Happily Ever After: A Novel (18 page)

Chapter 32

W
e sit around my big dining room table, listening to the end of Lily’s tale. We are certainly the world’s strangest impromptu dinner party, but even made-up people need to eat. Greta has propped a fan in the corner that blows the lacy edges of the curtains in a continuous loopy pattern. The old grandfather clock indicates the passing quarter hours with sharp chimes. Every lost fifteen minutes feels like a poke in the eye.

In the beginning of
Stolen Secrets,
at least the parts I wrote, Lily diligently followed the pattern of a leading lady. She appeared to be governed by the rules of erotic romance. When I asked for her backstory, I thought something in it might trigger an understanding of the magic Clarissa says we need. But the Lily sitting beside me now is so different from the one on the page that her past almost requires reinterpretation. It was designed to make her vulnerable to men like Aidan Hathaway, but in this reality, it made her tough. It made her strong and ready, even if she does not know what for. I wrote one thing and Lily made it another.

She looks at me expectantly.

“So?” she says. “Anything.”

I shake my head. “No,” I say. “Sorry. We’re no closer.”

My companions take that one hard. We are a forlorn group, out of ideas, watching the clock, waiting for the show’s finale.

I don’t want to look at anyone. I run my fingers along the tablecloth. It belonged to my grandmother, who was dead by the time I was born, but I cherish the link the cloth provides. There’s comfort in knowing what came before me. And in popular culture there’s not much of that. A minute can be a lifetime. Everything is disposable, from the books we read to the cars we drive to the clothes we wear.

Even love is disposable these days. We treat it poorly, it dies, and we move on. Or it never shows up to begin with because our expectations are out of line with reality. We spend too much time wallowing in the happily-ever-afters of fictitious characters rather than going out and creating our own.

Happily ever after. The words echo in my head. Of course! Just because this story has jumped the page does not mean it can escape the most fundamental rule of romance. I leap from my seat.

“Happily ever after,” I say. “The rules according to Ellen. Eyes for each other only and for always.” I narrow my gaze on Aidan and Lily.

“The magic is love,” I say. “Saying ‘I love you’!”

More powerful than any spell, more binding than time, love is the most dynamic force in our universe. It can even withstand death.

“Hasn’t anyone at this table read
Wuthering Heights
?” I ask.

There are defensive murmurs all around.

“I guess not,” I say. “Lily and Aidan, you’ve both changed. Clarissa’s bet banked on you two remeeting in this reality and not liking each other, but she was wrong. Aidan, you can love a strong, independent woman, and Lily, you can love a man like . . . Aidan. Right?”

“So what does that mean in practice?” Jason asks. Men, even the good ones, are all the same in certain situations.

“A declaration of love,” I say impatiently. “You two say it to each other, and bam
,
I bet you’re home in time for breakfast.” I smile. I’m proud of myself. I feel good all over.

“Is there a catch?” Aidan asks.

“Well, you have to mean it,” I say. False declarations of love do not magic make. I turn to Lily to see how she’s taking the news. Her skin is chalky, her eyes wide. She swallows repeatedly like the small amount of dinner she’s had time to consume is crawling back up her throat. It’s not quite the reaction I expected.

“Is that the only way?” she asks. The question is directed at me. Aidan takes her hands in his.

“This sounds right, Sadie,” Aidan says. He’s excited. For the first time since he arrived here, he looks hopeful. “I think we’re going to be okay.”

Lily gives him a wan smile.

“Sadie!” Greta yells from the kitchen. “Please come in here.”

I share Aidan’s excitement. I believe I’ve got it figured out.

“Be right back,” I say. “No one go anywhere.” I race out of the dining room and into the kitchen.

“What do you need?” I ask Greta.

“Nothing.”

I pause.

“But you called me.”

“Yes.”

“So?”

She makes a twirling motion with her fingers, indicating I should turn around. When I do, I bump right into Lily, who has followed me into the kitchen.

