The Ghostwriter

by Alessandra Torre

  The Ghostwriter

  Copyright © 2017 by Alessandra Torre. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  ISBN: 978-1-940941-93-6 (ebook)

  ISBN: 978-1-940941-94-3 (paperback)

  Editors: Madison Seidler, Susan Barnes, and Perla Calas

  Cover Design: © Sofie Hartley of Hart & Bailey Design Co

  Proofreader: Janice Owen

  Formatting: Erik Gevers

  contents

  title page

  dedication

  prologue

  chapter 1

  chapter 2

  chapter 3

  chapter 4

  chapter 5

  chapter 5

  chapter 6

  chapter 7

  chapter 8

  chapter 9

  chapter 10

  chapter 11

  chapter 12

  chapter 13

  chapter 14

  chapter 15

  chapter 16

  chapter 17

  chapter 18

  chapter 19

  chapter 20

  chapter 21

  chapter 22

  chapter 23

  chapter 24

  chapter 25

  chapter 26

  chapter 27

  chapter 28

  chapter 29

  chapter 30

  chapter 31

  chapter 32

  chapter 33

  chapter 34

  chapter 35

  chapter 36

  chapter 37

  chapter 38

  chapter 39

  chapter 40

  chapter 41

  chapter 42

  chapter 43

  chapter 44

  chapter 45

  chapter 46

  chapter 47

  chapter 48

  chapter 49

  chapter 50

  chapter 51

  chapter 52

  chapter 53

  chapter 54

  chapter 55

  chapter 56

  chapter 57

  chapter 58

  chapter 59

  chapter 60

  chapter 61

  chapter 62

  chapter 63

  chapter 64

  chapter 65

  chapter 66

  chapter 67

  chapter 68

  Difficult Words Epilogue

  the end

  notify me

  Note from the Author

  other books

  Dedication

  Dedicated to those crazy enough to pick up a pen and create magic.

  A gentle pull on my hand. I resist, turning away, and smile when I feel the tiny fingers pushing aside my bangs, the soft weight of a body against mine.

  “Mommy.” A huff of breath against my cheek. “Mommmmmy.”

  “Mommy’s asleep,” Simon whispers. “If we don’t wake her up, we can eat all of the delicious chocolate chip pancakes ourselves.”

  I growl, and clamp a hand over his, which is sneaking under the edge of my sleepshirt. I open my eyes and look up into his face, those handsome features dusted by flour and a smear of chocolate. “Easy,” I warn him, pulling on his wrist and dragging him onto the mattress, my movements quick as I wiggle out of the covers and atop his waist. “You know the monster is grouchy when she is awoken.”

  “Let me, let me!” Bethany scrambles before me, straddling his chest and gripping the front of his shirt, looking back at me with a smile.

  “Ah…” I crow. “My monster keeper and I have got you captured, Mr. Pancake Man!” I shift atop him and he gives me a look, the sort of look that—years ago—led to naked events that create babies. I smile at him and wrap my arms around my child. “What should we make Mr. Pancake Man do, Princess Bethany?”

  “He should feed the monster!” She announces, and raises both hands in the air to exclamation point the phrase.

  “AND… do the dishes!” I raise my own hands in the air and Simon groans in protest. Bucking up his hips, he deposits us both onto the mattress, giving Bethany a quick tickle, and me a deep kiss.

  “Come, Monster,” he commands. “Come and let me fill that big belly.”

  I come, I eat, and afterward, while Bethany draws and I settle into the recliner to write, he does the dishes.

  A perfect morning. A perfect husband. A perfect daughter. A perfect lie.

  I’m dying. It’s a grim start to any story, but I think the news should be delivered in the same manner as a ripped band-aid. Short and blunt, a stab that burns for a moment, then is gone, the moment over. My doctor tip-toed around the news, showing me test results and citing blood cell counts, CEA numbers, and an MRI that showed a tumor the size of a small lemon. He drew out what could have been accomplished in two short sentences. You’re terminal. You have three months left.

  I should be sad. I should be emotional, my fingers shaking as they press cell phone buttons and make depressingly bleak phone calls to all of my friends and family. Only, I don’t have friends. And my family… I have no family. I have only this countdown, a dark ominous chant of days, sunrises and sunsets before my body gives up and my mind shuts down.

  It’s not really a terrible diagnosis—not for me. I’ve been waiting four years for something like this to happen, a guillotine to fall, an escape door to appear. I’d be almost cheerful about it, if it weren’t for the book. The story. The truth, which I’ve avoided for the last four years.

  I step into my office and flip on the light. Moving forward, I reach out, my hand trailing over the corkboard wall, hovering over the tacked up photos, the pages of abandoned ideas, jotted notes of a hundred sleepless nights, sparks of inspiration—some that led nowhere, some that now sit on bookshelves all over the world.

  My husband made me this board. His hands held the wood frame in place, cut the cork, and nailed the pieces into place. He kept me out of the office all day to do it, my insistence at entering thwarted by the lock, my knocks on the door ignored. I remember sitting back in this same chair, my hands on my belly, and seeing the final product. I had stared up at the blank board and thought of all the stories I would build on it, the words already itching for their place. It had become everything I thought it would.

