The Ghostwriter

  “I have no idea.”

  Helena checks her watch, a Beauty & The Beast timepiece with a chunky pink strap, fastened on the farthest hole. “I took a sleeping pill just before you came. If you don’t mind, I’m going to lay down for a couple of hours.”

  “I have work to do,” Kate offers. “If you don’t mind, I’ll bring in my laptop and work in here.”

  Helena’s eyes move to the kitchen table, and then back to her face, as if she is considering the alternative scenario—sending Kate away, out to her car or worse, back to the city. “That’s fine,” she says slowly. “I’ll be on the couch.”

  When she rises from the table, it is with sluggish effort, and Kate fights the urge to offer assistance, staying in place as Helena slowly trudges through the kitchen and into the great room, all but falling onto the couch and pulling a blanket over her body. “Wake me up in two hours,” she mumbles. “Please.”

  Please? Had Helena ever used that word before? It’s so strange to see this version of her, one so different than the woman she’s experienced through emails and weekly phone calls. Seven years ago, the last time they’d met—a half-hour in Kate’s office—her body had been comfortably fleshed out, her dry humor sharp, her directions given with an edge of superiority. She’s always been private, never sharing details of her life, Kate’s imagination left to its own devices, painting a life of color and wealth, family and dogs, evenings spent reading by a crackling fire, a chubby baby crawling before her on a plush rug. She’d always attributed Helena’s irritability and strict communications to Kate’s own ineptitude. Surely she wasn’t like that with everyone, surely she…

  Now, Helena silent on the couch, her gaunt figure swallowed by the blanket, the house eerily quiet, she realized the bitter truth of the matter. Maybe she doesn’t have anyone else to be irritable with. Maybe, she doesn’t have anyone at all.

  A hunt for a phone charger brings Kate to the second floor of Helena Ross’s home. She hits a switch, light flooding an empty bedroom and revealing stark white walls, pine floors and a slow moving ceiling fan. She flips off the light and steps farther down the hall, the sound of her steps ominous in the deserted house, the perfect prologue to any horror film.

  The next room, another bedroom, also white, also empty. She moves on, the next door locked. It is eerie, all of the empty bedrooms. Why would Helena buy this huge house if she doesn’t use the space? It doesn’t make sense to waste all of these rooms, not when she has the money to fill each one with beautiful art and furniture, thick rugs and crystal chandeliers. Kate puts her ear against the locked door, wondering if it’s bedroom or closet.

  Downstairs had been a vacant showroom, the living room outfitted with just a couch and TV, the kitchen with only a table and two chairs. Every other room—the dining room, formal living room, foyer, and bedroom—all empty. Upstairs, the master bedroom had been the only room so far with any furniture. The king bed had been carefully made, and she’d resisted an urge to fluff the pillows or pull back the covers, her pause at the window long, the curtains left untouched. Maybe she could pick up some flowers at a local florist, something to put on her bedside table and give the room some color.

  Or not. Helena’s patience with Kate has to be wearing thin. Given different circumstances, she’d have already been asked to leave. Helena, most likely out of pure convenience, hasn’t taken that path yet.

  The door at the end of the hall is closed, and she stops before it, a piece of paper taped to its surface, one of Helena Ross’s famous lists.

  Only this list is different. Handwritten in colored pencil, the letters are big and loopy. This list closes a fist around her heart and squeezes.

  The Rules of Bethany’s Room

  1. No boys.

  2. Take off shoes.

  3. If Music plays, you dance.

  4. No touching my art.

  5. No spankings.

  6. Bring cookies.

  7. Don’t turn out the lights.

  Sometimes, it only takes an instant to understand a person.

  The feel of loss in the air… it isn’t imagined. The life her mind had painted… at some point, it had been real. At some point, it had created this list-making child, one who hated spankings and loved cookies. Kate looks at the list and knows, without reaching for the handle, there is no one in the room. She gives herself a long moment to prepare, then twists the knob and pushes open the door.

