by Ava Zavora
“May I present my rebuttal now?”
“You have the floor, counselor.”
“I agree. It is over the top. It is flamboyant. And it is something the real Adam would never do. But up to this point, Eden has suffered. The readers have suffered with her. The payoff has to be huge. She’s earned her happy ending and so have the readers. For Adam’s first appearance, nothing short of a spectacular fairy tale would do. To just have him show up out of the blue, after I’ve been crying my eyes out for months, knock on my door, and say, “Hey, here I am,” isn’t enough. Not after all I’ve been through.”
“Not after all Eden’s been through, you mean.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Never mind.” Ollie shook his head. “What would the real Adam do, you think?”
Evelyn became wistful. She could write reams on the topic.
“I don’t know how many times I’ve played this game. I had about ten different endings for Dear Adam. I could go more realistic, sure. But I’m not ashamed to say I want my fairy tale, even if it’s only in a book I wrote. The real Adam – if he was real, if his love was real – would do something quiet yet profoundly meaningful. Something that no one else could do, but Adam.”
“So when is the next book in the series going to be out?”
Darcy was officially Evelyn’s first fan. And an enthusiastic one at that. She had found out about the League of Librarians from a fantasy book blog with 35 followers and had devoured all three books in one week, so she told Evelyn excitedly when she came up to her at table at the San Francisco Indie Authors Convention. Darcy had persuaded her friends to read Evelyn’s books, and they in turn became fans as well. Because of Darcy and her five friends, Evelyn was saved from becoming a wallflower at the convention, which was dominated by bestselling romance novelists with their scores of devoted followers.
She was starting to feel like the ugly duckling of the homecoming dance, sitting all alone in her little table by the corner. Her plate of chocolate chip cookies lay untouched, and her new signing pens unused. She was regretting letting Ollie persuade her to buy a table.
“You need to connect with readers!” he had told her. “Online social networking won’t cut it. They need face time. You need to get out of the house, stop sitting in front of your computer. Get out into the real world.”
He had sounded so reasonable, and she had been swayed by the fact that the convention was being held in one of her favorite places in the city, Green Apple Bookstore. So she had signed up impulsively without checking to see who else would be attending. When she finally got the list of convention authors, she scanned the names with a sinking heart. There were no others in her genre.
She was about to text him with “I feel like a leper” and a frowny face, when Darcy and her boisterous group of library science cohorts had come sweeping in straight for her table.
Evelyn at first thought they were standing in the long line for Lavinia Wilde, who was next to her table, and stuttered with surprise when Darcy exclaimed, “Are you really E.A. Valfiero?” She almost forgot her own pen name and had to think for a second before replying with an astonished “Yes!”
Evelyn was in awe of Darcy and her friends’ glamorous vintage clothes, piercings, and tattoos. Her fans were cool! she felt like squealing. They made gratifying comments about the adventures of her magical librarians, insights which only came from close reading. They “got it.” She couldn’t wait to tell Ollie that they had picked up on the Benjamin Franklin references, the ones he said were too obscure.
She spent a glorious half-hour answering their numerous questions about some subtle threads and minor themes she had woven throughout all three books. Signing their physical copies of her series felt surreal. It was one of the happiest times she’d had this whole year. Ollie was right. There was no substitute for a face-to-face connection.
“Well, I’ll be coming back to the series soon. I just e-mailed my next book to the printers yesterday, and it will be released digitally and in print in two weeks.”
Upon seeing Darcy’s face light up, Evelyn quickly said, “It’s a departure from the series. A contemporary romance, called Dear Adam. I should have an excerpt up on my website soon. I’m a bit late on pre-promoting it,” she said apologetically.
Darcy looked a bit disappointed. She shrugged her shoulders. “You know what? I’ll try it. I love how you write!”
“Really? I hope so. It’s very close to my heart,” she said softly. “But don’t worry. The series is my baby. The Librarians are much too much fun to write about.”
