Brown and de Luca Collection, Volume 1

by Maggie Shayne

“Fine.” I turned away from him and tried to school my face into that of a spiritually enlightened guru who could change every viewer’s life for a mere $17.99 in hardcover or $22.99 for the audiobook, plus tax where applicable. Only a fool would wait for the paperback or ebook versions, though they would be cheaper.

  Mason sighed. Maybe in disappointment that I didn’t seem as glad to see him as he’d seemed to see me. A lot he knew. My inner idiot was doing cartwheels.

  The door opened again. Polly-Production-Assistant came all the way in this time. “Ready?”

  “Sure am.” Not even close.

  She took my arm and led me out the door and through a maze of hallways. Mason was following right along behind us.

  I turned to shoot him down over my shoulder. “I thought you were gonna wait in the greenroom?”

  “I want to watch the taping. That’s all right, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, sure, it’s fine,” said Polly or whatever the hell her real name was. “We’re in a commercial break, on in thirty seconds.”

  She dragged me through a set of big double doors, and then we high-stepped over masses of writhing cables onto the set, stopping along the way so someone could run a mike up my back, under my dressy black jacket, over my shoulder and clip it to my flouncy lapel.

  “Say something.”

  “Mike check,” I said, looking through the window to where the sound guys wore headsets suitable for a firing range. “How’s it sound?”

  They gave me unanimous thumbs-up, and I headed for the sofa. The show’s host, failed comedienne Mindy Becker, got up to shake my hand, then I sat down in the most flattering manner, uncomfortably on the edge of the sofa, legs crossed at the ankles, one hand resting lightly atop the other on my thigh. I wet my lips and plastered a great big smile on my face. I tried with everything in me to forget that Detective Mason Brown was standing a few yards away, watching my every move and hopefully wanting me as much as I was wanting him. He’d better be.

  He knew my deepest secret, too, I thought. The secret only those closest to me knew. That I didn’t really believe in what I wrote. That I was a skeptic, feeding the gullible a steady diet of what they most wanted to hear—that the power to change their lives was in their hands—and laughing all the way to the bank.

  And then the director said, “In three, two…” and pointed a finger at us.

  “We’re back!” Mindy told the camera. “Joining us now is the bestselling author of Wish Yourself Rich, the book that’s sweeping the nation and changing lives, while spending its fifth week on the New York Times bestseller list. After going blind at the age of twelve, Rachel de Luca, the author who’s been teaching us how to make our own miracles for five years now, experienced one of her own when her eyesight was restored by a cornea transplant this past August.” She swung her head my way. “Welcome to the show, Rachel. I’m so glad to have you.”

  “Thanks, Mindy. It’s great to be here.”

  “I want you to know that I have read this…” Mindy picked up a copy from the arm of her chair. “…this gem,” she said, “from cover to cover, and I loved it so much I got copies for every single member of today’s studio audience as an early Christmas present.”

  Applause, applause.

  “I can’t tell you how deeply this book touched me.”

  “Thanks, and thanks for saying that.”

  “While the title is Wish Yourself Rich, this book is about so much more. About creating our own experiences, and actually having the lives we dream of. A lot of spiritual leaders today are saying many of the same things that you say in these pages, but, Rachel, you are the only one who is living, breathing, undeniable proof that it’s true.”

  More applause.

  “Why don’t we start at the beginning? You went blind at the age of twelve.”

  I nodded. “It was a gradual process, but yes, eventually, I woke up one morning completely unable to see.”

  “What was the last thing you remember seeing?”

  Oh, good question. “It was my brother Tommy’s face.”

  She made a sympathetic sound. “This is the brother you lost earlier this year?”

  “Yes, just before I got my transplant. He was the victim of a serial killer.”

  She set the book on her lap and, frowning, put her hands over mine. “How do you manage to have something like that happen and not let it rock your faith? You are so positive, so certain that we create what we focus on. How did you come to terms with your brother’s murder?”

  It was not the first time I’d had this question. Thankfully, I was prepared for it. I wrote this crap for a living, after all. “Tommy’s journey was his own. I can’t know what his higher self intended for him, or why his life had to end the way it did. I only know that I have two choices. I can be at peace with knowing that he is at peace, trusting that everything happens for a reason and that I will know what those reasons are when my own time comes to cross to the other side, or I can wallow in misery and ask ‘why me’ and ‘why him’ and resent the universe for being so cruel. My brother is going to be just as dead, either way.”

  “That is so deep,” Mindy said, shaking her head slowly. “So deep.”

  “We get hung up when we think our happiness is dependent on circumstances outside ourselves. I’d be happy if only this would happen, we say, or if only that hadn’t happened. We have to let go of that and realize that happiness is a choice. When we can choose to be happy in spite of what’s going on outside us rather than because of it, when we can stop letting circumstances dictate how we feel, that is true empowerment.”

  “That’s amazing. ‘Happiness is a choice.’ That’s so good.”

