Until the End of Time (23 page)

“I don’t have time to date. I’m too busy getting my business off the ground,” Bob explained with a grin. He didn’t really care.

“That’s bullshit, you’re just lazy,” Paul insisted, and Bob laughed.

“Yeah, maybe I am,” he admitted. “What’s the point of going out with women I don’t care about, and know in the first five minutes I never want to see again? Why bother?”

“Because you have to go out with ninety-nine duds before you meet the right one. That’s the way it works.”

“Wake me up at ninety-nine,” Bob said, and changed the subject. He preferred talking business with his brother, and getting his advice about his investments, not his dating life. Besides, almost no one he had gone to school with had gotten married. Some had children, but few had wives. His brother was behind the times. And Bob took pride in saying he’d never been in love. He was in love with his business, and he hadn’t met a woman yet who could make his heart race the way starting his own business had. He was a born entrepreneur. His brother was five years older, part of another generation, loved having a wife, two children, living in Connecticut, and commuting to work every day on the train. Bob said he would have died of boredom if he had to live that way. He had a loft in Tribeca, three blocks from his business, and he worked late at night and on weekends.

He stopped at Pat Riley’s desk on his way to his office and nearly shuddered at the mess he saw there. It looked like Pat hadn’t cleared his desk in years. Bob wondered how he could find anything on it. There were stacks of papers all over the place, notes, phone messages, business cards, empty Starbucks cups, and three stacks of manuscripts sitting on the edge.

“What is all that?” Bob asked, frowning. He had dark hair and brown eyes and was almost handsome in a crisp blue shirt and khaki
slacks and loafers. And today he hadn’t worn socks either in the heat, but on him it looked all right.

“It’s the slush pile,” Pat said vaguely, digging for something on his desk. He looked like a cat searching for a mouse. He was referring to unsolicited manuscripts that came in from people without an agent. They were usually pretty bad. An agent provided a screening process so you knew you were getting decent material. These were mostly from untalented people who thought they could write. “I’ve been meaning to send them back. I just haven’t gotten around to it.”

“Do you read them?” Bob asked him. He would have been surprised if he did.

“Never,” Pat said honestly. “I don’t have time. I get enough stuff from agents to keep me busy for the next ten years. And nothing worthwhile ever comes in the unsolicited stuff. I used to try to read them, but I just can’t.” Bob nodded. He didn’t disagree with him, but for some reason he started flipping through them and noticed a fat bundle halfway down the second stack, wrapped in a piece of fabric. He stopped and looked at it, surprised. The submissions he used to get at Knopf were in manila envelopes or boxes, not wrapped in fabric.

“What do they do? Wrap them up in their boxers before they send them to us?” How could you take something seriously from someone who wrapped a manuscript up in their clothes? Bob was mesmerized by that one.

“Yeah, I know, pathetic,” Pat commented, and noticed what Bob was looking at. “She sent it in a blouse or something. Some farm girl in Iowa. I forget. I’ve got to send it back.”

“How long do we take to return them?” Bob asked with interest,
suddenly pondering the cruelty of the process. People poured their hearts out in books, sent them to publishers, praying they’d get published, and then they got them back with a form letter that basically told them to forget it or to try somewhere else.

“We take a couple of months,” Pat said with a shrug. “I think I’ve had the one in the blouse for about a month. It struck me when it came in. I think she’s young. She wrote the whole thing by hand.”

“I hope she made a copy before she sent it to us, or put it on a disk,” Bob said, feeling sympathetic again, and then pulled it out of the stack. He could see then that it was neatly wrapped in a piece of fine gray linen held together with straight pins. He nearly stuck himself on one of them, pulled it loose, and saw the stack of notebooks inside. He didn’t know why, but he had been drawn to that package and was fascinated by it now. He saw that the fabric was beautifully stitched by hand, and when he held it up after he unpinned it, he saw that it was an apron of some kind, about the right size for a child. “How weird,” he muttered, as he flipped open one of the notebooks and saw the lacy European handwriting inside. He could see that she had sent them the original, and he wondered again if she had copied it before she sent it off. What if they had lost it or thrown it out? He almost shuddered on her behalf. There was no cover note, he noticed, only the address of a dairy farm in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and as he saw that, his eyes widened, and he looked at Pat. “Wait a minute, she’s not from Iowa. She’s from Pennsylvania, in the heart of Amish country.” He held up the apron again and suddenly realized what it was. It was the apron of a young Amish girl. “Shit, Pat, I’ll bet this girl is Amish. Hell, we might have something here. She probably can’t write for beans, but it might be
worth a look. An exposé by an Amish girl on a farm in Pennsylvania could be interesting, even if she can’t write.”

