CHAPTER 7
Tears.
This was the saddest and most beautiful thing I had ever read. This wasn’t some made-up scene in a movie or a book. This was straight from someone’s heart. Raw, real, beautiful, emotional . . .and this was so wrong.What I was doing was so, so wrong.I knew that, but. . .
I started opening and closing each letter, one by one, looking for more letters that had been written by her. But there was only this one, and the story ended so abruptly.What happened next?I was dying to know, and I alsoneededto know. I had a very incomplete story in front of me, and I’d promised my agent a complete story, from two perspectives.
I stood up and paced my room a few times. I was feeling so agitated and unsettled, like I needed to claw my way out of my skin. The letters on my coffee table seemed to be calling my name—not literally. Well, Ihopednot literally, or I would definitely be requiring a very specific sort of help, the sort that kind doctors with clipboards handed out. The letters seemed to be calling to me in a way I didn’t understand yet. This all seemed so fortuitous; only a few hours ago, I had been so desperate for a story, and now one had fallen into my lap.Was that just a coincidence?Or was it more? Or was I just looking for ways to justify my actions?
I turned and looked at the letters again. There were a lot of them—thirty, maybe even forty—but there certainly weren’t enough to write an entire book with, and certainly not without the other side of the story, or the ending, or a setting, or more context!
I rushed back over to them and started scanning them for clues. If only I could find this place, I could fill in the blanks. I read through them, picking out small details here and there: more mentions of the willow tree and the engraving, mention of the hot summers on the beach, an old town hall, a river that ran into the sea. I gathered up clues like lost puzzle pieces, trying to fit them together to see the bigger picture.
I reached for my computer and opened Google. I didn’t have much to go on—in fact, there was almost nothing. But Google usually has the answers to absolutely everything. (Although, sometimes the answers can be wrong. Turns out that rash I’d had wasn’t a deadly reaction to pomegranate juice and I wasn’t going into anaphylactic shock.) My fingers hovered over the keys for a while; I was deciding what to type . . .church, Father McMillan, willow tree, river, sea. This was like a needle in a haystack. I was never going to find this place,or was I . . . ?
And then, a sign. Big, bright red, flashing and screaming at me. An article about a church on a hill in Willow Bay that had been burned down, rebuilt and dedicated to Father James McMillan, who had died some thirty years ago, heroically saving a child when the river flooded and washed the boy out to sea.
What are the chances?!It was all there, as clear as daylight.
I stared at the screen and blinked a few times. I googled the name of the town, and the more I looked at pictures of it, the more I knew this was it. There it was: the river mouth that ran into the sea, making a strip of the sea a brown color; the willow tree; a church on a hill; hot, summery beaches.
Shit, it couldn’t be this easy, could it?I went straight to Google Maps and entered the address. It was a five-and-a-half-hour drive away. I stood up and walked the room again, pacing back and forth. I couldn’t sit still; a furnace of energy burned inside me, making me feel hot and itchy, and not the kind of itch you can scratch or the kind of hot you can douse with a cold shower. This was deeper than that.
“Crap!” I cursed and bit my nail clean off. I looked down at my nail; what the hell was I doing? I didn’t bite my nails. Then again, I also didn’t usually lie to my agent about having written a book that didn’t exist, and I didn’t usually plan to plagiarize letters I’d accidentally found in a handbag after almost plummeting to my death in an elevator.
But my career was hanging by a thread. I had no book, and if I didn’t write this story, there was nothing I could write. I had been existing in a stale, lonely state of writer’s block for almost an entire year now, and these letters were the first beacon of light I had seen in months. These letters were my only way out of my situation, the only way to save my career and save myself. Because, without my career, who was I? I had been nobody before it, and I didn’t want to go back to being nobody again. I couldn’t givehimthe satisfaction of seeing me fail, I couldn’t give any ofthemthat satisfaction . . .
I didn’t want to go back to being the girl with the wrong name, living an ordinary life. I wanted to be Becca Thorne. That’s the life I wanted.But was I really going to steal someone else’s life to get it. . .