  I smiled humbly. It really was one of my best nuggets of manure, that one. I rearranged this particular piece of…wisdom slightly after every interview, so it sounded fresh. Hell, I knew a thousand ways to say it by now. It was the core message of seven bestsellers.

  “So did you always know you would get your eyesight back one day?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “In fact, I’d pretty much given up on it. I’d had cornea transplants before, but I was one of those rare individuals who rejected them every time. And I rejected them violently. My doctor had to convince me that it was worth trying again with a new procedure.” That, at least, was true.

  “And it worked.” Mindy clapped her hands to emphasize the words. “What was the first thing you saw after the bandages came off?”

  “My sister’s face,” I said, again speaking the truth.

  “Oh, that’s beautiful,” Mindy said in an emotional falsetto, blinking rapidly.

  “So is she.”

  Applause, applause.

  Note to self, use that line again.

  “So if we create our own experiences according to where we put our focus, how do you think you attracted your blindness?”

  Because life sometimes sucks, and I drew the short straw. Because bad shit happens, and it doesn’t make any sense at all and it never will.

  I nodded sagely while I pulled the appropriate well-rehearsed reply from my archives. I had them for all the tough questions. “Until we know that our thoughts and focus create our lives,” I said, “we sort of create by default. Our higher selves guide us toward the life we’re supposed to lead, and we either go with the flow or fight tooth and nail. I believe this was simply a part of my journey in this lifetime. I think I had agreed to it before I ever incarnated.”

  “Really?” she said. “You really think all those years of blindness happened to you for a reason?”

  “Absolutely.” Because I had shitty luck.

  “And have you reached any conclusions about what that reason might have been?”

  “I think I’ve pieced together some of it, but not all. I don’t think I’ll know all of it until I’m on the other side, lo
oking back, reviewing my life and the lessons it taught me. But I do know that being blind led me to my career of writing self-help (bullshit) books like the ones my family used to (push on me) get for me when I was going through hard times. It led me to dear friends I might not have made otherwise, people in my transplant support group, the best friend I ever had in my life, Mott Killian, who’s since passed over himself, and my dog, of course.”

  And Mason Brown. It led me to him. When he hit me with his car because I stormed into a crosswalk, blind as a bat and too mad to be careful. Helluva coincidence that he ended up donating his brother’s corneas to me later that same day. Helluva coincidence.

  A big smile split Mindy’s face, and she lifted the book again, opened the back cover and turned it toward the camera, which caught a close-up of Myrtle sitting in the passenger seat of my precious inspiration-yellow T-Bird with the top down, wearing her goggles and yellow scarf, and “smiling” at the camera as only a bulldog could do, bottom teeth sticking up over her upper lip.

  The audience laughed, then applauded again.

  “Myrtle is blind, too,” I said. “I might not have taken in a blind old dog if I hadn’t been through what I had.” Odd, that was sappy as hell, and yet it was the absolute truth. Just like the bit I’d been thinking about the way Mason and I met. I should really be using this stuff more. But it made me uncomfortable to point to true things in order to prove my false claims. Muddied the waters. I liked clear lines between real life and my fictional nonfiction.

  “That’s beautiful,” Mindy said. “That’s just beautiful. Thank you so much, Rachel. It’s been a pleasure having you. I hope you’ll come back.”

  “Thank you, Mindy. I’d love to.”

  She faced the camera again, holding up the book. “Grab a copy of Rachel de Luca’s Wish Yourself Rich, available now in hardcover and audio wherever books are sold.”

  Applause, applause, applause.

  “And we’re clear!” called the director.

  I relaxed and automatically turned to see if Mason was still there.

  He was. But he was looking at me with his head tipped slightly to one side, like Myrtle when I say the word food. Or the word eat or the word hungry or any word remotely related to a meal.

  He’d just seen a Rachel de Luca he’d probably never met before. The public one. And now he was going to berate me for it throughout an entire lunch. This should be pleasant. Not.

  * * *

  Mason had never seen the side of Rachel he’d witnessed on that stage. He had read her books—the last three, anyway—and he’d skimmed the others. They were pretty much all the same—all about positive thinking and creative visualization and everything happening for a reason. He would probably have read more, because the message was so uplifting and empowering, if he hadn’t known that she didn’t believe it herself. Not a word of it.

  It was the one thing he’d never liked about her. God knew he liked everything else about her a little too much. But that she was selling this spiel to the masses when she didn’t believe in it felt a little too cold, too calculating. It was a side of her that he found hard to take.

  But today, just now, he’d seen a hint of something else. She might say she didn’t believe the stuff she wrote about. She might even think she didn’t believe it. But she wanted to. She had practically emanated a glow on that soundstage when she was going on about her positive thinking message. He was beginning to think it might not be an act at all.

  Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on his part.

  She’d kept the mask in place as she’d said her goodbyes to her hostess, and the entire time she’d signed autographs for the respectable-sized group who’d gathered outside on the sidewalk, despite the fact that it was cold and starting to snow. Then the crowd fell away as they walked up the sidewalk to find a place for lunch.

  “It’s a great time of year to be in the city,” he said.

