she somehow landed Patricia Gilmore as her agent. The rest, as they say, was history.

  By the time she hit the New York Times list she was an obsessive write-aholic afraid to let up lest she lose all that she’d managed to accumulate and be forced to return to the lonely, poor little girl she’d been and hated.

  She had created a brand and real wealth, which she was determined to hold on to. Chris had given her his love and support. In many ways he’d built their life with his own two capable hands. And she had been too busy writing, and too afraid to stop, to thank him for it.

  “Get out now,” she said as she caught herself counting the ticks of the digital clock. “Get out of this house before you end up out in the garden watching the grass grow.”

  Without further internal debate, Mallory grabbed a wind-breaker, her cell phone, and a set of house keys and let herself out of the brownstone. With no destination i
n mind, she took a left, then a right, deciding to follow the sidewalk wherever it wanted to take her.

  Things were quiet in the Liberty Laundromat that afternoon, for which Tanya was grateful. Her editor at Masque, Darby Hanover, had just called to tell her that her last book had come in first in sales for the month, which Darby saw as a win for her team. Then she told Tanya that she’d put her name up for inclusion in an upcoming anthology with two bigger-name authors. The very possibility made Tanya vibrate with excitement.

  A dryer buzzed and she left the front desk to get the clothes and put them in a basket for folding. She was rolling it toward the front desk when the bell above the door jangled. Before she looked, Tanya knew that it was Brett. Apparently despite the amount of time she’d spent trying to stay away from him, she’d developed a sixth sense that tingled whenever he got within range.

  Out of pure orneriness, she took her time getting back to the desk, schooling her thoughts and her features as she moved toward him. He didn’t need to know that her first response to his presence was a swift kick of excitement. Or that her heart actually sped up whenever he was near.

  Her mouth was already open to offer some sort of glib comment when she noticed that he wasn’t carrying dirty laundry but copies of her latest Masque release, The Rookie Gets Revved.

  “Hey,” he said, his face creasing in a grin that could only be called shit-eating. “How’s it going?”

  “Fine,” she said, though, in fact, what she felt was off balance. “What’s going on?”

  “I brought these copies in to get them autographed.” He held up a stack of four triumphantly. “I tried to buy more, but all the stores are sold out. I practically had to duke it out with a white-haired woman in the aisles of the Tyrone Barnes and Noble to get its last copy.”

  “But, why would you . . .”

  “Do you remember when I told you my mother was a romance junkie?”

  She nodded numbly. “Well, yeah, but . . .”

  “When I told her I knew a real live Masque author, I swear you coulda heard her scream clear across the state.” He grinned, seeming to enjoy her confusion. “She couldn’t believe her no-account, good-for-nothing son knew a celebrity. My stock went up almost as high as it did the years when Valerie and Andi and Dani were born.”

  Tanya smiled. “So I earned you some points with your mama?”

  “Girl, she told me if I didn’t send her an autographed copy of one of your books pronto that I didn’t need to call again.”

  Tanya laughed.

  “Then she called me back and told me everybody in her book club wanted autographed copies, too.”

  Tanya no longer cared how much of this might be BS. She was absolutely enjoying herself.

  “So I went out and tried to corner the market on Tanya Mason novels, but it seems like a bunch of people beat me to it.”

  “Yeah, my editor just called and told me I was the top seller this month.”

  “Well that sure sounds like something to celebrate.”

  “It’s pretty great,” Tanya admitted. “I may be invited to be a part of an anthology they’re planning. It’s a definite step-up.”

  “You deserve it. I thought the book was great. It had lots more character development and more powerful emotion even than your earlier releases, but then I guess there’s room to build more of that in a Masque Xtraromance than a Masque Appeal.”

  Her mouth dropped open at the realization that he not only knew the difference between the two Masque lines but had obviously read not only her current but earlier releases.

  He set the books on the counter and pushed them toward her. Tanya felt a warm glow in her chest that she couldn’t seem to shove away. The fact that this man liked her children and put up with her mother was a good thing; the fact that he had not only read but understood her work—Tanya figured that was a flat-out miracle.

  “Yep,” he said. “All this good news definitely calls for a dinner out. Some place with white tablecloths and fancy service.”

  “Oh.” Tanya stopped glowing and remembered that her goal here was not to get drawn in. “No.” She shook her head. “I don’t think . . .”

  He whipped out a pen and started to direct the autographing. “OK, this one’s for my mother, LindaLee.” He spelled her name and waited while she signed the book. “And this one’s for her best friend, Lila.”

  He talked her through the rest of the signatures and then asked where she thought he could get four more copies.

  “I can check with the Borders at the mall,” she said. “I know the buyer there. But about the dinner . . .” She was flattered and deeply touched, but that didn’t mean getting involved was the right thing to do.