“Don’t count on it being anything,” Pat muttered, still hunting for whatever he had lost in the rubble on his desk. “If she could, she wouldn’t be sending us notebooks in the mail wrapped in her underwear.”

“If she’s real Amish, she doesn’t have access to a computer, or even a phone. Or a copier. For all we know, this may be the only copy she has of her manuscript.”

“That could be a blessing,” Pat said unkindly, as Bob grabbed the stack of notebooks and the apron in one hand.

“I have no lunch date today. This could be fun. I’m going to read a few pages before you send it back.”

“Have a ball,” Pat said, and pulled a file out of a drawer, after he gave up trying to find the business card he had lost.

“I’ll put it back in your stack if it’s no good,” Bob said. He walked into his office, dumped the pile of notebooks on his desk, and found himself with the pale gray apron in his hands. And for no reason he could understand, he held it, thinking of the woman who had worn it, wondering if she was young or old, and what she looked like. Suddenly the idea that she was Amish fascinated him, and he wanted to know who had written the book, and why. He set the apron down carefully on his desk and opened the first notebook. The handwriting was delicate and old-fashioned but strong, as though she were young. The only clue he had to her identity was her name. She had written “Lillibet Petersen” boldly under the title at the top of the first page.

Slowly, he began reading, falling into the pattern of her words.
She had a strong cadence to the way she wrote, a powerful voice that he rapidly became accustomed to, and a way with words that he liked. She reminded him a little of Jane Austen, but in a fresher, stronger, newer way. Lillibet definitely had her own voice. And as he read through the handwritten pages, she captivated him with her characters as well. The main character of the book was a young woman who had left her family’s farm and traveled far into the world, looking for new adventures, and her descriptions of people, places, and situations were mesmerizing. He moved on to the second notebook without stopping and was startled when he saw that it was after five o’clock. He hadn’t put her notebooks down. And he smiled as he sat for a moment, staring into space. He had a strange feeling that she was sitting in the room with him, and as he glanced at the apron still on his desk, he had a sense that a powerful force was with him, and fate had taken a hand.

He closed the notebook where he’d stopped reading, signed some papers on his desk, and left his office at six o’clock, with the notebooks in a shopping bag, and at the last minute, he put the apron in with them. And he couldn’t wait to get home to start reading again.

He picked up a salad at the deli where he often bought dinner, and twenty minutes later he was at home in his apartment, sitting on the couch and reading Lillibet’s notebooks again. And suddenly he stopped, as though he had to send a message to her. The pull was so strong, he felt like he could almost reach out and touch her. Instead he ran the delicate apron through his hands.

“Lillibet, I don’t know who you are, but I’m reading your story. I
hear you,” he said softly. He put the apron down and began reading again. He sat there until midnight, going through notebook after notebook. He was normally a fast reader, but he found himself wanting to savor the story as he devoured it. He didn’t know how much of it was fact or fiction, but it was so compelling, he continued reading through the night, and finished just after four
A.M
. He hadn’t done that in ages. She had swept him up in everything she’d written, and he had fallen in love with her characters, been fascinated by how she developed the story, and needed to know what was going to happen right until the end. He was wide awake when he finished the last pages. She had spun around expertly in a giant literary pirouette and landed on her feet in a remarkable tour de force at the end. He sat holding the last notebook in his hands, contemplating everything he had just read and bowled over by it. The farm girl from Pennsylvania, or woman, whoever she was, had knocked him squarely on his ass, and that didn’t happen often.