  She nodded. The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was all lit up, and every store window was decked to the nines. “I wish I could stay, but I’ve gotta get home to the kids.”

  “Kids? Don’t tell me you got another dog.”

  “No, Myrtle’s plenty. My niece Misty is dog-sitting, though.”

  “At your place?”

  She nodded.

  “You’re a brave woman, leaving a seventeen-year-old alone in your home overnight.”

  “Amy’s staying over, too.”

  He grinned. “I don’t think your assistant is going to be much help, unless it’s to buy the booze for the inevitable party.”

  “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” she quipped. “Amy may be all Goth-chick on the outside, but she’s super responsible, and besides, she hasn’t forgotten that I saved her ass a month ago.”

  “We saved her ass a month ago.”

  “Well, yeah. You helped.”

  He laughed and meant it. It had been a while since that had happened. “Why only one twin with the dog-sitting? Is your other niece a cat person?”

  “My sister and Jim took Christy with them for a two-week Christmas vacation in the Bahamas. She got the time off school but had to take her assignments along and promise to bring them back finished.”

  “And Misty didn’t go?”

  “Misty had the flu. Or at least she convinced my gullible sister that’s what it was. Frankly, I think it was more a case of not wanting to leave her latest boyfriend behind. The priorities of love-struck teens never fail to make me gag.” She did the finger-down-the-throat thing to make her point.

  “I’ve missed the hell outta you,” he said, smiling at her gross gesture as if she were a supermodel posing in front of a wind machine. Then he added, “And your little dog, too.”

  “She’s missed you, too.”

  But he noticed that she didn’t say she had.

  “Corner Deli?” she asked.

  She’d stopped walking, and it took him a beat to realize she was suggesting that they should eat at the establishment whose wreath-and-bell-bedecked door they were currently blocking. He opened it. It jingled, and she preceded him in. They joined the line to the counter, ordered, and then she picked out a table to wait for their food. She headed for the quietest table in the crowded, noisy place. “Ahh, New York,” she said. “The only place where you can order a twenty-five-dollar sandwich that will arrive with a pound of meat and two square inches of bread.”

  “And it’ll be worth every nickel.”

  “Hell, yes, it will.” She was sparkling. Her eyes, her smile, told him she was as glad to see him again as he was to see her, whether she was willing to say it out loud or not. “So how are the nephews? I’ll bet this is a hard time for them.”

  “It’s rough. Their first Christmas without their dad. It’s hard on all of us.”

  She nodded slowly. “It’s my first holiday without my brother, too. I think that’s probably why Sandra wanted to get away. It’s too hard.”

  “It’s rough. Sometimes I wonder if it would be easier if they knew the truth about Eric.” He looked at her as he said that. It was one of about a million things he’d been dying to talk to her about.

  “No, Mason,” she whispered. “No one would be better off knowing their father, husband or son was a serial killer. No one. Trust me on this.”

  He nodded slowly. “It’s been eating at me. Keeping that secret.”

  “You did the right thing.”

  God, he’d needed to hear her say that again. He didn’t know why, didn’t need to know why. It was a relief, that was all.

  “They must have that new baby sister by now, though, right? Marie was out to here last time I—”

  “Stillborn,” he said softly.

  “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I’m so sorry, Mason. I didn’t know.”

  “I know.”

&nbs
p; “You should’ve called.”

  “What good would that have done?”

  She blinked real tears from her eyes. “Poor Marie. First her husband and then her baby. I’d ask how she’s doing, but…” She just shook her head.

  “Yeah, she’s having a hard time of it. Keeps saying she’s being punished.”

  “For what, for heaven’s sake?”

  He shook his head. “She’s grieving. We can’t expect her to make sense.”

  “And the boys?”

  “Josh is good. He’s eleven, you know? It’s Christmas. They bounce back at that age. They spend a lot of weekends at my place, including this one when I get back. I pick them up after school and take ’em to the gym to shoot hoops every Wednesday when they don’t have any other commitments.”

  “Josh is good,” she said, homing in on what he’d left out.

  She was good at that. Good at reading between the lines, good at sensing the things people didn’t say. He’d never seen anything like the way she could tell when someone was lying and read the emotions behind their words.

  “But Jeremy, not so much?” she asked.

  “He’s seventeen.” He said it as if that said it all, but then reminded himself that Rachel had nieces, not nephews, and it might not be quite the same. “He’s not bouncing back like Josh. He’s morose. Brooding. Quiet. Withdrawn. Didn’t even go out for basketball this year. Would’ve been his first year playing varsity, too.”

  “Sounds like he’s depressed.”

  “Marie thinks he’s been drinking. Said she smelled it on his breath when he came in late one night.”

  “Shit. I’m so sorry, Mason.”

  “It is what it is. They’ll come back around. It just takes time.”

  Then he lifted his head and tried to do the same to his mood. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to dump all that on you. I should be focusing on the positive, right? That’s what your books would tell me to do.”

  “It’s hard when there’s so little positive to find,” she said. Then she stabbed him with those insightful eyes of hers. “What about you? How are you doing, Mason?”