“Not expressly, but you’re not that far off the mark. He lives in a cabin that is partly off-grid. He fishes and hunts. He has a big garden in the summer and does a lot of canning and preserving. He arranges his writing schedule and deadlines so as not to interfere with harvest season. He lives like a survivalist, but he doesn’t subscribe to any conspiracy theories.” He paused. “My point is, he basically has no expenses, so he’s not particularly financially motivated. So he wasn’t ever interested in being involved in film projects.”
“Yeah, but he wouldn’t have had to be involved,” Esme said, and Blair was aware that she should shut this down, but it was getting interesting. “There’s a spectrum of author involvement. He could have just taken the money and run. With a good producer like my mom, you often get a better movie without the author hanging around mucking things up.”
Esme had been paying attention over the years.
“I know you said he isn’t financially motivated,” Esme said, “but who doesn’t want a chunk of option cash?”
“I suspect,” Tiffany said, eyeing Jack with an expression Blair couldn’t read, and there wasn’t much about Tiffany that Blair couldn’t read, “that the problem was that even if he took the money and ran, his name would still be attached to a film version of one of his books. He wouldn’t have wanted to give up control, but he wouldn’t have wanted to be involved, which of course is the only thing that would have given him some control.”
“That’s exactly right.” Jack’s brow furrowed. “I think.”
“All right,” Blair said. Time to put Jack out of his misery. “I’m as full as a tick on a hound dog, but can I interest anyone else in pumpkin chiffon pie?”
“Let me help with the cleanup,” Tiffany said when Blair started clearing the table after dessert. Blair had only been intending to take stuff to the kitchen—out of sight, out of mind, right? That was the hope, anyway. And this way, she could tackle it all once everyone was gone.
She hoped this dinner hadn’t been a mistake.
Blair was fully aware that the reason she’d been so lonely lately was that she was avoiding people. She hadn’t wanted anyone to see the state she was in.
But they’d had the loveliest dinner. Her daughter, her best friend, and her… grumpy lodger, Jack. Who was also, somehow, a close friend?
He was, right?
Anyway, it felt like she’d had dinner with three of her favorite people—the only one missing was Cal.
As she’d told Jack once, the cure to loneliness was people.
But the other side of that was that when you had your people around, they saw you.
She was getting the bone-tingly feeling that kitchen cleanup often triggered. Letting people help with cleanup would mean letting them load unscraped dishes into the dishwasher. Letting them use the same sponge for the counters and the dishes.
She tried to deflect Tiff’s offer to help. “I’m fine. I wasn’t even going to worry about the cleanup until tomorrow.”
Could everyone tell she was lying?
“I didn’t bring anything,” Tiffany said. “The least I can do is clean up.”
The cyclone was coming. Her vision was getting a little blurry, and she was getting that compressed-lungs feeling, like she couldn’t get a full breath in. She tried anyway, silently counting her inhalations and exhalations, even though she knew it was futile.
“Come on, I am very skilled at dishwasher loading,” Tiff said.
“Blair likes to do things her way,” Jack said.
Jack’s tone was, on the surface of things, unremarkable. Perhaps a touch teasing. But Blair wasn’t far enough gone that she couldn’t hear… something under the surface.
Blair had never told Jack about the cyclone. He had never witnessed it. But did he know about it anyway?
Why would Jack know about the cyclone? He wasn’t inside her head.
Hedidmanage to write the most carefully observed characters.
But they were fictional. Products of his imagination. Blair was a real person in control of her own life.
And speaking of, she needed to do a better job… what? Hiding? Because that’s what she was doing, right?
No. She was just managing her business, emphasis onher business.
“Hey, Esme,” Jack said, “you want to come to the pool house and work on your résumé?” And to Tiffany: “You should come, too, and see my collection of junk my crow army has brought me.”