  “Why don’t we plan on a Saturday night?” he said, not really asking. “I may need some time to get the right reservation.”

  “Oh, I don’t think . . .”

  “I can get Valerie to sit if that would help.”

  “It’s not that, it’s just . . .”

  “It’s settled then,” he said, as if they were in complete agreement. “Definitely a Saturday night. That way we won’t have to worry about what time we get in or how hard we party.” He waggled his eyebrows at her and her heart flip-flopped down into her stomach. “I’ll make sure that neither of us is on the schedule for that Sunday morning.”

  25

  Truth may be stranger than fiction, but fiction is truer.

  —FREDERIC RAPHAEL

  Kendall didn’t want to jinx anything by feeling too good, but the truth was that with each day that passed and each page she wrote, she felt a corresponding lightening of the dark cloud that had been hovering over her since the WINC conference in New York.

  After months of being beaten down and stomped on, Kendall felt the universe conspiring to lift her up.

  Her children were happy at college and blissfully unaware of their parents’ impending divorce, her attorney had taken over the onerous job of communicating with Calvin and his equally onerous attorney, and her friends continued to rally around her, sending scenes as they wrote them and calling often to discuss the book and check on her well-being.

  Even from a distance she could feel their love and support and she fed on it hungrily, using it to keep her going as she wrote the book that had evolved from punishing task to welcome therapy.

  With October well under way, the air turned crisper and sharper as the mountains exploded into color, drenching her in infinite shades of red and gold.

  Today she sat in what she now thought of as Mallory’s spot on the deck while she worked on chapter eight and her character’s flight to her haven in the mountains. When she was satisfied with the scene, she stood and stretched. Leaning against the deck railing, she stared up into a cloud of claret-colored leaves and allowed her thoughts to wander to the second bathroom, where she’d decided to install bead board.

  Inside she showered and dressed then took final measurements of the bathroom. She was pretty sure James would be working this afternoon and though she didn’t allow herself to think about the correlation, she spent more time than usual on her hair and makeup.

  Highway 78, which was a winding two-lane affair, was choked with cars bearing Georgia license plates. It was prime leaf season and it seemed that half of the Atlanta area’s four million inhabitants had driven up to gawk at the scenery. She called Mallory from the car, expecting an admonition or irritation when she admitted where she was headed, but Mallory sounded very un-Mallory like when she came on the line.

  “Are you all right?” Kendall asked, when Mallory didn’t raise a single objection to the bead board project or the trip to Home Depot. “You don’t sound like yourself.”

  “I’m fine,” Mallory said. There was a hesitation. “I’m just trying to figure a few things out.”

  “Do you want to brainstorm?” Kendall asked. “I’ve got a good twenty-five minutes in the car.”

  There was another weighty pause. “Well, it’s not actually a plotting issue. Miranda’s
scenes in Sticks and Stones seem to be pretty much writing themselves.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Kendall replied, afraid to push for more. Mallory was notoriously closemouthed about her personal life. But after all the help Mallory had given her, Kendall wanted to return the favor. “How’s Chris?”

  The silence was so profound that for a few moments Kendall thought the call had been dropped—not an unusual occurrence up here where the mountains and their towering treetops played havoc with cell reception. But a glance at the face of her cell phone indicated that she and Mallory were still connected.

  “Has something happened?” Kendall asked.

  “Not really.” Mallory’s voice carried none of its usual certainty.

  “So, something’s sort of happened?”

  “Chris has been on a project in Phoenix for the last three weeks. And it just feels a little strange here without him.” The admission was grudging.

  “Oh. So he’s just home on the weekends?”

  “Um, no. Not exactly.” Another pause. “He hasn’t been home at all.”

  Kendall wanted to offer sympathy, but she knew Mallory would hate that. “When will the project be over?”

  “That’s a bit unclear,” Mallory said. “The project appears to be remarkably . . . open-ended.”

  “Awww, Mallory.” Kendall took the shortcut that would allow her to avoid Dillard’s Main Street where she knew the tourists would be barely chugging along in the mountain version of rush hour.

  “No ‘awwwing,’ Kendall. He’s just upset that I haven’t made enough time for us. And now that I have made the time, he’s upset that he wasn’t the reason I made it.” She sighed. “And they call women irrational!”

  Kendall cut back onto 441 just past the garbage and recycling center and headed south toward Clayton. “Well, I’m here if you need me. And you’re welcome to come back and write with me anytime. The Mallory St. James Memorial Bedroom stands ready and waiting. I just finished repainting it and the floors are all buffed up and shiny. Pretty soon the bathroom will have beadboard and molding.”