The Accidental Bestseller

by Wendy Wax

  “I just don’t have an answer,” he said. “I don’t know if I have the energy to try again.” He shook his head, his smile tinged with regret.

  “But you’ll keep the ticket,” she said. “And think about using it.”

  “Yes,” he said as she picked the ticket up off the table and placed it gently in his hands. “I’ll think about it. I will.”

  She felt his eyes follow her as she turned and walked out of the restaurant. And as she walked down the sidewalk to where her car was waiting, she told herself there was still hope.

  Chris hadn’t said no, he’d simply ended this chapter with a cliffhanger. In Mallory’s mind, that meant “to be continued.” She smiled as she played with the metaphor. With the possibility of a sequel.

  The story wasn’t over until somebody typed, “THE END.”

  More than a month after the Kristen Calder debacle, Kendall’s life remained in flux. All around her in the mountains, spring gave way to summer and Kendall took delight in the deep pinks and whites of the flowering rhododendron and dogwood, cheek to jowl with the mountain laurel and azaleas that bloomed down the mountainsides and through the woods where she walked.

  Sticks and Stones was still on the shelves despite the constant rumblings about its being pulled. One call from Sylvia Hardcastle had warned that Kendall was going to be asked to repay her advance. The next she’d been told how well the book was still selling and that there’d been an approach about movie rights. Sylvia advised her to hold tight. Each change of direction served as yet another testament to the vagaries of publishing.

  Today’s call caught Kendall replacing a toilet with a low-flow model and raised a subject Kendall had been too conflicted about to broach.

  “Kendall,” Sylvia said. “Have you done anything more about the sequel to Sticks and Stones?”

  “Um, no,” Kendall admitted, though that hardly covered her feelings about the project. She felt a pull to write, an urge to express herself that she hadn’t felt since Mia, her original editor, had left to have her baby and left Kendall in Jane Jensen’s hostile hands.

  But she no longer trusted that urge or her ability to fulfill it. Because no matter how she wanted to whitewash it, the truth was that she hadn’t hit the New York Times list or been noticed by Kristen Calder because of her own talent. Her only major success had come because her friends had helped her write Sticks and Stones.

  Like an obese person who loses a hundred pounds but still sees a fat person reflected in the mirror, Kendall was deathly afraid that Jane Jensen’s assessment of Kendall’s talent—or lack thereof—was correct and that she’d only ceased being a mediocre midlist author because her friends had stepped in to save her. “Why?”

  “I’m asking because I just found your proposal,” Sylvia said. “I’d set it aside until we were forced to discuss your option book with them. And with all the hoopla we’ve been dealing with, I didn’t read it until yesterday.”

  Kendall felt a shimmer of apprehension. She’d been so jazzed when she’d finished her part in Sticks and Stones that the proposal for its sequel, Names Will Never Hurt Me, had flowed out of her, the synopsis and first three chapters practically putting themselves on the page.

  She didn’t think she could bear to hear Sylvia tell her, even gently, that it sucked. What would she do then? Pick another room to remodel? Build a workshop to house all her power tools?

  “Did you write this yourself?” Sylvia asked.

  “What?” Kendall had been picturing the workshop. Found herself imagining where she’d hang her tool belt.

  “Did you write the proposal for Names Will Never Hurt Me alone?”

  Kendall sighed. “That bad, huh?” She told herself it would be OK. She’d find something else to do. Lots of people gave up writing. It was hard to stand up to the pressures of the business. She wouldn’t be the first to stop writing for good. “Yep,” she admitted. “It’s all mine. Nobody else to blame it on but me.”

  “Well I’m relieved to hear that,” Sylvia said, and Kendall braced for the blow. So what if she’d wanted to write since she was a child. Surely she must have some other talents. Maybe James, who had called after her Kristen Calder appearance and talked her into that first cup of coffee, would find her a job at Home Depot. Clayton had a Walmart, too. Did they already have a greeter?

