Give yourself a chance, even if you’re not sure you can do it. We believe in you.
Trent
_____________
Dear Ms. Cabot,
I had the pleasure of reading your novel, Flight of the Caterpillar, and would very much like to speak with you further about it. I have some feedback that will fortify the plot and make your natural voice shine even more. You have a great amount of talent, and with the right editorial guidance, this could be a phenomenal story. I want to discuss the terms under which we might work together.
Do you have a literary agent you would like to involve in this process? If so, please provide their details and we can set up a group call to discuss your submission.
Kind regards,
Mark Nicholls
Editorial Director
Cora’s hands shook above the keyboard on her laptop. Was this really happening? A publisher wanted to talk to her about her manuscript. And Trent…Trent! She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to scream at him or hug him to death. Probably a bit of both.
Sagging back into her office chair, she spun around to face the view outside. It was a frosty Manhattan winter day—with snow and sludge and little puffs of condensation coming from everyone’s mouths. She longed for the Aussie heat and the perfect blue of the ocean right on Patterson’s Bluff’s doorstep.
More than that, she longed for Trent.
Cora opened her desk drawer. Inside was a slim black velvet box…the same box she’d found the day of the ill-fated picnic.
She’d found it upon her return home, when she’d started unpacking her clothes. He must have slipped it in when she’d stepped away from her packing. It had been sitting for weeks in the desk at her office, unopened. Every time she even thought about seeing what was inside, her fingers froze.
She missed him so much. Each passing day, the feeling grew stronger and more aching, memories snapping at her with sharp teeth. She couldn’t escape them—not at night, not during her endless workdays.
Heart in her throat, she pulled the box out of the drawer and ran her fingers over the velvet. It was buttery soft, luxurious.
Open it.
Holding her breath, she pushed the lid up. Inside was a superfine chain in gold and a small disc, with a tiny caterpillar engraved onto it. It was the most thoughtful, personal gift she’d ever received and with shaking hands, she drew the thin chain around her neck, securing the clasp under her hair.
The gentle weight of it was like being embraced in a warm hug. In his strong arms.
Cora bit down on her lip and read the email again and again and again. After what felt like the hundredth time, she drew her eyes away and toyed with the necklace.
Would her dad want to represent her now? Maybe with the offer from an editor on the table…?
It’s not an offer, it’s a phone call.
But it was close, right? This sounded like a prelude to an offer. A discussion with serious interest. This would have to make her dad see that she had potential.
A knock at her door startled her, and she swung back around, her stocking-covered feet searching for the shiny black Louboutins she kept under her desk. She slipped the pretty deathtraps on and called for the person to come in.
“Cora?” Her father’s executive assistant poked her head around the door. “Have you got a minute?”
“Sure.” Cora motioned for the other woman to take a seat. But the second she started talking about business—some new hire who needed an office tour and something about a printer needing a service—Cora completely zoned out.
Her mind had been swirling for days. Her father had promised to make time to talk about her becoming an agent for the firm, and he’d asked her to think about what kind of clients she might want to represent. To do some market research and think about the list she wanted to build. But every time she tried to think about it…
Her mind went to her story. To her characters.
She wanted to tell stories…not sell them.
Her gaze drifted across her desk, catching on the artfully arranged trinkets—the little succulent (fake) in the marble pot, the Tiffany pen (real) that she only ever used for signing office birthday cards, the silver-framed photo of her family (the photo was real, but the smiles were fake). Her father stood stoically behind Cora, his hand resting on her shoulder. In the past, she’d looked at that photo and felt comfort in seeing his solid grip. But now…now it felt like a padlock on a cage.
“Cora?” The other woman waved her hand. “Are you okay? You look like you’re somewhere else.”
“Sorry.” She shook her head. “I’m still waking up at odd hours.”
“That’s all right. I’m sure it’s going to take a little while to get fully caught up.”
“Does Dad have many meetings this afternoon?” Cora asked, glancing at her schedule on her laptop screen. “It would be good to debrief with him, too.”
“He hasn’t seen you yet?” The assistant frowned. “Strange. I put a two-hour meeting in his schedule three days ago so you could talk.”
And yet her father had brushed her off when she’d come back to the office, saying he had too many meetings. “Oh.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t tell me to reschedule. Oh well, he’s got a break now until the leadership meeting starts. If you go, you can catch fifteen minutes with him.”
Cora rose up from her chair almost as if pulled by some otherworldly force. She snapped the lid of her laptop closed and picked it up. “Thanks.”
Without waiting a beat, she walked out of her office, leaving the bewildered assistant behind, still sitting in the plush leather chair. The walk to her father’s corner office took mere seconds, and despite that, she could go days without talking to him.
With each step, her pencil-thin heels clicked against the polished boards. It was almost a strange sensation after a month of nothing but flip-flops slapping against her heels. Oh how she longed to have sand between her toes and the sun beating down on her shoulders and Trent’s arms sliding…
No, stop that. You will not think about him.