“Holy shit, Lillibet Petersen! Who
are
you? You write like an angel, you think like a genius, and you are driving me insane!” He started laughing then. It was one of the best books he’d read in years, and he couldn’t believe it was from their slush pile, sent to him longhand in notebooks, wrapped up in her apron. And he still wasn’t sure if she was an Amish girl. She had never mentioned the Amish in the book, so maybe she wasn’t. Undoubtedly not everyone in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was Amish. Maybe she was just an ordinary farm girl, but in fact there was nothing ordinary about her. Whoever she was, she was a remarkable writer. And he felt as though fate had put a jewel in his hands. He had walked past Pat Riley’s desk a thousand
times on the way to his office, and the slush pile had never caught his eye. That day Lillibet’s manuscript wrapped in her apron had mesmerized him. It could only be destiny at work.

He couldn’t sleep that night, thinking about her notebooks, and on Saturday he read some of them again. He went for a walk then, stopped at his office, and everywhere he went, her story followed him. She was driving him crazy. He had already decided to call the dairy farm on Monday, to talk to her. But he still had to get through Sunday before he could. It was the longest weekend of his life. He felt as though she were waiting for him to respond, and he was keeping her on hold. He made the call from home on Monday morning and sat staring at her apron while he did.

He called the dairy and asked for Lillibet Petersen and was told that there was no one there by that name. He was suddenly panicked that she had used a nom de plume, but the return address on her manuscript had to be good. Maybe someone at the dairy knew who she was.

“Is there a general manager or an owner on the premises?” Bob asked, with a nervous sensation in his stomach. He felt like he had the glass slipper in his hand and would have to look all through Lancaster County to find the woman it fit.

“That would be Joe Lattimer,” the voice answered. She put Bob on hold, and three minutes later Joe was on the line.

“Joe Lattimer,” he said crisply. And Bob felt tongue-tied as he tried to explain. He had no idea why this woman affected him that way, but he felt as though he was being swept away by a tidal wave.

“Hello. My name is Robert Bellagio. I’m a book publisher in New York. We received a manuscript a month or two ago, from a woman
named Lillibet Petersen, if that’s really her name. She used your dairy as her return address, but your operator doesn’t know who she is. Do you?” Joe Lattimer was smiling as he listened. He had forgotten all about it until then. Bob had refreshed his memory immediately.

“Yes, I do know who she is,” Joe Lattimer answered his question, as Bob let out a long slow breath. “I mailed that package for her myself. Quite a while ago, as I recall. You’re right, a month or two, I think. She didn’t tell me what it was. I think maybe there were some notebooks wrapped in an apron. So she’s written a book.” Joe sounded impressed. He hadn’t seen her since a few days after he’d mailed the package for her. Her brother Willy had started delivering the milk to them again. And there was no reason for Lillibet to come back. She was busy at home.

“She certainly has written a book,” Bob confirmed. “A humdinger of a book. Do you have a phone number for her? I’m sorry to bother you with all this. I just didn’t know where to reach her. She didn’t include a letter, just your return address.”

“I don’t mind your calling at all. She doesn’t have a phone number. Her father doesn’t have a phone.”

There was a long pause at Bob’s end then, as he wondered if his first guess was right. “Is she Amish?” he asked Joe cautiously, wondering if it sounded strange.

“Yes, she is. They are Old Order Amish, and her father is one of the elders of the church. And my guess would be he has no idea she wrote a book. I’m sure that’s not in keeping with their beliefs. Did she write an exposé about the Amish?” Joe asked, curious himself now about her book, especially after what Bob had said.

“No, she didn’t. There’s no mention of the Amish anywhere in it. Your address just caught my eye. That’s the heart of Amish country, isn’t it?”

“Indeed it is. I’ve done business with her father for thirty years. Or my family has. We buy his milk and make their cheese. Her father is about as serious Amish as you get. Good man.”

Bob wasn’t sure where to go from there. “I’d like to come down and talk to her. Do you suppose that would be possible?”

“I wouldn’t want to try it. The Amish are very polite people, but they don’t welcome English in their midst. They keep to themselves and expect us to do the same.” Joe had had that experience with his first crush forty years before. It was what Bob had heard about them too, but he felt stonewalled here and had no idea how to reach Lillibet.