by Lexy Timms
They opened the old gate that Michael had always wanted to fix because it screamed against the hinges. Over the cobblestone walkway that cut through their tiny yard and up the steps where Michael had sat on the porch in his rocking chair, watching the sunset with her until he was forced into the hospital. She unlocked the door and went inside, where her parents had already set up everything with the help of her brothers this morning. Everything was taken care of for her. No one wanted her to lift a finger. As far as they were concerned, she had lifted enough over the past month.
At the entrance, she looked at herself in the mirror and felt like everything she saw was a waste. Her entire life, Leslie had been terrified of being an ugly girl. It wasn’t that she was ugly, but rather she just had an overwhelming fear not to be the ugliest person in the room. Being a late bloomer had been mortifying for her, and during college she was delighted to see that she was going through the transformation from ugly duckling to beautiful swan. A fan of healthy eating and a beloved member of her gym, Leslie had sculpted her body with the singular motivation of making herself the best for Michael. Even as he wasted away in the hospital, she found solace in the gym, working out the aggression and rage that she felt washing over her all the time. She wanted to be beautiful for him. She wanted him to see her at her best before he passed. She wanted to be perfection that he could hold and touch before he left this world. Now, without him, all she saw was a hollow beauty devoid of purpose or the desire to keep going.
She was certain that the gym was going to play a huge part in her process of getting her life back together, of working out her rage and frustration. She’d taken up boxing three months ago and found that it was most helpful to pummel her trainer when Michael had a particularly bad day. She knew she’d be back there often.
Truthfully, men hit on her all the time. When she’d had Michael around, he would always fire some sarcastic comment or barb at anyone who hit on her and they’d vanish, but now she was all alone. Whenever someone tried to compliment her or was less than chivalrous about their advances, it made her want to cry. Her protector and champion was gone.
Looking away from the mirror, she walked past the framed letter of acceptance she’d received from Grant when she was eighteen years old. It was the letter that told her that he wanted to read more about a female detective named Tiffany Black. When you’re eighteen and trying very hard to pursue a career in being a novelist, and in a last ditch effort send out the right query letter to the right agent, it’s overwhelming. When she was picking her classes for her junior year of college, she signed a deal with a publisher for six figures. She had paid for both her college tuition and Michael’s. She’d paid for this house and their cars. She had enough money in the bank that if she wanted to; she could move anywhere in the world and never work again.
She was twenty-four and one of the wealthiest, most enigmatic authors in America, but without Michael it seemed worthless.
She passed the bookshelf where her Tiffany Black series sat in pristine condition, her crowning achievement. When they had friends over, they had no clue that she was the author, that she was the mysterious Evelyn Frock. They would come into their home and they would always assume that one of them came from money and that was where they got all of their wealth, how they afforded a townhouse in San Francisco, and why Leslie only worked part time at a library. No one ever considered she could be an international bestseller. After all, how many people actually stopped and read the letter mounted on her wall? She took the framed letter down and slid it between the books on the shelf.
When people started to arrive, Leslie felt like she was doing right by her husband. She smiled and tried her hardest to make sure she wasn’t a disappointment to everyone or rude to them. Everything that she said to them, everything that she felt like she was supposed to say to them felt like it was a lie. It felt like she was nothing more than just a shade standing in this house, a remnant of a life that had been ruined and flushed down the toilet. It was hard to feel anything other than overwhelmed with grief and despair. In the end, this was all that she had left. This was all that she was going to ever have from the life that she had wanted to start with Michael. She was alone, and for the first time in her life she didn’t have her best friend to be there with her.
Friend, family, and people who had been part of Michael’s life streamed into the house one after another. Leslie found herself talking to all of them, smiling and nodding her head as she accepted everything they had to say to her. She found that there was relatively nothing that anyone could say to her today that she wouldn’t just offer a sweet smile and nod to. What else was she supposed to say? What was she supposed to do in this situation?
Time felt like it had frozen entirely around her and everything was going so slowly that it all felt so surreal and so nauseating. She didn’t touch the food or anything to drink. She hadn’t been able to keep anything down outside of the bare minimum since Michael finally died. She closed her eyes and kept moving, kept standing and listening to the stories and the compliments people would give her about how well she’s holding up or how amazing Michael was and how lucky they all were to have him in their lives. It made Leslie want to throw up, but eventually people began to leave and the last stragglers were herded out by her family and her in-laws, who were strangely somber and dry-eyed at this point in the misery that had taken over.
From what they had said, it was a blessing that Michael had finally been freed and released. They thought of his final days and his final hours as something horrible and painful, like fiery bonds keeping him locked in his mortal coil. It was too bad that he was in a coma at that point, completely unaware of what was happening, unaware that death was creeping up.