  Pale green walls, the shade of Eva’s in Forced Love. A bed hangs from the ceiling by gold and pink ropes, the coverlet an organized mountain of pillows and stuffed animals. By a window sits a desk, the surface covered with drawings, pencils carefully lined up and organized by color. The right side of the room is a half-completed mural, supplies nearby, a forgotten doll on the floor.

  The most heartbreaking piece is in the middle of the floor, a sleeping bag unrolled on the rug, the fabric rumpled and open, the pillow indented. So different from the stiff, unused bed in the master bedroom. This one reeks of frequent use, of sleepless nights and tears. Kate’s throat becomes thick and she blinks, turning to leave the room before she loses all composure.

  She doesn’t look through any more of the home.

  After that, she can’t.

  My house smells of bleach, the downstairs gone over by Kate, clad in surgical gloves and armed with a spray bottle and paper towels. She probably would have been a good roommate, one who understood my need for refrigerator conformity and organizational rules. Simon had always scoffed at my concerns, just as he did over my immunization research and the alarming air quality index in Brooklyn. My research, the fat envelope wrapped with three rubber bands, bulging with terrifying statistics, was why we moved to New London, three hours up the coast, a small town with an acceptable crime rate and clean air. I had grown up here, and embraced the idea of returning, my memories of the sleepy town filled with library visits and quiet afternoons reading in the backyard hammock. My mother had also jumped on board, buying a home a couple of miles away, her offers to babysit met with delight by Simon, and trepidation by me.

  I watch Kate as she cleans the front of my laptop, paying careful attention to the keyboard, a bleach wipe coating the surface of the letters. When she finishes, she carefully turns it toward me, almost reverently, moving it to the exact middle of the kitchen table. A timer on her watch chimes and she smoothly turns, reaching for the cabinet and pulling out a bottle of pills, twisting off the lid and shaking out one. She holds it out to me.

  “Ever thought of being a nurse?” I say wryly, reaching gingerly forward and taking the medicine, half-irritated, half-grateful. Maybe taking my meds as prescribed, on time and with food, would help my symptoms. I already feel better, revived after my nap, my headache down to a barely-noticeable ache.

  “Don’t laugh,” Kate says, “but I did.”

  “Really?” I reach forward and press the laptop’s power button, turning it on.

  “Yep.” Her snappy response makes me smile. Earlier, while she left Marka’s agent another voicemail, I flipped through television channels and asked what she liked to watch, a question that was met with a recitation of Rule 4, in which—one grouchy day years ago—I stated that she must never share personal details of her life with me. It had seemed a reasonable request at the time, one designed to enhance my productivity. Now, it just seems bitchy. Recently, all my rules seem bitchy. And super controlling, which sucks, since that was Simon’s most popular complaint, one I’d always dismissed without consideration.

  My computer finishes its startup , and I open my email. There is one from Charlotte Blanton, and it takes my mind a moment to place the name. Charlotte. My doorbell-ringing, husband-inquiring, intruder. I click on her email with the heavy finger of the doomed. Any fantasies of long-lost sisterhood fly out the window as soon as it opens. It is short and cuts to the point, which I appreciate. Everything else about it, I hate.

  Helen
a,

  I am a journalist for the New York Post, and am writing an article on your husband. I have some questions to ask you, and some information to share. Please call me.

  Charlotte Blanton

  Investigative Journalist, New York Post

  I’ve waited four years for something like this. For someone to pull a loose thread, a gentle tug that turns into more, everything unraveling until our secrets are bare to the world. This could turn into a media shitstorm. This could be the biggest story of the year, amplified by my pending death. I can see the headlines now. I can see the papers flying off the shelves, my cul-de-sac filled with news vans and microphones.

  I can’t let her do this. I can’t let Charlotte Blanton ruin everything when I am finally ready to tell the story for myself.

  I carefully drag her email into the SPAM folder, then block her as a contact. There. Done. Kate’s phone rings, and she picks it up, her eyes connecting with mine.

  “It’s Ron Pilar.”

