On A Run

Copyright © 2103 by Kimberly Livingston

All rights reserved.

Title ID
:
4370921

ISBN-13:
978-1491054574

YOU CAN’T

RUN AWAY

FROM

T
ROUBLE

AINT NO PLACE

THAT FAR

          
-Uncle Remus

CHAPTER ONE

“
I am not a hermit!” she mumbled, as she slammed the cabin door behind her and leaned against it, heart pounding. “I just…don’t...like…people.”

The winters in Breckenridge weren’t bad. Her cabin was away from the main slopes and she could avoid the ski crowds in town simply by not going to town at all. She had her groceries delivered to her door and found little reason to go out otherwise. If she needed some fresh air she would snow shoe, out her back door. Few winter enthusiasts in the area wanted that kind of work out, most opting for the downhill slopes or groomed cross country trails that the resorts offered.

The springs and autumns in Breckenridge were perfect. The place would become deserted. There was only a small population who lived there year round, and those that did tended to stick to themselves. But the summers were becoming unbearable. Almost as busy as the winter season, the town was overrun with tourists out to enjoy the views and all that the peaceful Colorado mountains had to offer. And while in the winter she could avoid them altogether, in the summers it seemed they crawled the mountain sides – her mountain sides.

This morning, as she was coming back from her run, she had to cross a parking area attached to the nearby resort. There was another convention in town and she found herself trying to navigate around a horde of business suited, name tag wearing men. It was not what she wanted. Not that any of them paid attention to her, or if they did, as was more likely the case, she tucked her chin and ignored them as best she could. But still, having people between her beloved trails and the sanctuary of her home was… upsetting to her.

This would be her tenth year in the cabin. Not really a cabin, more a typical resort town getaway home that her parents had owned before they died. In fact, they died driving home to the very spot one icy winter night while she was still in college. It would seem, perhaps, too sad to live in the house that her parents had last been alive at, except that they had loved this place, as did she. That and it was all that she had left of them. Typical of the times, her parents, while having the outward appearance of being quite well off, were in debt up to their ski poles. The cabin was the only thing they owned outright and everything else had been sold to pay off their enormous credit lines.

After their death, she finished college with a degree in journalism, and had gone straight to work for a newspaper in Denver. But whether it was the stress of losing her parents or the stress of the day to day grind, she found herself withdrawing more and more from society. As a vent, she began to write fiction and found herself to be quite talented at it, talented enough to be one of the lucky few to be published and make a decent amount of money from it.

“Anyway, I have friends.” Hannah justified her existence. She meant of course her agent and the people who visited her website. Ironic as it was, she the recluse wrote novels about the jet set and the popular. She made a living making up people who were well adjusted to living in the limelight. The books were published under the pen name of Hannah Glen. Hannah didn’t use this name as a protection for her privacy. Hers was not yet a household name; she had never been discovered or pestered, for she just wasn’t famous enough. Born Frances Glenford, after her grandmother, she hated being called “Franny” growing up and had, as a young girl, created her first fiction heroine and named her Hannah Glen. Fitting that she should use this name for herself she decided.

Hannah went to the back porch with a glass of water and sat down on an Adirondack rocker. The views from the back, up the mountainside and over the valley, were her favorite. Even in the busy summer months, this was an isolated spot, as long as she didn’t look around the corner. The storms would come early again today, she thought, listening to the rumbling thunder off in the distance. It was a good day to write. Hannah smiled to herself. She liked her lifestyle. She liked the peace and the quiet that she folded around herself like a blanket. She felt safe here.

The sudden and unexpected ring of her phone made Hannah jump and spill her water. Perturbed at the interruption to her moment in peace, she was tempted not to answer. She knew who it would be. Hannah’s agent, Sheila Rowe, was a whip cracker when it came to her job. Hannah loved her and hated her for this. If not for Sheila, Hannah would never have made it, she knew this. But Hannah was less worried about career arcs and press releases than Sheila would like her to be. Finally the guilt took over and Hannah clambered to get inside before it quit ringing. While battling the back door to run for the still tethered phone line, Hannah racked her brain to think if she was behind on her deadline. No, she was sure she was still well within her time expectations – even for Sheila. What then?

“What’s up?” Hannah was surprised at her own voice, cracking from lack of use since…. She couldn’t remember the last time she had spoken to someone out loud.

“Hannah, are you catching a cold again? I don’t know how you live where it is always so stormy.” Hannah had to smile. Agent, publicist, add mother hen to Sheila’s list of titles.

“Nope, I am good. Just got back from a run that is all” it wasn’t a fib after all.

“Good, because I have something for you.” Sheila’s voice was deceptively perky for one about to deliver a message that she knew wasn’t welcomed.

“Oh God Sheila, what have you done?” Hannah had known Sheila for a long enough time to know how she worked.

“There is an author’s convention… now don’t say anything until I tell you all the details. There is an author’s convention next weekend in California and there was a cancellation so I have booked you to do a break out session and book signing.” She said it as if it was the best news anyone could ever hope for.