But how could she avoid it? The whole reason she had the email of a lifetime burning in her inbox was because he believed in her enough to risk her being furious with him. He believed in her enough that he said the difficult things and kept encouraging her even when she didn’t believe in herself. When she wasn’t strong enough to accept his love.
You think he loves you? Even if by some slim chance he did before, he certainly doesn’t now.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the shiny reflection of an ornate mirrored piece of artwork hanging on the wall in the main office area—Trent wouldn’t recognize her here, hair straightened to within an inch of its life so it hung around her shoulders in a glossy kink-free sheet. She had on red lipstick and pearl earrings, skyscraper stilettos, and a pencil skirt so tight she couldn’t eat more than a few pieces of sushi for lunch.
It was as if coming back to New York had transformed her back into her old self, not the carefree, happy person she’d been in Australia.
Cora paused outside her father’s office and observed him through the slight gap in the door. They shared some features—both of them had a tendency to bounce their leg while they worked, they shared a taste for coffee strong enough to punch you in the face, and they both hated cilantro with a passion. Growing up, she’d collected those similarities like baseball trading cards, filing them away and growing her collection as if it was a substitute for them having actual things in common.
She raised her hand and knocked on the door, the action nudging it open farther. “Dad?”
He waited one beat, then two, before looking up at her. There was no delight in his eyes, none of that blossoming warmth she got from the people in Patterson’s Bluff whom she’d started to consider her friends.
Watching him now was like watchi
ng a stranger.
“Yes Cora?” His tone, as usual, had a clipped sound. Time was money in New York, and niceties weren’t worth the energy.
“I saw you had a break between meetings and I was hoping we’d be able to catch up, since I got back from my trip almost two weeks ago.” She couldn’t keep the sting out of the last few words, her bitterness seeping onto her tongue like a foul-tasting liquor. “If you have time.”
“I’m busy, but come in anyway.” He waved her in, still looking at his screen. He was dressed sharply as always, with a sleek charcoal suit and crisp lavender shirt. He wore more vibrant shades these days since he’d walked out on her mother. Almost as if leaving her had brought life back into his body. “I’m sorry I’ve been hard to get a hold of. We’ve got a big potential auction on the table, and it’s taking all my focus.”
“I understand.”
“I assume you want to talk about the transition into becoming an agent. Have you done the homework I sent you?”
“Actually, I wanted to talk about my book—”
“Not this again, Cora.” Now she had her father’s attention. He looked at her with an expression that was equal parts concern and pity. “I know my last email must have been tough, which was why I wanted to give you space when you came back. But I really can’t keep rehashing this.”
“I’m sorry my dreams bother you so much,” she muttered.
“I’m trying to protect you from inevitable disappointment.” He folded his hands into a neat parcel at the edge of his desk. “You have your mother’s idealistic spirit, and we know from the past that just because you want something doesn’t mean it’s the right path for you. Look at what happened at the music conservatory.”
His comment stole the air from her lungs. She wanted to shout that she’d never even wanted to go there, that it was all her mother’s pushing and pushing. But in hindsight, he wouldn’t have known that, because she’d never protested too hard or too loud. She’d tried to convince her mother it wasn’t a good move, but as usual, Catriona had steamrolled her.
For all her father knew, she’d wanted that dream as much as writing a book. And she’d failed, cementing his belief that she lacked talent and the fortitude to pursue a career in the arts.
“That was years ago,” she said, keeping her voice steady.
“Not long enough that my wallet has forgotten being emptied for nothing.”
“Gaining experience isn’t worth anything to you?” she asked through gritted teeth.
“My dear, of course experience is worth something, and I want you to have a successful life.” He smoothed a hand over his perfectly styled hair, which she knew he did to hide a burgeoning bald patch. “I know your mother has been a terrible example, chasing one whim after another. Therefore, I see it as my duty to steer you back onto the right path without setting you up for failure. Part of that means helping you understand what your options are.”
“But you haven’t even given me a chance.”
“I know you’re not cut out for a career in the arts. You were miserable the entire time you were studying music, even though you wouldn’t admit it. But you’re my daughter, and I could see the pain you were in. I could see what it was doing to you.” He sighed. “I’m trying to stop you repeating that mistake and ending up in a worse position than last time.”
For a second, Cora saw her father’s expression soften and in it, the man she’d adored as a little girl. “I regret what I exposed you to when you were young—I stayed with your mother way too long and allowed you to be influenced by all her terrible behavior. It’s only natural that you’d pick up some of her traits. But if I can prevent you from turning out like her, then I’ll do it…even if it makes you hate me.”
“I don’t hate you,” she said with a heavy sigh. God, her whole life she’d loved him more than anything. And she’d craved that love in return. “But I’m not her.”
“But you could be. She wasn’t always so…”
“Narcissistic?”