  I stop at the page I’ve read countless times, its paper worn more than the others, the edges not obscured with clippings or neighboring photos. It’s the synopsis for a novel. Right now, it’s just one paragraph in length, the type of copy that might one day be embossed on the back cover of the book. I’ve written fifteen novels, but this one terrifies me. I fear that I won’t have the right words, the right arc, that I will aim too high, hit too hard, and still not properly affect the reader. I fear that I’ll tell everything, and still no one will understand.

  It’s a book I had planned to write decades from now, once my skills had grown, my writing sharpened, talents perfected. It is a book I planned to spend years on, everything else pushed aside, my world closing in on the one thing that mattered, nothing else moving until it was finished, until it was perfect.

  Now, I don’t have decades.

  I don’t have years.

  I don’t have the level of skill.

  I don’t have anything.

  It doesn’t matter. I pull at the tack that holds it
in place, and set the page carefully on the center of my clean desk.

  Three months. The deadline is the tightest I’ve ever faced. There will be no frantic calls to my agent, no negotiation for more time.

  Three months to write a story that deserves years.

  Is it even possible?

  When I meet him, the night is singed with the smell of funnel cakes and cigarette smoke. He smiles and something inside of me shifts, a crack in between the vertebrae, my heart beating a little bit harder than it ever has.

  Boys like him don’t go for girls like me, they don’t follow me with their eyes, or listen when I speak. They don’t lean closer or want more.

  He is different than all the others. He doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t step away. Our eyes meet, his mouth curves, and my world changes.

  Writing the first chapter burns. Maybe it’s the new drugs, maybe it’s the memories, but I feel hot with the effort, my shirt damp against the small of my back, my chest tight and achy by the time I finish the story of our meeting and our first date. It was a night where he won my mother over with one easy smile, and won me over with tacos and Mexican beer, his fingers looping through mine as we walked out to the car. He had kissed me against that car, my mouth hesitant, his strong and sure, my nerves dissolving in the first confident dive of his tongue.

  I had been such a young twenty-year-old—one that had never been on a date, never been pursued, never cared about boys and romance, outside of the pages of my novels.

  But everything had been different after that night. Simon swept into my life and turned it into something fiery and wild, my days beginning with an excited fervor, my nights ending with thoughts of love and of a future—one of travel and passion, of his eyes and his touch, of being desired for something other than my words.

  It had been love. From the very beginning. Wild. Crazy. Senseless. Love.

  I save my work and close the laptop, feeling nauseous.

  At precisely 2:24 on Wednesday afternoon, I stop typing. Moving the laptop aside, I clear off the top of my desk, moving my phone into the center of the space, a fresh notepad pulled from the drawer, a pen uncapped and placed on its white lined surface.

  In the next two minutes, I settle back against the chair and extend my arms over my head, closing my eyes and stretching my chest.

  At precisely 2:30, the phone rings. I sit up, grabbing the phone and lifting it to my ear. “Hey Kate.”

  “Good afternoon, Helena.” There is a hitch in her voice, as if she’s run to the phone, as if she hasn’t had all week to prepare for this call and set aside this time. Irritation blooms in my chest, a common occurrence on these calls. “I have four things to discuss.”

  It took years for me to properly train Kate, to curb the agent’s tendencies for mindless chit-chat and pleasantries. In the beginning, she was more resistant to my expectations, but the first advance, the first bestseller, the first commission—that made her more pliable. It’s amazing what money will do to a person, the level of control it can establish. It’s made Kate my monkey. It made Simon my pet—the sort who doesn’t clean up his messes, the sort who marks his territory, the sort who bares his teeth and will attack your child if you don’t keep him on a tight enough leash.

  Kate brings up a foreign offer first, my pen scratching out the terms under a neat heading with today’s date. I accept the terms, and we move on to the second item—a third reprinting of Hope’s Ferry. Wahoo. I sigh, and manage to make it through the third and fourth topic. She falls silent and I consider my next words, choosing ones designed to cause as little a reaction as possible.

  “I’ll need you to close any open action items. I’m retiring.” Retiring, I decided over breakfast, would be the best way to put it. It’s sort of the same thing as death, as far as Kate is concerned. Both mean that my book production will stop. Both mean that I won’t be able to meet any outstanding deadlines.

  There is a long silence, the sort that stretches over canyons, the kind that causes someone to pull the phone away from their ear and check the connection. When she finally responds, it is decidedly unimaginative, and I sigh at her predictability.

  KATE

  “Retiring?” Kate says dumbly. She spent the greater part of the last ten seconds trying to find a better response, one that Helena would appreciate, but the thought is so… absurd, that she can only repeat it. There is no way Helena Ross is retiring. Not when Marka Vantly is churning out a fresh bestseller every four months. Helena will write until her fingers fall off purely out of competitive spite for her rival. Besides, who retires at thirty-two?