  “Because it’s fabulous. With even bigger potential than Sticks and Stones.”

  Kendall held her breath, afraid to exhale lest she erase what she thought she’d just heard. “You liked it?”

  “Liked it?” Sylvia asked. “I loved it!”

  Kendall clung to Sylvia’s enthusiasm. Her agent was smart, straightforward, and generally positive, but she was not a flatterer.

  “And if we can get this whole Sticks and Stones mess cleared up, it really should go to Scarsdale. Now that Jane Jensen’s gone, they should have the most interest.”

  Kendall’s heart squeezed in happiness, something that hadn’t happened in much longer than she cared to remember. The details of Sylvia’s plans to present it, her suggestions for who she’d submit to if Hannah Sutcliff passed on it, flew right over her head. Her agent thought the proposal she’d written was even better than Sticks and Stones! Right now that was Christmas and the Easter Bunny all rolled up together.

  Kendall hung up in a haze of happiness that softened everything she looked at from the sparkle of sunlight off a distant mountain peak to the grace with which the branches of a nearby pine tree swayed in the breeze.

  She was a writer and she had a new project under way. At the moment she didn’t care where it ended up; she only cared that she would get to write it.

  A burst of positive energy welled up inside her. She needed to set her life in order so that she would be free to write. Without waffling or her usual internal debate, she placed a call to both her children and this time when she got their voice mail, she calmly and succinctly read them the parental riot act. Their mother and father loved them, they simply didn’t love each other. There would be no more groveling and apologizing. She was more sorry than she could ever say that they’d been hurt. But it was time to move forward.

  When she hung up she felt immeasurably better, but there was still one dark cloud skulking across her horizon.

  While it was imperative to know that she could write without the support of her “peeps,” and she was embarrassingly grateful that Sylvia had confirmed that she could, that didn’t mean she wanted to.

  On the deck the breeze that had set the branches to swaying teased at her hair. The afternoon sun was warm and gentle on her face.

  She wished her friends were here with her now to celebrate her newfound confidence; she could never have found it without them.

  So some of them had kept secrets; so everyone’s good intentions had gone awry and they’d all been damaged in the process. The one thing she couldn’t envision was a future that didn’t include Mallory and Faye and Tanya.

  She picked up the phone, wishing she could simply call all three of them, read them the riot act, and demand that they all forgive each other. But they weren’t her children. And they were all facing their own demons right now.

  She clutched the phone to her chest, trying to figure out what she might do to help make things right. She couldn’t sit idly by without trying to do something.

  As she listened to the stir of the leaves Kendall began to formulate the outline of a plan. Afraid that if she waited she’d talk herself out of it, Kendall punched in the New York number and asked to speak to Lacy Samuels. Perhaps the “plucky young assistant,” who had bucked her boss to save Sticks and Stones, would consider tilting at a few more publishing wind-mills. Or would at least know someone who could.

  45

  Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.

  —HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

  Kendall Aims met Sylvia Hardcastle in the marbled, if not hallowed, lobby of Scarsdale Publishing on a late June afternoon, just shy of a year afte
r she’d failed to win the Zelda at the national conference of Wordsmiths Incorporated.

  As they waited for Lacy Samuels to escort them to the conference room, Kendall reflected on all that had transpired over the last twelve months. She’d bottomed out and scaled the heights, been humiliated on national television and written off a husband, but she’d also reclaimed her mountain home and regained her children. She’d lost her faith in her talent and then found it again. And according to Sylvia, an offer had been made for Names Will Never Hurt Me, of which she’d completed seven full chapters.

  And then there was her surprising affinity for power tools and her uncontrollable urge to fix things, which she now recognized as a physical attempt to repair her broken life. Not to mention James, who was sweet and understanding and willing to let her set their pace.

  In the yin and yang of loss and redemption the only things that still hung in the balance were the fate of Sticks and Stones and the friendships that had created it.

