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Chapter Three
It had been three daysand three nights since Elise had discovered the truth of her family lineage. In those days, she had dined with Cindy, danced around Tracey’s kitchen, hiked with Michael, pored over old photographs with her father, and gossiped freely with Emma and Megan. Through it all, she’d also found time to sit at her desk at the Bloomingfeld and finalize the last bits of her screenplay.
Her cursor blinked there on the last line of the final page. She leaped from the rickety wooden chair as her robe flung out behind her and her heart performed a tap-dance across her diaphragm.
It was finished.
She’d read and reread and erased and uncovered bits of herself throughout the process that she’d forgotten had once belonged to her. As she had fallen in love with the Swartz family and with Wayne—she had somehow returned to the self she’d once believed in, the person she’d lost throughout her thirties, the one she had abandoned after Sean’s affair.
I’m back, baby.
As the sun rose over the horizon line, casting everything in a sherbet pink haze, Elise typed out an email to her agent.
Courtney,
As promised, here’s the first draft of ‘Time After Time,’ a film in which a forty-something woman finds herself, new love, and a life she would never have imagined on the banks of Mackinac Island.
Let me know what you think.
Elise
Once the email was sent, Elise jumped into the shower. As the tiny beads of hot water lashed across her back, she stared into the far corner of the room and felt it: the realization that nothing would ever be the same again.
Thank God.
Elise had always been something of a no-sleeper. Back in college, she’d written long nights, partied long days, found a way to minimize her time spent unconscious. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” is what she had told Haley time and time again. In her late thirties, earlier forties, she had slept much more, falling into a kind of fog. That fog had ended, and “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” had found itself a new refrain. There was so much to do, so much to feel. Elise was ready for all of it.
Elise donned a new dress Tracey had gifted her from the boutique, a dark purple low-cut that hugged her waist and sprung out across the thighs that had, admittedly, grown the tiniest of bits bigger in the wake of her Midwestern eating habits. She was surprised at how much she liked the curves. If Wayne had even noticed them—they seemed to work for him, too.
When Elise stumbled out of the Bloomingfeld, she nearly ran head-long into a horse and buggy. The horse whinnied and flashed his eyes. As Elise’s heart settled, she glanced up to see none other than Michael alongside a particularly beautiful twenty-something girl; one Elise had never seen.
“My, my. Look what the cat dragged out here,” Michael said with a crooked grin.
Elise winked, crossed her arms over her chest, and said, “Why is it you always seem to turn up like this, Michael? About ready to run me over, looks like.”
“It occurred to me that you’re higher up on the inheritance list than me these days,” Michael said with a light laugh. “I have to do what I can to keep myself up in the ranks.”
“Michael, come on.” The girl beside him delivered a light smack across his shoulder—the kind of thing only a girl truly in some kind of lust did. She flashed her eyes back toward Elise and said, “His manners are terrible, so I’ll tell you myself. I’m Margaret Starr. We met down in Texas, when he was hard at work, or hardly workin’, at a little coffee shop.”
“I see! So you met Michael during his wild romp around the continent?”
“You talk about it like it wasn’t exactly what you’re up to right now,” Michael said. “Margot, this is my Aunt Elise. The thing about it is, we didn’t know about her until a little more than a month ago. She was out in California, just living out her life without us. Rude, huh?”
Margot laughed in a southern way, with her lips wide open and her eyes closed. She gripped Michael’s bicep hard and said, “I can’t believe this. You only just found out about each other?”
“It’s wild, isn’t it?” Elise said.
“Hence my hope for murder,” Michael said, winking again. “However, I’ll have to try again another time.”
“Very funny, Mike. How long are you here from Texas?” Elise asked.
“Not sure yet,” Margot returned with a tilt of her head. “This goober called me up a few nights ago and said he had a dream about the Texas night sky.”
“They really are the best stars,” Michael affirmed. “And you know how much I care about astrology.”
“I think you mean astronomy, honey,” Margot said. “Aunt Elise, he’s a classic Sagittarius. Fascinated with the world, but not so good with specifics.”
Elise chuckled. This girl was clearly no dummy.