  “No.” I press my fingers against my forehead, feeling nauseous, the condition either caused by the recent pill or the words that just tumbled out of Kate’s dark red lips. “No way.” It’s one thing for me to reach out to Marka Vantly with a business proposition. It’s another for us to meet, face-to-face, which is what she wants.

  “We aren’t exactly negotiating from a place of power,” Kate says carefully, perched on the office couch. We moved upstairs after the call, me wanting to get to my calendar, my files, and out of that damn kitchen. She’s wearing the same blouse, and it’s a reminder that it’s the same day as when I walked to the mailbox and watched her car pull in. It feels like a week has passed, her presence already turned from stranger to… not friend, but something in between the two. Thirty minutes ago, she walked straight to the bathroom without asking where it was. During my nap, she must have wandered around the house, discovering the empty rooms, the occasional bits of habitation. Did she try to open the door to the media room? Probably. No doubt she found Bethany’s room, my bed there. From the change in her eyes, the softening in her speech, the fragile way she’s handling me—she thinks she knows. Maybe, before she woke me, she did an Internet search on my married name. Maybe she knows about everything, or thinks she does.

  She follows my eyes, looking down at her blouse, and smooths it self-consciously. “They said Marka will come here. You won’t have to travel.”

  “No,” I snap, my irritation rising, as much over her invasion as Marka’s. “I’ll outline everything, and we can communicate through email.” Anything to prevent Marka Freakin’ Vantly’s sky-high stilettos clipping across my floor, her eyes on my empty house, on my sweatpants and greasy hair, a stupid smirk playing across her face as she taps those perfect fingernails against her sexy lips. Screw that.

  “She hasn’t agreed to anything; she just wants to talk.”

  Marka doesn’t want to talk. She wants to ask questions, to peel back the layers of my soul and understand why, after a decade of insults, I chose her to write this story. She’ll want to know about the ridiculously short timeline and my motivations. She’ll want to know about the story and why it is so important—my next inhale is a struggle, panic tightening its grip around my heart. “No.” I manage. “I can’t.”

  “Are you intimidated by her?” Oh, the bitter irony, my earlier question so easily thrown back in my face. It is manipulative, same as it had been with me, my backbone straightening despite my knowledge of her motives.

  “Of course not,” I snap. “She’s just not worth my time.” I spin slowly in my chair, my eyes moving over the corkboard, focusing on the worn piece of paper, the blurb, stuck prominently in the center of the board. If Kate looked hard enough, she’d see it. If she thought hard enough, she’d figure things out.

  “We could get a different author,” Kate offers. “Maybe Vera Wilson or Kennedy—”

  “No.” I say, my eyes stuck on the opening line of the blurb. If you lie enough times, no one believes your truth.

  “It doesn’t have to be Marka,” Kate persists. “I could try—”

  “No,” I repeat, my words stronger. Vera Wilson or Kennedy Blake or Christina Hendlake… they are all the same. Words on pages. Well-written, their craft holds no room for criticism. But it also holds no life. This story… my last story… it needs life. It needs a soul. It needs to be powerful enough, and I don’t know if even I can do it justice. I need the next best thing, and with guidance, maybe Marka can be trained. Maybe, with a heavy hand of direction, she can pull it off in time. She writes quickly, I know that much. I’ll do the outline, she can write her ass off, and I can heavily edit it. Steer her onto better ground when she goes astray. It can be done. It has to be done.

  “Helena?” Kate has been talking, her last few sentences lost in the tangle of my thoughts, and I turn to her, raising an eyebrow. “Do you want me to call it off with Marka’s people?”

  “No,” I grumble. “Let me email her first.”

  If you lie enough times, no one believes your truth. It is a good intro. I only wish it wasn’t so true.

  My beautifully worded email to Marka, one where I refrain from any insults or profanity, goes unanswered, a status that infuriates me. I hold firm for a full day, and then crack, giving Kate permission to call her agent and agree to the meeting. I’ve spent almost a decade battling the author. Now, with the pressure of my deadline, I give up.