“I need to talk to you,” Lily says. I sometimes wonder if Greta is the truly magical one among us. She knows things. I have no idea how, but she does.

“Sure,” I say.

“I can’t do it,” she says bluntly.

“What?” I ask. “Go back? Of course you can. You’ll get your happy ending and everything.”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “I can’t tell Aidan I love him.”

“Why?” I ask. “You don’t have to be scared. He loves you for who you are. This man isn’t going to break your heart. I promise.”

“No, Sadie,” she says. “You’re not listening to me.”

There are shades of Allison in those words.

“Okay,” I say. “Explain.” Behind me, Greta studies her cookbook, but I’m keenly aware of her presence.
She’s
listening. She is not missing the point.

“I can’t tell Aidan I love him,” Lily says, “because I don’t love him.”

Her words make me instantly dizzy. I lean on the kitchen island. This is not how I imagined this scene progressing.

“But,” I say, “that’s the reason you exist, even if you have changed a little. To fall in love with a beautiful man and drive off into the sunset. In a fancy car. Wearing nice clothes. And impractical shoes.”

Lily holds up a hand for me to stop.

“This is your house, right?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“You bought it, you paid for it. You work for yourself. You decide what to have for breakfast, what clothes to put on. You choose what channel to watch.”

“Not always,” I say. “I have an eleven-year-old daughter.”

“You know what I mean,” Lily says.

I look down at my feet. I do not like where this is going.

“And you have Jason,” she says. “I bet you guys talk about things. I bet you laugh together. I’m sure he doesn’t treat you like a delicate flower always at risk of wilting in the heat.”

Definitely no delicate flower issues.

“And I bet when you got divorced from Roger, you dated a bunch of men. You dated anyone you wanted. You got to decide.”

I want to clarify for her just how awesome the dating thing turned out for me, but that’s not her point.

“Yes,” I say. “To all those things.”

“Well,” Lily says, taking a step closer. Even in bare feet she towers over me. “I want all that. I want to be in charge of my own life. I don’t want to be arm candy for some superrich, incredibly good-looking guy.”

“But don’t you like Aidan?” I sputter. “He’s nice . . . and good looking . . . and things. I know he may appear shallow to you now, but he’ll get better. I swear.” It’s the rules.

“I do like him,” she says. “I don’t love him.”

I sink into a chair beside Greta.

“Trouble,” Greta says, without looking up.

I’ll say. There’s no point in asking Lily to fake it. It won’t work. It might even backfire. I lay my head down on my arms.

“Can you help me explain this to Aidan?” Lily asks quietly.

No. No. No. One hundred times, no.

“Yes,” I say.

Lily’s story is not done. I can see her with a short, geeky guy who creates video games for a living. I can see her with an older professorial type. I can see her with a professional athlete who likes to get up at dawn to run laps around an empty Central Park. I can see her having children and going back to work. I can see her discovering all on her own how difficult it is to have everything you think you want.

These opportunities for exploration, for finding one’s path, stumbling, finding it again, are the moments that make us who we are. It is all I want for my daughter, to be bold enough to go where she wants to, to be unafraid of the world around her. Is it fair that I would want less for my leading lady?

“You belong in a different book,” I mutter. “You belong on the women’s fiction shelves. Not erotic romance.” Of course, over on the women’s fiction shelves, we would not be in danger of Lily disappearing into thin air in under an hour. Or of her being banished to another dimension for all eternity. That doesn’t happen in women’s fiction.

“Sorry,” Lily says.

“Never mind,” I say. Now is probably not the best time for a discussion of genre fiction versus general fiction. “We should go back in there and see what we can make of all this.”

I’m about to return to the dining room when Greta grabs my arm. She has a surprisingly strong grip, and I lurch to a halt.

“This is a house of women,” she says, matter-of-fact. “Room can be made.” Before I ask her why she has chosen now to begin speaking in code, she releases me and returns to her study of beef bourguignon. Greta and I don’t hug or touch, but after a decade I can read her body language almost perfectly. Her posture says, “Don’t ask me anything.” It says “go away.”