“Librarians rock!” She and Darcy high-fived each other. It felt completely natural, even though she hadn’t done it in about ten years.
She was sad to see them go, but cheered herself up with the thought that if no one else visited her table the whole afternoon, Darcy and her friends more than made up for it. Lavinia Wilde may have her hordes of hundreds, but she had six cool librarians-in-the-making. Not only did she achieve #2 on her secret list, she had exceeded it.
“Yay! I have fans! They drove down all the way from Sacramento just for me!” she texted to Ollie.
“That’s great,” he texted back. “Have you read The Altar of Vices by Phillip St. James?”
Evelyn frowned. The Altar of Vices? Why was he texting her about someone else’s book? Sure it was #1 in the New York Times bestseller list, but she had six fans. Six. She needed two hands to count them.
“No, but I’ve heard of it,” she replied. “Hey, guess what? They thought the Ben Franklin references were original! Author-1, Editor-0.”
Instead of texting, Ollie called her. “Evelyn, I just finished reading the book three hours ago.”
“Oh-kay,” she said. “It’s that good, huh?”
“It’s brilliant,” he said offhandedly, “But that’s not really what I’m calling about. Did Adam tell you that he got shot near the heart when he was about 19?”
Evelyn gasped. That was one of the details she had left out in Dear Adam. Instead, she had written that he got stabbed in the chest. “How did you know that?”
“It’s in that book, The Altar of Vices. Listen, when I was reading it, I thought some of the plot elements sounded really familiar, but it didn’t click with me at first. It was the best book I read this year. Well,” he corrected himself, “Except for yours of course.’
“Yeah, yeah.”
“So I decided to see if he had any other books. The Altar of Vices is his debut novel. But he also self-published another book. It came out last week. Are you sitting down? It’s called Evie. I downloaded it and did a side-by-side comparison with my galley of Dear Adam and it comes pretty close -”
Evelyn stopped breathing.
“No,” she whispered, “He didn’t.”
“You said he was writing the story of his life, right? Only with ‘poetic license’ and under a pseudonym.”
“Uh-huh,” she replied weakly.
“Evelyn, if only half of what’s in The Altar of Vices is true – My god. He’s been through some deep shit. I mean, the mob, murder attempts, and the women –”
“Ollie, is there a picture?”she interrupted. “In the back, anywhere?”
“No, there isn’t. I checked. Not on the book jacket, not on Phillip St. James’s website, not on the publisher’s website. He doesn’t even have a bio.”
The disappointment was swift. “Of course he wouldn’t have a photo. What am I thinking? This is Adam we’re talking about.”
“So does this mean he’s for real?”
“No. It means he told me the same story he wrote in his NOVEL. Fiction is fiction. I was just a beta reader,” she said bitterly.
“Don’t you want to know about Evie?” he asked timidly. “It’s dedicated ‘To the Woman I Love.’”
“Ha!” she scoffed. “I can’t believe he would do this! Not only did he lie to me, he’s trying to profit from my heartbreak! How dare he! He probably just started our relationship solely to get materia
l for his book!”
“Yeah,” Ollie agreed, not at all convincingly, “How dare he write a book about you. About something so private.”
“And he published his story before I got to publish mine!” To add insult to injury. “Tell me I wrote it better.”
Ollie was silent on the other end.
“Seriously, Ollie? You’re my editor AND my friend! I’m going to put you in my next novel!”
“His version is … different. From his POV, it makes it seem like you abandoned him when he needed you the most.”
Evelyn winced. “See what I had to deal with. He’s even got you convinced of his innocence.”
“Uh,” Ollie said, a peculiar note in his voice, “This probably isn’t the time to ask, but, uh, uh,” he stammered.
“What?”
“Um, did you really, um, you know, do that over the phone?”
“Do what – OH DEAR GOD. He put THAT in the book?”
Evelyn suddenly felt really hot. The room started to spin a little, and she felt dizzy. The last time this happened, she had been three months pregnant and had hit the back of her head against the counter before fainting.