  The clack of heels sounded on marble and Kendall looked up to see Lacy walking toward them. She was still tall and leggy but with a new air of confidence that Kendall suspected came from working under Hannah Sutcliff instead of Jane Jensen as well as her new position as an assistant editor.

  When she reached them, Lacy smiled and hugged Kendall warmly then shook Sylvia’s hand.

  “Everyone else is already here,” Lacy said as she led them past security to the bank of elevators. “There are an awful lot of lawyers in that room. I’m not sure that’s such a good thing.”

  Neither did Kendall, though in truth she was more nervous about seeing her coauthors than she was about exactly what kind of deal might be struck. Sylvia, however, had that gleam that stole into her eyes right before any hint of negotiation, so Kendall kept that heretical thought to herself.

  Kendall spotted Mallory and Faye and Tanya the moment she entered the conference room. Each of them was flanked by an agent or an attorney or both. Even Tanya had a red-tied blue suit-wearer on one side and a woman clad in New York black on the other.

  Harold Kemp, Brenda Tinsley, and Hannah Sutcliff were also there as were others Kendall assumed to be in-house counsel or accountants. She’d been told that the most combative meetings had already taken place and that today’s little get-together was intended to present the suggested settlement to the four of them. Theoretically their agents could have sought their clients’ approvals and gotten the pertinent paperwork signed. Yet all four of them were here.

  Kendall decided to take that as a good sign.

  At first their four gazes skittered over each other as if they were afraid to offend by looking too closely.

  Kendall offered a tentative smile and found herself assessing and cataloguing what the last months had done to the others. Faye looked more relaxed than Kendall had ever seen her, more centered. Tanya still looked like she belonged in a country music video, but her cornflower blue eyes were sharper than ever.

  Mallory sat on the opposite side of the conference table, next to Patricia Gilmore. She still held herself in a way that testified to her star power, but Kendall sensed something softer, more vulnerable, underneath.

  With real alarm Kendall realized that if no one took charge they might reach an agreement and walk out better off financially, but with no need to see each other again. If she hoped to engineer a reconciliation, she was going to have to make her move soon.

  She was trying to decide what to do when Harold Kemp, Scarsdale’s publisher-in-chief, began his opening comments, then proceeded to bring them all up to speed on the rerelease with its new cover listing all four authors that was planned.

  Kendall studied the cover and liked it, especially the way they’d interlocked all four of their names. She looked up but couldn’t read the others’ reactions.

  The cost of production for this new version would be divided equally between all four publishing houses as would the profits, minus the authors’ advances and royalties.

  It sounded fairly clear cut to Kendall and she wondered again why so many people were necessary. She tuned out the rest of what was being said in order to study her friends. Or rather, the three who she hoped were still her friends.

  She wanted to know if Mallory had made up with Chris; whether Tanya was still fighting off the cook and whether she’d quit all her jobs once Sticks and Stones started paying out. Ditto for Faye, who was rumored to be writing a time-travel erotica series set partly in biblical times.

  Scarsdale’s lead attorney talked next, but Kendall noticed that only the other attorneys appeared to be listening. Even the agents were busy scoping each other out. Kendall was dying to hear about Tanya’s new agent and what had happened during the split with Masque.

  Another attorney began to speak.

  Feeling someone’s gaze on her, Kendall looked up to find Mallory contemplating her. A dark eyebrow went up, then there was a roll of Mallory’s green eyes. She tilted her head toward the door and Kendall felt her first real stirring of hope.

  Faye noticed and nodded her head almost imperceptibly. Then Tanya joined the silent communication with a flip of her big hair.

  When the attorney finished speaking and called for comment from the authors’ representatives, Kendall stood and asked to address the group. Sylvia groaned quietly beside her, but Kendall was ready to make her move.

  “Before we vote on the specifics, I just want to take a moment to thank Mallory, Faye, and Tanya. I’m not sure if they realize it, but they saved my life. And in the process, they made sure we all wrote a truly incredible book.”