Upstairs, Leslie took off her heels and looked at their bedroom, the room that they had decorated together and that they had poured their hopes and dreams into. They were going to live in this house for a very long time. They wanted to make sure that Michael’s career got started on the right foot and San Francisco was where they planned to be for the first ten years of their marriage. It was why they’d bought a house instead of rented. It was why they’d built everything that they had.
She could hear her family downstairs, talking with Michael’s family. They were all staying here, all suffering the misery of a slow demise. She could tell they were talking about her, about the future that was waiting for her. Everything in her life had evaporated into a smoky question mark. This was her life now, a huge mystery where she was alone, carrying the weight of a life that might have been.
For the first time since he was hospitalized, Leslie crawled into their bed and curled up. She felt herself weeping uncontrollably.
Chapter 3
About a Year Later
“At this rate, you’ll never have to work another day in your life,” Grant said with a smile on his lips. It was strange having these conversations in person. His office was nicer than anything Leslie had ever seen before and it was strange being here in person. She had never actually been in Grant’s office. Every time she had met with him he had come out to visit her in San Francisco, which felt like a lifetime ago.
In fact, when Leslie hailed a cab and headed for the office, it truly felt like she was living a new life.
“We both know that’s never going to happen.” She smiled politely.
It was coming up on a year since Michael had died, and it was hard to believe that it had all happened such a short while ago. It was a month after Michael’s passing that Leslie contacted her friend Tessa in New York, asking if she was looking for a roommate or if she had any connections for a real estate agent who was really good at their job. It was a hard decision, but it was an inevitable one that hadn’t really caught anyone off guard when she told her parents and Michael’s parents.
Clearing out the house had been difficult, but in the end she knew she had to move on. After all, by the time Michael died she was already in the process of moving on, whether she liked it or not. There
was nothing she wanted more than to have Michael back, but he was gone. It was time for her to find a new world; shaking off the sorrows of her old house, she sought out her new home.
She’d cried a lot the past eleven months. It was hard when she was alone, with just a glass of wine and music which only made the tears flow more easily. The freely falling tears were something that made it impossible for her to really focus on what she was doing. Moving gave her the chance to run away, to be alone with the right to be miserable without having to hide it for her friends and family.
On the far side of the country, it was hard to let that get to her anymore. She, of course, had her box of memories; things that she wanted to keep forever that reminded her of how much she loved Michael and how great they had been together. To her, his death was a long time coming and this new move was just what she had needed to get some energy back into her veins.
So she started writing again.
Her agent was so happy to have her in New York City finally, and the thin-crust pizza-lover inside of her was just as glad to be in New York as well, but she was still lonely. It was something she couldn’t shake, regardless of how many events she was invited to or how many new friends she made… Ones who didn’t know about Michael, or about her alter ego.
Her identity was something she guarded closely, so whenever she showed up to a book signing or a launch party, she always would lie and say that she was just a friend of Grant’s. While her identity was kept a secret, it was one of the things the media forever pressed and wondered about. No one knew, and it heated social media on the mystery.
She had gone with Grant to one of the release parties and then a few more. He’d introduced her as a new editor of a publishing house. She was the beautiful new girl, but when she had nothing even be remotely interesting about herself to share, they gave up asking questions. After all, beautiful and successful women were all over New York, and people were always quick to move to the next hottest thing. When they found out that she wasn’t that next hot thing, they gave up on her.
It was funny how people always made the excuses that were relatively the same. They needed to get another drink, had to go to the bathroom, or that they saw someone they knew. In the end, Leslie had taken in the experience, something that only writers really know how to do. It was a skill that was required for anyone interested in transcending the normal. It was a talent all writers honed and found themselves amused by. It was the art of observing people around them, and Leslie was often left alone, watching people at the parties more than actually getting in there and enjoying them.
No matter how many friends of hers tried to get her out there to enjoy and become part of the life that she was given an opportunity to enjoy, Leslie always found herself drifting along the edges of the life she thought she wanted. Without Michael, it seemed so lonely and so empty. She missed him, the things he would say in those kinds of events and situations. She missed his wry wit and his sarcastic narration of everything around him.
So, that brought her to the moment she was finally sitting in Grant’s office. For an entire year, she had drifted through New York, going to parties and events, taking in the local atmosphere, and eating at all the places that would actually give her a reservation. There were a handful of people in the writing community who knew her secret identity who had taken her to places and restaurants that she couldn’t get to in her wildest dreams even. All of this had done nothing for her, and in the end, she would end up at home in a lonely, empty apartment that was just large enough for her and her computer.
It was in those lonely, quiet places that she would turn on Spotify and she would begin to work her magic, the kind of magic that was black gold to her agent and Grant loved her for. In the past year she had written seven novels, all of them coming without hesitation or without difficulty. When they asked for a revision or an edit, she would get it to them by the end of the week. Sometimes, Leslie would vanish completely and no one would know where she’d gone or if she’d even survived. Amber and Josie, who had introduced themselves as her neighbors, quickly became friends with her and were greatly concerned about these reclusive tendencies that their new friend would develop.
