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He’d glanced at Theo. “Please,” she replied a little uncertainly. He was probably not a serial killer.
“Here,” he told Chic. “And the usual for…?”
“Theo. Theo Benton.”
He introduced himself then, and she recognized that she was speaking to Dan Murdoch—the novelist, whose name was acclaimed enough to appear on his books in a bigger type than the title. Now she was mortified. She’d just told Dan Murdoch that she was writing a novel. She could feel the color in her face. “I’m not a real writer,” she said quickly.
He smiled. “I must say it’s been a while since I ordered coffee for a figment of my imagination.”
“No…I mean…I meant…”
He laughed. “I know. I guess I’m not a real writer anymore either.”
“But you’re—”
“Becoming a writer is one thing; staying one is entirely another beast.”
“Oh…” Theo wasn’t sure she understood, but Dan did not seem inclined to explain.
Instead, he put her out of her misery by asking about her work. Specific questions about genre and theme, how long she’d been working on the project. Theo’s shyness receded gradually as she spoke about the historical mystery she was writing, set in the twenties in Canberra, a city that was still under construction. She told him that she had once been at law school in the Australian bush capital, which she found had a strange soul for a city—the ancient lands of the Ngunnawal people buried beneath the modern façade of a planned metropolis—and how that had planted a seed that would not leave her be.
He seemed interested—really interested—as opposed to polite or amused or merely kind, and Theo found a new pleasure in talking of the ideas which had been crowding her thoughts. She had previously only spoken of her work to Gus, and even then, with restraint, conscious of boring him with the imaginings that consumed her at the moment. But Dan gave her permission to effuse; indeed, he drew out the depth of her obsession with the story she was fashioning from scraps of history and the wanderings of her mind. And the morning passed unnoticed as they talked.
He’d asked her about Airborne as they stepped out to buy sandwiches for lunch. “They made it into a film, didn’t they?”
“I was fourteen when I read it,” Theo said, a little worried that he would think her literary taste immature.
He flinched. “I was a lot older than that, I’m afraid. What did you think?”
Theo hesitated, a little surprised that the book interested him and wondering if he meant the work or the man. Jack Chase’s career had fallen to scandal—allegations of sexual misconduct that had seen him become a pariah, dropped by agents and publishers, destocked by bookstores. She wasn’t aware of what Chase had done, exactly—she couldn’t even remember if it had been criminal or simply unsavory, and she wasn’t sure if it should have changed her mind about the book she had loved when she was fourteen. She opened the volume to the title page and showed him the inscription, and she told him how she came to have it.
“So you keep it for your brother’s sake?” he asked, reading the inscription.
“Not entirely.” She took a deep breath and made her stand. She was not a coward. “Jack Chase was an extraordinary writer. His work was nuanced, his world-building complex and layered. His heroines always made me feel powerful and strong…like no one could ever hurt me, and when I was fourteen, that meant a great deal. Whatever else he did, he wrote beautiful books.”
Dan had said nothing.
“…And, yes, it was a present from Gus…and an omen, I think. It’s my good luck charm.”
“Well, I hope that it works better for you than it did for him. It was his last book.”
She gasped. “Did you know him?”
He laughed. “No. Not at all. My first book was published just as the scandal broke, so I remember it.” He told her then of the roller coaster of first publication, the anxiety, the waiting, the incredible euphoria of first seeing your book on the shelf or reviewed by the New York Times.
Theo drew every word into her heart.
She’d returned home that evening full of enthusiasm and hope. She didn’t have a key to the kingdom yet, but she’d made a friend who did. It made her feel like this dream of hers could be real.
Theo didn’t see Dan Murdoch for several days after that, and the earth met her hard. She wondered if perhaps he’d found another place to have coffee and avoid the wannabe writer who now knew who he was. He must have been afraid she’d bother him, ask him to read her manuscript. For nearly a week, she went to Benders and sat alone, silently humiliated by the judgment she imputed to his absence. And then he was back, with a laptop and new gleam to his eye. He’d thanked her for inspiring him to write again, for shaking him out of a block.
“Were you blocked?” Writing was still so new to Theo, the creative rush so strong that the thought of not being able to find words, of not wanting to look, seemed unimaginable.
“Well, maybe not blocked,” he said. “But bored. I’ve been writing the same kind of books for a while, found myself distracted by other things—you reminded me what it was like to step into the wilderness and explore.”
“The wilderness?” She laughed. “We’re sitting in a coffee shop!”
“Yes…” He lowered his voice. “But the coffee’s not great.”