  The attorneys, accountants, and agents looked slightly uncomfortable as if paying a compliment crossed some unwritten line, but Kendall only cared about her audience of three. And they were sitting up and paying attention.

  “All of them paid a price for helping me and I don’t think I ever thanked them properly. I wouldn’t still be here—or anywhere—if it wasn’t for them.”

  The attorneys and agents exchanged looks of alarm. A faint whiff of panic wafted into the air.

  Kendall saw Mallory’s smile and the batting of her eyelashes as she attempted to hold back tears. Faye ran a hand through her salt-and-pepper hair. There was a suspicious sheen behind her glasses.

  Tanya stood and raised her pointy chin. “It was my pleasure,” she said, as she swiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “My new agent here,” she nodded to the woman seated to her left, who looked like she was about to have an apoplexy, “seems to think my future lies in Southern women’s fiction. Well, hell, I guess I’ve got the accent for it. But I sure would like to know what you three think.”

  “I think we have a lot of things to discuss.” Faye stood at her place now, too. “But I don’t think much of it has to do with this particular deal.”

  “No,” Mallory said. “It doesn’t, does it?” She stood, completely ignoring Patricia Gilmore’s gasp of horror.

  Kendall looked at her “peeps” and felt a pure rush of joy as the last piece of her life’s puzzle dropped into place. “All in favor of recommending that our representatives accept the split and cover credits on our behalf as offered, unless they can negotiate even better, but still equal deals, please say ‘aye,’ ” Kendall said.

  “Aye.” All four of them answered as one.

  Lacy Samuels, the onetime naïve but plucky editorial assistant, pumped a triumphant fist into the air.

  Hannah Sutcliff, who had already made a six-figure offer on Kendall Aims’s next novel, Names Will Never Hurt Me, which would chronicle said plucky assistant’s imaginary rise up the publishing ladder, smiled serenely.

  Everyone else just looked nervous, which Kendall figured was precisely what they got paid for.

  “I say we adjourn to someplace where we can toast our good fortune,” Mallory said.

  “And find out how the hell everyone’s doing,” Tanya added.

  “If you’ll excuse us?” Faye addressed those still assembled. “We really need to leave now.”

/>   And they left just like that. Crowding into the elevator, bursting out into the lobby, throwing their arms around each other as they marched across the marbled floor and out onto the steamy New York sidewalk.

  If this were the movie version that had been proposed for Sticks and Stones, Kendall thought, the theme music would swell up about now as the four of them shouted to and over each other as they walked, all of their energies focused on the joy of being together, oblivious to the surge of humanity forced to pass around them.

  And there’d be short paragraphs typed on the top of the screen—little capsule views of their fabulous futures—as the camera zoomed out so that the audience could see Mallory St. James’s car and driver trailing sedately behind them.

  Kendall Aims’s sequel to Sticks and Stones, Names Will Never Hurt Me, sat on the New York Times Bestseller List for twenty consecutive weeks. She is also a master handyman and has built rooms onto her mountain home so that struggling writers can come and write in solitude.

  Mallory St. James and her husband, Chris, divide their time between their home, the Happily Ever After, in Cabo San Lucas, their beach house in the Hamptons, and their brownstone in New York City. The author has not gone on tour since 2009 and despite her yearly bestsellers is reputed to be a confirmed homebody.

  Faye Truett’s time-travel bible series went into seven printings and has been translated into thirty languages. She’s a guest lecturer on Pastor Steve’s weekly Prayer Hour, and she packs lecture halls with her talks on “What Wouldn’t Ruth Do?” and other sensual matriarchal parables.

  Tanya Mason is a popular author of Southern women’s fiction. Publishers Weekly has named her Fannie Flagg’s heir apparent. She and her daughters live on St. Petersburg Beach, just a bridge away from the Downhome Diner, which she bought for her boyfriend Brett Adams. Her mother’s shiny new double-wide resides in her backyard. They take family trips on their sixty-foot houseboat, which they have christened Ain’t Beholden .