So I do. But I can’t help thinking Greta just suggested we
keep
Lily here. In our house. In our reality.

Chapter 33

W
hen I invented K. T. Briggs, I had to create a biography to go with her. In the old days, which means a time before the Internet, writing under a pseudonym was no big deal. A short paragraph on the book jacket was all that was required. It could be as brief as “The author lives in San Francisco with her golden retriever and a small green parrot.” It was rare for a reader to spend her valuable time investigating whether the author really
did
live in San Francisco with the dog and the bird or whether it was a ruse and she
really
lived in Texas with a husband and four kids. I mean, at the end of the day, who cares?

But in a world driven by social media, things are more complicated. A website with a photo of the face behind the fake name. A Facebook page where this person who does not exist writes witticisms about getting naked. Maybe a Twitter feed where she offers followers a creative sexual position of the day, described in 140 characters or less. In short, this person who used to be just a paragraph is now much more. She has opinions. She cracks jokes. She stays up too late and needs espresso shots to get going in the morning. She’s as real as anything else in the digital universe.

It’s a little like suffering from multiple personality disorder, except I am acutely aware of it.

When it came time for K. T. Briggs’s book jacket photos to be taken, I asked the photographer to make me look like I wrote about sex. Do your best for this very cool lady I invented who has to share a face and body with me. Please. The results were spectacular and do not resemble me in the least. I plastered them all over the K. T. Briggs website and have been known to visit there when I need a pick-me-up. K. T. Briggs lives alone on the Upper West Side of New York in a sleek, modern apartment. The kitchen gleams with stainless-steel appliances she never uses because she does not cook. She has an assortment of lovers, all handsome and successful. Her closet is stuffed with couture. She gets invited to parties. She has manicures. She never picks up anyone’s laundry, and she writes saucy books. No doubt about it, K. T. Briggs is fabulous.

Of course, I might have done things a little differently if I had considered the implications. For example, the book tour. My fans are expecting K. T. Briggs, and when they get me, I can see the disappointment on their faces. I am not at all what they expected. But nobody looks like her picture on the book jacket, and readers should know that by now.

So while sharing space with K. T. Briggs can be complicated, I love her dearly. In many ways, she saved my life. When I first invented her, I was still under the cloud of heartbreak. More than anything, I wanted to be free of the misery. I wanted to create a lovely, thick bubble around myself and live there alone forever, safe from the cruelty of the outside world. Having an imaginary life, the life of K. T. Briggs, to fall back on was remarkably liberating. It got to the point where I thought everybody should have a pseudonym to hide behind when trouble showed up.

From the looks of it, Lily doesn’t want an imaginary life, or at least not the one I have imagined for her. She wants her freedom. But is it my job to give her that? I’m not sure I’m brave enough to mess with the rules to that extent.

We return to the dining room to find Aidan and Jason studiously ignoring each other.

“Are we ready, my love?” Aidan says, jumping from his seat. “Do we need to hold hands like when we tried the spells before?” I can practically see his heart swell beneath his shirt. So this is great. I’ve got a romantic heroine who wants to be an independent single gal in New York City and I’ve got a romantic hero who has gone positively soft with love. What a mess.

Lily flashes me a look. Please. Help me.

“Why don’t we all sit down?” I suggest.

Jason taps his watch again. “Time, Sadie,” he says, as we sit.

“I understand,” I say. I don’t know how I’m supposed to put this. I close my eyes and imagine a blank page on my mental computer. How would I write this scene if I knew I could not delete?

“Aidan,” I say. “Lily really likes you. She thinks you’re strong and handsome and . . . nice. But she feels she hasn’t known you long enough to commit to something like love.”

I sound like a grade school counselor. Lily kicks me under the table, but I ignore her. I’m not prepared to tell Aidan she is pretty sure she’s never going to love him.

