Page 55 of Cut Off from Sky and Earth
The first real smile I’ve seen lights her face, softening the hard edges of her jaw.
“What are you saving for?”
She waves a hand. “It’s stupid.”
“I want to know. Tell me.”
I grab a chair and she hands me a mug of coffee. She retrieves a notebook from the counter and slides it across the counter. I trap it under my palm.
“We have a bucket list for when Robert retires. He’s a military linguist and his work has taken him all over the world, but I haven’t gone along. So when he’s done in two years—actually twenty-one months—we’ll sell the farm, get rid of most of our stuff, and become global nomads. We’ll travel around, see all the things I’ve read about or places he’s seen in passing in a blur during a leave. We’re going to experience the entire world together.”
As I page through the notebook taking in the places, events, and ideas scribbled in cramped blue ink, I get swept up in her excitement. “That’s amazing.”
She flushes. “It seems silly sometimes.”
“You’re going after a dream. That’s bold, not silly.”
She pours herself a cup of coffee and joins me at the table. “What’s your bold dream?”
“Oh.” I sip my coffee and think. “I suppose I’m doing it. I’ve always wanted to write and I’m living that dream. Maybe it’s not as exciting as globe trotting, but I have a rich interior life,” I say lamely.
She gives me a steady look. “Tell me about the book you came here to work on.”
“I don’t really talk about works in progress.”
“Is that a superstition?”
I scrunch up my nose and try to figure out how to explain my process. “No, it’s not that I think it’s bad luck to talk about it. It’s that I don’t know the story until I’m finished writing it. I discover it as I go. So what I tell you now might not be the way the story ends up.”
“It’s okay. I won’t hold you to it,” she says with a laugh.
For most of my books, I wouldn’t be able to do this, but this one’s different since it’s a retelling. “I’ll give it a shot. My agent has a client who’s a huge romance author. People tattoo her characters’ names on their butts and name their cats after her. There are tours of the town she sets her books in.”
She nods. “I think I know her. Jillian James, right? The one who bought the bookstore?”
“Right. So, you know, she’s a force unto herself. Jillian had this idea to have twelve authors each retell a fairy tale. She’ll release the books over the course of a year. And I was invited to participate.”
“So it’s a romance?”
“No, mine isn’t a romance. It’s women’s fiction, which is what I usually write.” I paused. “Actually, this one’s a little dark for me.”
“Frankly, I’m surprised you don’t write noir given your past.”
This is an echo of our conversation about true crime. But it’s just not in my nature. I shrug. “My books are all about relationships. In this book, the relationship is a friendship. It’s based on Maid Maleen. It’s an obscure German fairy tale, not one of the famous ones.”
“Right, the princess who’s put in the tower for seven years and her father forgets about her.”
My jaw hinges open. “Literally nobody, including my agent and Jillian, has ever heard of Maid Maleen.”
It’s her turn to shrug. “I read everything,” she tells me.
“Then you know the plot. In the Grimm brothers’ version, she’s in love with a prince, but her father wants her to marry someone else. In the original version, there is no king-approved suitor. Her father just doesn’t like the one she has, so he puts her in the tower to break her spirit.”
“He builds a windowless tower, sends up seven years’ worth of food and drink, then seals Maleen and her lady-in-waiting inside,” Alex adds.
“Right. Maleen has a choice. Her lady-in-waiting doesn’t.”
“Does her maid even have a name?”
