The Arrangement

by Ashley Warlick

  The cashier loaded her brown paper bag, and Mary Frances slipped her sunglasses off the crown of her head, stepped back through the fan and into heat of the day.

  She was waiting for the light to change on the corner, of all things innocuous and simple, of all things daily, she was waiting for the light to change when someone touched her shoulder.

  Even before she turned around, she felt as if she were falling, her getaway disappearing. This was it. It was all over. She’d been found out.

  “Mary Frances.”

  It was her sister, Anne.

  In a single motion, they both reached for her belly, high and firm and real, steadying themselves against it. Anne’s face was pale, round-mouthed, and Mary Frances could not help but laugh.

  “Dote,” Anne said. “Jesus Christ, are you all right?”

  She couldn’t get a breath, the baby high and tight in her rib cage, and the laughing that was both nervous and true. She thought of little Anne, years ago in her pinafore, her mouth on fire, her sister, the only person who might and might not understand what she was doing, her toughest audience, her first. How could she explain?

  Anne had her by the elbow. She was headed for a park bench.

  “Shhh,” she said. “We’ll sit down, Dote. What on earth has happened? What is going on?”

  “Oh, Anne,” she said, still laughing. “Where do I begin?”

  Acknowledgments

  This book was written over the better part of a decade, with the support of so many good people to whom I will always be grateful.

  It began with about two dozen pages of Joan Reardon’s luminous biography, Poet of the Appetites: The Lives and Loves of M.F.K. Fisher. That biography, read and read again, sent me to Fisher’s body of work, her letters and published journals, and late in the game, to Anne Zimmerman’s An Extravagant Hunger: The Passionate Years of M.F.K. Fisher, all of which provided insight, friction, and answers to questions I had not even thought to ask about a charming, enigmatic, and brilliant woman.

  I would like to thank the National Endowment of the Arts, Queens University of Charlotte, the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, edible Upcountry magazine, and M. Judson Booksellers and Storytellers, as well as the management and staff at Ballcrank Industries—namely Carla Damron, Stephen J. Eaonnou, Dartinia Hull, Beth Johnson, and Holly Pettman—without whom I would quite literally be lost.

  Writers I admire greatly read this book in manuscript and provided invaluable feedback and care. Thank you to Lauren Groff, Jo Hackl, Fred Leebron, Mamie Morgan and Jim Walke.

  Thank you to Kathryn Court and Lindsey Schwoeri at Viking for sharp and sensitive editorial skill, and to the incredible Marly Rusoff, for putting me in their hands.

  Thank you to Ron Friis, who always thought this would be a good book.

  Thank you to my family. And to my children, who mean everything.

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