In any case, I’ve said plenty. Aidan’s face falls. His eyes grow dark. I can see him closing in on himself, shutting down. This sort of news delivered directly from the person of your desires is bad enough but from me, it is pure humiliation.

“I’m sorry,” Lily whispers. But Aidan won’t even look at her. He is utterly still.

“You’re nothing special,” he says finally. “You’re just another girl in a sea of them. No big deal.”

My heart aches for him. I want to hold him like I do Allison when she’s hurt, pull him into my lap, wrap my arms around him, and tell him everything is going to be okay. But it’s not going to be okay. In about ten minutes, Clarissa is going to march through my front door and send us all off to hell. I have made a big mistake. I have responsibilities. I have a child. Panic begins to rise in my throat. Jason puts a hand on my thigh and squeezes.

“Is our bag of tricks empty?” he asks quietly. He wants to know if I’m going to tell Aidan that Clarissa loved him in another time and in another place. But I cannot hurt Aidan any more. And I don’t think it will make a difference. The ending is out of our hands.

“Yes,” I say.

We sit around the dining room table, like we’re holding a vigil. The air is still and hot and filled with unexpressed emotions. My wine is warm, but I drink it anyway. It does little to slow my racing heart and the feeling of strong, determined hands closing around my neck.

“Do you know what she’s going to do when she gets here?” Lily asks me. “Do you think it will hurt?”

She keeps surprising me. She may cease to exist in mere minutes, but she is not melting down and she is not willing to compromise what she feels just to survive.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“I think everything about Clarissa hurts,” Aidan says. And as the words spill from his lips, I hear the front door swing open.

“She’s here,” I say.

In the center hallway, beside a fresh-cut bunch of flowers in a crystal vase, stands Clarissa. Her eyes gleam at the sight of us.

“Oh good,” she says, looking at Aidan. “I was worried I’d be late and miss the fireworks.” She laughs at her joke.

“What do you want?” Jason asks, taking a step in front of me.

“Only what is mine,” she says, pulling a flower from the water and tucking it behind her ear. In all the blackness, the red flower looks terribly lonely. “Aidan knows he accepted my deal and has now failed to deliver. It’s only fair, wouldn’t you say?”

I like that Jason is between Clarissa and me. It’s comforting. Not that I think he has a chance in hell of defending me if she starts in chanting and waving her hands around. But still, I like it.

“You’re right, you know,” Aidan says flatly. He steps toward Clarissa. “Lily doesn’t love me. I thought she did. I was sure. But she doesn’t.”

I see fear in Lily’s eyes, as if she is just now realizing the steep price of freedom.

“Oh, silly boy,” Clarissa says, opening her arms to Aidan. “I could have saved you the trouble. You belong to me. You always have and always will. There is nothing that can come between us.”

Before stepping into her embrace, Aidan casts a glance over his shoulder at us. He gives me a smile and a wink, like I’m in on it. My insides clench with pain, and I almost double over. What is he doing? Lily is by my side. She shakes from head to toe. As Clarissa’s black-clad arms wrap around Aidan, she closes her eyes and inhales his essence. She begins to chant, so quietly I cannot hear the words.

“Hold on to her,” Aidan says over his shoulder. “Hold on to Lily. Hold her, Sadie, and don’t let go!”

Clarissa appears not to have heard a word he has spoken. I link my arm through Lily’s. Jason moves to her right and puts his arm around her shoulders. What does Aidan think he’s doing? Now is not the time to throw himself on the sword. We can’t let Clarissa win. But Aidan is doing only what he was destined to. Sacrificing himself for love. He’s making the ultimate dramatic gesture.

The room fills with the same thick yellow light we saw earlier in the guest bedroom. Clarissa is taking Aidan back with her, and God only knows what is to become of Lily.

But this is too much. This will not do. Aidan and Lily are my responsibility, and I love them as though they are my children. I let go of Lily and take a step forward. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Hit Clarissa on the head with the vase? Curse at her? Tell her to get the hell out of my book? She’s too preoccupied with Aidan in her arms to notice my advance. But Jason notices.