  I don’t know why she’s insistent on coming here. To make things worse, I can feel Kate’s certainty that Marka won’t agree to the terms. It’s a legitimate possibility, one that I am afraid to consider. Hell, if Marka had reached out six months ago with a similar request, I’d have laughed at her. I would have taken perverse pleasure in turning her down, my email maliciously worded with the full intent to stab her when she was down. I would have been the biggest bitch on the planet about it.

  And that’s the main reason I’d initially refused her request for a face-to-face. The most likely scenario is that she is flying here for no reason other to embarrass me to my face. She will curl up that pouty mouth and laugh at my book proposition, at my timeline, and at my life. She will judge my uneven features and stringy hair. She will be just like the popular girls from seventh grade, only this time I will care, it will matter.

  I need her.

  But I’m also terrified of her.

  With less than twenty-four hours until our meeting, I feel a wave of nausea and stumble for a chair.

  When he meets my mother, it’s like butter on hot toast, a melding of souls—an effortless union that I am merely a spectator to. I feel betrayed, seeing her laugh at his jokes, seeing him hold the door open for her, and his compliment on her work.

  I prepared him for her stiff disapproval, for her judgmental stares, for her psychoanalysis. I didn’t prepare myself for them to get along, for my mother to beam at me, for the two of them to unite.

  Later, it will be war—but on that cool Sunday afternoon, it is just irritating. I—

  The doorbell rings, and my fingers pause above the keyboard, the paragraph half-finished on the screen before me. My eyes move to the clock, worried for a moment that I have lost track of time, and that Marka is already here. But it is a quarter ‘til four, fifteen minutes before our appointment. I can’t picture Marka as an early arrival. If anything, I expect her to be fashionably late.

  The doorbell rings a second time and I stand from the desk, saving my work and moving to the door, taking the steps as quickly as I can manage, suddenly filled with an urgent need to get to the door before a third chime of the bell.

  I make it to the door and jerk it open, caught off guard by the man who stands there. I immediately toss the idea that he is Ron Pilar, Marka’s agent. This man, his face ruddy, hair wild, clothes crumpled—is not an agent, and is certainly not from New York. There isn’t a polished bone inside his loose khaki shirt, one with an unnecessary num
ber of pockets, a fish stitched onto the front breast. No salesmanship in his comfortable stance, one hand tucked in a pocket, the other lifting from the doorbell in greeting. I watch his hand move, noting the calluses on the palm, the cracks in the skin, the gold band on his left ring finger. If I look closely, there’ll probably be dirt under his nails. I hope he isn’t the driver that Kate found, showing up a day early. There’s no way I’m letting a man like this take me anywhere.

  “Helena?” The drawl of my name is deep and masculine, and I’ve described voices like it a hundred times, the rough kind that makes weak females swoon against fence posts. I will not be swooning. I will be kicking him off this porch, immediately, before Marka Vantly and her brigade pull in. I eye his vehicle, a white Ford truck that squats in the middle of my driveway.

  “I have a sign.” I tap it. “No ringing the doorbell. No parking on the driveway. And no soliciting.”

  “Ah.” He smiles. “And I thought those rules were put up just for me.”

  I stare at him blankly, the response making no sense. Even worse, he is still here, his boots on my Go Away mat, precious minutes clicking by. I should be clearing my mind and composing myself. This distraction… I don’t have time for this. “You need to leave.”

  “I’m a little early.” His smile is still in place, and it is an amused one, his personal joke too freaking fascinating to share. “Would you like me to wait in the truck ’til four?”

  I am a little early. Would you like me to wait ’til four? The words slowly click into place, and I blink, processing the possibilities, my next question a desperate attempt to buy time. “The truck in my driveway?”

  He chuckles, and I’m glad this is so much fun for him. “Yes.”

  “Are you Ron Pilar?” He can’t be, not unless Ron Pilar negotiates book contracts on fence rails before wrangling cattle.