Sometimes, they would catch her rushing down to Gustavo’s Pizzeria for slices in her yoga pants and sweatshirt and try to stage a micro intervention. In the end, they might end up at one of their apartments, watching Netflix all night, but that was the extent of the success any of the interventions would have.
Ultimately Leslie was a writer, and that meant that she was going to spend her life writing and that when she had an emotional stimulus, she was going to use it to her maximum advantage. Without Michael in her life, there was a barren emptiness that could not be filled by any amount of pizza, partying, booze, or friends. When you lose your best friend, everything else in the world is hollow and void of any meaning or purpose. The only solace she had was in her writing.
Leslie focused back on the present, staring at the strange cubic giraffe statue in the corner of Grant’s office. It was an artistic piece that looked like it was made by someone who really didn’t care about making people comfortable with his creations.
Grant looked up at her and smiled, then stared back down at the contract he was going over. “How many of this series do you have in the works? Two? Three?”
“Seven,” she answered, looking at him with a solemn, somber look on her face. She couldn’t stop writing even if she wanted to. She had developed a system and a plan of writing as much and as well as she possibly could in the time she had been given. It was just how she lived her life now. Maybe it was a writer thing, but she knew Grant wouldn’t understand.
“At this caliber?” he asked, tapping on the manuscript next to him.
She wasn’t sure what that meant. She didn’t think of herself as having a caliber of writing. She knew she was popular and that she had an extraordinarily large fan base, but she didn’t think of herself as being overly poignant or powerful. She was just a writer, and she just wrote what she thought she would love to tell people. It was never anything more than that. She nodded and he shook his head as he laughed. He had this strange sort of growling laughter that made her wonder how a person naturally developed that kind of a laugh.
“You don’t feel like you’re burning out?”
“Nope,” she said honestly. She was certain that eventually she would find something that would take her mind off of hating life, but for now writing did. And she was more than comfortable catering to that drive. If things stayed the same, she would just end up having an enormous canon for her fans to read for generations to come.
“Well, if you keep them coming, I’ll make sure that the publishers keep getting them out—for a pretty penny in your pocket, of course.” He smiled. “There’s talk about turning the series into a movie or screen writing it to television.” He shot her a happy grin and when she didn’t smile back, he straightened in his seat. “They’ll want to stagger the releases, but I’ll make sure you have nice signing bonus for each book. I’ll take care of you. So will Harper-Collins.”
She had more money than she would ever need. “Whatever is fair. That’s why I pay you the big bucks to be my agent.”
Grant smiled. “You are one of the wealthiest, most reclusive authors in the world. How you live so simply and easily…” He shook his head. “Money is something you are never going to have an issue with.”
She had more money collectively than she was ever going to need. She couldn’t spend all the money that she had, even if she wanted to. It was a joke to think that she would ever need more of it. Besides, what did she have to spend money on right now? Most people traveled and ate at fine restaurants, but when you don’t have the person you love with you all of that just seemed kind of meaningless. So, the money in her bank account stagnated and waited for there to be any kind of reason or purpose for her to spend it, beyond donating anonymously to charities and going to cheap movies or cheap dinners. Of course, there was also the o
ccasional binge she would go on at the numerous bookstores where she would sometimes whittle hours away.
“Anything else you need?” she asked him, feeling like her time here was wearing a bit thin. She knew Grant worried about her, but she wasn’t fragile anymore. Sure, she had been devastated and distraught by the loss of Michael, but time had slowly moved forward, taking her along with it.
“How are you, Leslie? You moving on?”
“Excuse me?”
Grant pointed to the new MS on his desk. “You’re writing fantastic! I love it! Are you hiding away or are you beginning to embrace life again?”
“I’m not drowning in a world of sorrow and regret, if that’s what you’re asking.” She stared at him and pressed her lips tight, knowing that answer wasn’t enough for her agent. “The truth is, hanging on to that past is like having an oasis in the middle of the desert. To get anywhere else, you have to go through the scorched hell of the desert first. No one looks forward to that. It’s easier just to linger for a while. It’s easier just to give in to the pain and the sorrow and just be present in those lost memories for a while.”
He nodded. “Damn, girl. You know how say shit.”
She laughed. Grant liked dollars, but he did have a sweet side somewhere inside him. “So you still haven’t found the oasis?”
“I’m close.” For nearly two years she had been grieving the loss of her husband, even when he was still alive. It wouldn’t be long now before she was ready to start building a new life with substance again. Of course, she told herself this same story a thousand times before, but maybe this time it would actually be true.
“So, we’re good for now,” he said with a smile on his face. He was a charming guy when he needed to be. That’s what made him so good at his job.