“Stop right there,” he hisses. “Don’t take another step. You hold Lily. Let me.”

“Forget it,” I say. “This is my mess. I need to fix it.”

“I’m the man,” he says.

“So what?”

Clarissa continues to whisper in Aidan’s ear. His eyes close, and his head falls back as if he’s hypnotized.

“So those are my rules,” he says. “I need to protect you.”

“I’m fine,” I mutter. I’m not, obviously. I’m frozen in place. I have no idea what scene comes next. If I were writing, this would be the moment I stop to make more coffee. “Shit.”

“Back up,” Jason demands.

“Sadie,” Lily says. “Listen to him.”

“No,” I say. Aidan’s head jerks forward. His mouth hangs open. All his masculine power is gone. He’s an empty sack.

I can take a lot of criticism. I can take an editor gutting my story, because that is the deal I entered into when I signed on the dotted line. But I cannot take some unfinished character with a chip on her shoulder taking my story in a direction in which it was never meant to go. A girl has to have limits.

I rush forward, grabbing the vase.

“No,” Jason yells. “Sadie, I love you, goddamn it! Stop!”

His words hit me like lightning. I stumble from the jolt of their power. But I have momentum. I fall into Aidan, clutching the back of his shirt. The aura Clarissa has spun around her is mesmerizing. It’s like slipping into a warm bath up to your chin. My heart immediately calms.

But just as suddenly, the aura disappears.

“What did he say?” Clarissa asks, her face a look of pure horror. She stares at Jason.

“I said I love Sadie,” Jason repeats. “I love her. I really love her. I would travel to the ends of the earth for her. And back again. I would do
anything
.”

Oh, those words!

What follows is a bloodcurdling scream, high-pitched and agonizing. For a moment, I have no idea where it is coming from. Am I screaming? Lily? Did Greta discover she was missing an ingredient for the beef dish?

But the scream comes from Clarissa. She releases Aidan. She holds her hands to her ears and howls.

“What the hell?” Jason shouts above the noise. Aidan backs away from Clarissa. She starts to writhe as if suffering from a seizure, spinning and contorting right in front of us.

She is also fading. Her edges blur and melt. She looks like everyone does to me when I take out my contact lenses. She stops screaming long enough to recognize this new state of affairs. She runs her hands up her arms. Is she still here? Her eyes focus on me. They are hot little coals, glowing red. I shudder. She is a terrifying vision.

“You take everything,” Clarissa bellows. “This was supposed to be easy. Aidan was mine. He’d finally come back to me, and you had to ruin it with your magic!”

My magic? What is she talking about? She begins to spark like one of those cake toppers, little bits of light shooting off her in every direction. The air smells of char.

Jason is beside me. I lean against him. It’s like a roadside car wreck, one you must slow down and look at even if you don’t really want to.

In my mind, I see the box into which I put my heart all those years ago. It’s dusty and shows the wear of time. Tentatively, I pick it up. It’s lighter than I expected. I slip one finger under the flap that seals it shut and pry it open. Inside, the box is empty because my heart is pounding, steady and firm, in my chest.

“I love you too,” I say to Jason. Love is my magic. I have to let it out, let it flow and not fear what will happen when I do. Without risk, there can be no joy. And suddenly I understand this is not about Aidan and Lily and their story. No, it’s
my
story. Clarissa made the outcome of Aidan’s deal dependent on me because she was sure that was the safest bet. It was almost foolproof. I would never understand the magic. I think I might faint.

“Oh my God!” Lily has jumped into Aidan’s arms. He holds her tightly. They stare at the mess that is Clarissa. “What’s happening?”

“The spell,” Aidan shouts above the noise. “She bet her life she would win.”

I close my eyes, the image of the witch burning in my hallway seared on my eyelids. All of a sudden, there’s a loud roar from behind me. Greta, holding our industrial-size fire extinguisher, marches down the hallway.