She put her head between her legs.
“What if Danny comes across this? Or my parents? Or people from work? Adam didn’t even bother to change my name!” she wailed as she dropped her phone in shock. It thudded below her table.
With this sudden turn of bad luck, she wouldn’t be surprised if her phone was broken. She got on her hands and knees and ducked behind the skirt to look for it.
Its screen glowed in the dim space below her table. It appeared to be okay. She could hear Ollie’s tinny voice saying, “Evelyn, are you alright?”
“Yeah, hold on,” she called out as she reached for her phone. “I dropped the phone. Give me a sec.”
She heard a throat being cleared somewhere above her.
Below the table skirt, she saw a pair of expensive-looking black leather shoes, the crisp hem of black trousers. Its well-dressed owner was standing in front of her table.
“Ollie,” she whispered, “My seventh fan is here. At least I think he’s a fan. He’s the only man I’ve seen in this place. He’s probably just lost.”
She started backing out, taking care not to knock her head against the table’s legs.
“Evelyn, there’s one more thing –“
“I gotta go,” she whispered urgently. “Find contact information for St. James. E-mail, agent, anything. Call you right back.” She hung up the phone just before she fully emerged from the table, still on her hands and knees.
Her eyes traveled from the black dress shoes, up the pressed, pin-striped black pants, to a square hand being held out to her.
She was about to say “Thank you” as she reached for it, when she saw what the man held in his other hand. The words died in her throat as she stared at the book he held. She would recognize it anywhere. The distinctive blue cover art, the typography she had commissioned. It was the book that she had just e-mailed to the printers yesterday. The book that hadn’t even published yet. Dear Adam.
She started trembling.
She dared not raise her eyes. It was an illusion wasn’t it? The black shoes, the black pants, the faint whiff of Armani Code. The familiar hands in front of her – pictures of which she had stared at a million times in the past year. The only physical copy of her book in them.
Before the tears had even begun falling, a white handkerchief appeared in front of her. She took it and covered her face.
“Evie, darling.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. She’s just imagining his voice. That rich, deep, unforgettable voice. He couldn’t be real.
She dropped the handkerchief and opened her eyes. The man was still there standing in front of her.
He was real.
She wanted to hang onto this moment as long as possible. That moment just before opening the door, before rounding the corner, the moment just before she finally meets the man she loves.
Smiling through her tears, Evelyn slowly raised her eyes.
Books and Authors Mentioned in Dear Adam
Real:
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Sylvia Plath
Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
John Le Carre
Piano by Jean Echenoz
Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost by Paul Hendrickson
Ernest Hemingway
The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot
The Godfather by Mario Puzo
The Mating Mind by Geoffrey Miller (quoted)
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (quoted)
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961
The Inferno by Dante Alighieri
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
J.D. Salinger
Emma by Jane Austen
Dan Brown
Stephenie Meyer
Edgar Allan Poe
James Patterson
Songs of Fire and Ice series by George R.R. Martin
Not Real:
The Angel's Shadow by Arturo Valiente
The Palace of Forgotten Memories by Arturo Valiente
The Midnight Garden by Arturo Valiente
Beautifully Ravaged by Scarlett James
Beautifully Obsessed by Scarlett James
Intrigue in Istanbul by Jonathan Frasier
A Storm in Madrid by C.L. Galloway
The Awakening by Marianna Devuille
League of Librarians series by E.A. Valfiero
Lavinia Wilde
The Altar of Vices by Phillip St. James
Evie by Phillip St. James
Acknowledgment
My esteemed editor and first writer-friend, Orry Benavides, is the word wizard behind “My Dinner with Andre for The Notebook generation” and “It’s like … Godot Shows Up.” When clever grows up, it wants to be just like Orry.
Thank you very much for reading Dear Adam!
For news of book releases, please subscribe to my e-mail newsletter.
www.avazavora.com
Table of Contents
Summary
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
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
Epilogue
Books and Authors Mentioned in Dear Adam
Acknowledgment