  “Yes,” Helena snaps. “It’s when people stop working.”

  “I’m familiar with the term.” She pushes against the desk, her office chair spinning, the room a soothing blur of pale pinks and cream. “Why?” She closes her eyes when she asks the question, knowing—even as she utters the word—that it isn’t allowed. Rule #4 on Helena’s Rules for Kate is to Not Ask Personal Questions. A rule she’s broken before, the results always disastrous. She steels herself for the click of the receiver, the sharp cut of Helena’s voice, the dreaded ding of an incoming email—one full of stern admonishments about their agent/client relationship and its boundaries.

  Instead, Helena only sighs, the lack of reaction as odd as her retirement announcement. “I need you to reach out to the publisher about Broken and let them know I won’t be delivering it.”

  Kate’s eyes snap open, her teeth baring in the inhuman act of not repeating the woman’s words. She sits upright, pulling herself closer to the desk, using the moment to flip the calendar open, her fingers skimming over the dates until she gets to the neatly written words. Broken Due. A little over a month from now. Last week, when they spoke, Helena had been eighty percent done, and confident about her delivery. In their thirteen years together, Kate could count the number of times that Helena had missed a deadline on one hand. Her requested extensions had never been for more than a week or two, her personal rules as strict as the ones she had for everyone else.

  But now, she isn’t asking for an extension. She is telling Kate that she wants to walk away from a publishing commitment, a book that has already been announced, pre-marketing in place, half of her seven-figure advance already in the bank, Kate’s commission way past spent. Non-delivery is a rare event in the publishing industry. For Helena Ross, it’s inconceivable.

  She stands, every muscle tightening in preparation for battle. “Helena,” she says carefully. “What’s happened?”

  “Stop being dramatic, Kate.” Helena’s voice is brisk, one that an elder would use with a child, despite Kate’s ten-year jump on her. “Call the publisher, wrap up my other obligations. If you can’t handle that task, I’ll find another agent who will.”

  There is something else. Kate can feel it coming, something even bigger than the Broken news, a tsunami moving calmly toward the shore, preparation useless, her feet rooted in place, disaster eminent. She swallows, leaning against the edge of the desk for support, her fingers tugging at the double strand of pearls at her neck, fighting the urge to reach higher and pick at her lips. “I can do it.” Maybe she’s wrong, maybe there isn’t something else. Between retirement of her biggest client, and cancellation of a contract—maybe the bloodletting is over.

  “There’s something else.” Three words Kate doesn’t want to hear. She drops her head and exhales. Whatever it is, she can handle it. She hasn’t survived thirteen years with Helena without becoming strong. The woman is a freakin’ wrecking ball of high-maintenance unpredictability.

  “I’m going to write a new book. I’d like Tricia Pridgen to edit it.”

  Of course she does. Tricia Pridgen is the hottest editor in publishing. When she wants a book, she gets it. And everything she publishes turns to editorial gold. #1 Bestseller, multi-print-runs, foreign explosions. But Tricia Pridgen won’t take a new Helena Ross. She doesn’t do romance n
ovels. Hell, she barely does fiction. Her last novel was a collection of OJ Simpson interviews, perfectly packaged and still dominating the bestseller lists. Helena should know this, Helena has to know this.

  “You want to walk from Broken, and retire, and write a new book to sell to Tricia Pridgen?” It is a bad math problem, the variables not adding up.

  “Yes.”

  Kate closes the calendar and tries to think, to work through the steps in this impossible equation. “Do you have an outline?”

  “No outline.”

  A relief, something to buy her a few weeks of time. “How long will it take you to finish one?”

  “I’m not submitting an outline. Or a synopsis.”

  She sighs. If Helena were anyone else, she’d think she was bluffing, that this entire conversation is a joke, a camera hidden in her bookshelf, her coworkers giggling in their offices. But Helena doesn’t, outside her novels, have a sense of humor. She doesn’t believe in anything that wastes time. There is no way she would spend—Kate glances at the clock—twenty-four minutes, on something that isn’t vitally important. “I can’t pitch without an outline. Especially without a synopsis. You know that. I could get away with that with Jackie, but not with Tricia Pridgen, who—by the way—doesn’t take romance submissions.”

  “I know what Tricia Pridgen is interested in, Kate.” The words are a whip, one that paints the words NOT WORTHY in red blood across her face. Not Worthy to handle the Great Helena Ross’s submissions. Not Worthy to be the agent of romance’s hottest star. Not Worthy to ask personal questions, or to call on any day except for Wednesdays at 2:30 pm, or to issue opinions about Helena’s novels. Not Worthy to do anything except keep her mouth shut and obey.

  “Then, please explain to me how you’d like me to sell this book without knowing a thing about it.” Kate uses her nicest voice, the one she reserves for when Helena is at her most difficult, a voice that—had she used it on her ex-husband—he might have stayed around a little longer.

  “I don’t want you to sell it now. I want you to sell it in a few months. Once I… retire.” There is something funny about the way she says retire, as if she hasn’t grown used to the word quite yet.