“Difficult,” he supplied. “It came later, after we got married. I don’t want to see you going down the same path.”
“My wanting to write a book has nothing to do with me being like her.” She shook her head. Was he purposefully diverting the conversation? Or did he really think that she’d suffer one rejection and turn into an egomaniac?
If only he knew that she’d been suffering his rejection her entire life.
“Writing isn’t about being famous or rich or any of that. I think…I think my stories could really help people.”
“Why do you keep forcing me to be cruel, Cora?” He rubbed at his temples. “I can’t put my reputation on the line for a book simply because you wrote it. End of story. I don’t want to speak about this again.”
Time away from her family had made some of her rosy view diminish, the pink fading away to gray reality. She could open her laptop now and show him the letter from the editor in Sydney. She could show him proof that she had what it took to write a wonderful story that would touch people. She could use these things to convince him to let the agency represent her, even if he didn’t want to do it himself.
But why should she?
If he didn’t believe in her, his one and only daughter, unless there was concrete proof from other people…then he would never believe in her, not really. And there was always the possibility that proof wouldn’t change his opinion at all.
She didn’t know which of those two outcomes was worse.
All she did know was that she wasn’t going to let an opportunity pass her by, simply because she’d been conditioned not to believe in herself. She knew it was conditioning now—a lifetime of her mother pushing her own dreams onto Cora, coupled with her father’s misguided view that he needed to temper her ambition. It was the perfect storm.
No matter how much she tried to gain his respect and make him proud, he would always see her as the broken by-product of her mother’s toxic personality. He would never understand that he was also toxic.
“No one is ever cruel because they’re forced to be,” she said, rising up from her chair, keeping her laptop tucked under one arm. “If you’re cruel, it’s because you get something out of it.”
His mouth hung open. She’d never spoken back to him, never thrown a mirror up to his words. “You’re being emotional, Cora.”
She laughed, shaking her head in disbelief. Emotional? After she’d spent her whole life forcing herself not to cry and not to flinch and to smile, smile, smile? Cora was done trying to be the perfect daughter, done trying to win him over and mold herself into what he thought she should be.
She. Was. Freaking. Done.
“I quit.” She kept her voice measured and quiet, and it was easy. Because she had no anger left, only pity. Only sadness that it had taken her so many years to see that no amount of trying, no amount of success or hard work, would change his opinion of her. “I’ll clear my office out this afternoon, and you’ll have my letter of resignation in your inbox by tomorrow morning.”
Her father blinked. “What?”
“You heard me.” She met his eyes with an even stare. “I’ve got a dream to chase, and if you’re going to try to clip my wings, then I’ll go it alone.”
Wings. It was the first time she’d ever thought of herself as having them, since only perfect, fully transformed butterflies had wings. Maybe she had changed…even if she wasn’t done changing yet.
“Actually, I won’t be alone. But I will be with people who believe in me.”
With a smile that blossomed from the depth of her soul, and a freedom that added an uncharacteristic spring to her step, she walked out of his office and down to her own, already dreaming about the things she would do once she set foot into the outside world.
Chapter Twenty-Four
One month later…
Cora Cabot didn’t make the same
mistake twice. This time when she had her layover in Hong Kong, she’d showered and changed her clothes. After all, she wasn’t going to get caught a second time being the stinkiest person on earth. Not when she had a very special meeting to attend.
Her stay in Sydney had been brief but eventful. She’d spent three days there, seeing all the important sights—the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour bridge and sunbathing on Bondi (which she’d learned was pronounced Bond-eye)—and meeting with the editor who wanted to work with her on her book.
But then it was time to move on to the real reason for her trip back to Australia.
The car she’d hired whizzed along the Nepean Highway, which felt totally thrilling because a) she was driving on the other side of the road and b) she could see the turnoff for Patterson’s Bluff just ahead. The green and white sign indicated she was less than five kilometers away, which triggered her stomach to knot up like a set of headphone cables.
She had no plan. No steps to follow. No backups or fallbacks or other options. It was Patterson’s Bluff or bust.
She understood Trent a little better now, and how he’d enjoyed living life following whims. It was exhilarating to be free of the restraints she’d put on herself previously, to be her own boss and forge her own path. Wind whipped through the car window, ruffling her curly hair. When she’d packed up her apartment for sale, she’d sold off most of her possessions and given the rest away. She’d even tossed her hair straightener in the trash, because she was never going back to being the woman who spent an hour taming her curls every day because she thought she had to.
Cora was going to be herself, unfiltered and unrestrained. Frizzy hair and all.
She hit the turn signal and slowly eased herself off the highway and onto the main road into Patterson’s Bluff. Where would she even go? She had no hotel booked, though it was outside peak season and she was confident she could find a room at one of the various quaint places around town. But there was something about coming here with nothing concrete waiting for her that sent a thrill down her spine.
She was free to make her own decisions.
Her Aussie Holiday Page 26