“California? Next week? I need to write Sheila, I have a deadline you know. What would I ever be able to talk about at an author’s convention and besides, I don’t have time to prepare for it!”

Hannah was having a hard time pulling oxygen into her lungs and she reached for a chair behind her. Other than her runs she hadn’t been out of the house in over a month, and it took her four days to recover from that venture. She hadn’t been on an airplane since before 911.

“Just breathe for a second. You have plenty of time until your deadline. Besides, it is just for the weekend. You keep saying how much you hate how crowded it is there in the summer.”

“So you want me to go to California?” Hannah continued suspiciously, “Exactly where in California is this event?”

“It is at the Disneyland resort.” Sheila’s voice had lost some of its enthusiasm.

“Forget it.”

“Hannah, just listen for a minute…”

“No, I am not doing it.”

“Would you…”

“No.”

“Hannah, you need the publicity. You haven’t had a new book out for a little while and well, there are some new authors out there that are, well, new! Susy Cahill just made the best-selling list again and at this point in time your name is about as familiar as mine is.”

“Sheila, I can’t go to Disneyland. I can’t stand up and speak to a bunch of people about how I do what I do. I don’t even know how I do what I do. Sheila you know me, I can’t do this”

“Tough love kid, you are doing it. As your agent you gave me permission to make bookings and this one is booked. If you were to cancel now, we would be looking at a possible lawsuit, which means you would have to spend plenty of money on lawyer fees and plenty of time around strangers in not friendly territory. Besides, I have you a room at the Grand California Hotel. It is a resort similar to the ones you have there in Breckenridge – all woodsy looking and stuff. The conference is in the same hotel. I don’t care if you go from your room to the convention and back to your room, but you are going.”

Hannah didn’t know the legalese of the business. She didn’t know if she could actually get sued for breach of contract. She also did not put it past Sheila for making that up. Still, the wisdom of what Sheila said was sinking through the screen of panic. The cabin needed some major repairs before winter and Hannah could use the extra publicity.

“Ok, but you will be there the whole time, right?” Sheila could hear the scared little girl in Hannah’s voice.

“But of course. I will be right by your side. Do you want me to get you a shuttle to the airport?”

Hannah didn’t need to think about this very long. She did not like to drive, especially not on the highway or in traffic to the airport, but the idea of letting someone else drive her the ninety minutes seemed like a worse option.

“No, I will drive to D.I.A. But you drive in L.A.”

“I am having a car pick us up in L.A., no need to worry about that. I will email you the itinerary. We leave Friday night and come back Monday.”

“I thought the convention was only on the weekend.”

“It is
.”

“Then why aren’t we coming home until Monday?” Hannah never liked being away from home, it was the only place she truly felt safe anymore. Even her infrequent trips into town brought on waves of panic.

“Because I thought we might do something fun while we had a chance on Sunday night. I won’t be able to get out much longer and you desperately need to get out!” Sheila was seven months pregnant with her first baby. She and her husband had tried for this event for many years.

“What, you planning on tying one on and then hitting the roller coasters?” Hannah quipped, though she wasn’t in much of a joking mood. It was a defense mechanism she had learned, to remove the attention off of herself.

“Maybe, or maybe I want to check out the parks for when I get to take my own little one there.”

“Well, you said I never have to leave the hotel, so you are on your own.”

Sheila had known Hannah a long time. She wasn’t surprised by this statement, but it was her goal to change Hannah’s mind.

“Whatever. I will see you Friday night. Don’t be late!”

The phone clicked as Sheila hung up, but Hannah held hers in her hand staring at it. She fought off the waves of nausea and tried, unsuccessfully, to take a deep breath. Sheila was smart to not tell her until last minute. Hannah didn’t doubt that there was no cancellation and that Sheila had known about this for a very long time. Giving it to Hannah last minute increased the chance that Hannah would focus on preparing for the session and not worrying about the trip. For, though Hannah’s fears were very real, her perfectionist side drove her to focus on her task. “What do I tell them, though? That after…” she couldn’t add ‘my parents had died’ even in thought, “everything inside me screamed ‘write!’”

It was true; Hannah had always wanted to write. It was what got her into journalism school to begin with. But, what she really wanted was to write novels, and getting lost in the characters was such an escape for her.

“That I was lucky enough to work for someone who read and liked my early works and knew a great agent who then took a chance on me; that the agent was good enough at her job to sell my work to a publisher. That I sit around the house all day and the stories just come to me. I sit down with a single thought in my head and soon the stories are writing themselves. That even
I
don’t know what my characters are going to do until they do it!”

Perhaps that would be an intriguing topic, Hannah thought. It was true, the more she took her mind out of the process and just let the words flow the better the work came. She had never been lacking in stories. She had never had a hard time writing a next novel nor a next one. It was the one thing that Hannah was comfortable with in her life. The predictability and stability of the characters she developed. Hannah could control the chaos of their lives and could change the endings if she wanted to. Her characters always accepted her exactly as she was and they never judged her. Hannah found that the more her heart raced and her head worried, the faster her fingers danced along the keyboard taking her further and further away from the real world she so feared.