Timeless

CHAPTER 4

“Y ou want to do what ?” her publisher asked.

“Did you not hear me?” she checked, wondering if the cell reception in her house had gone from two bars to one again, which was a common occurrence.

“Oh, I heard you. I just don’t think I heard you correctly . You want to write a 1930s love story, but about two women ?”

“Yes,” she confirmed.

“But you don’t even write romance. You just gave me a best-selling historical fiction book.”

“I’d like to stick to the historical part and the fiction part,” she replied and could feel something like a neuron or synapse firing in her brain at the last part of her sentence, which made no sense. “And add romance.” She pressed two fingers to her temples and squinted her eyes shut for a minute before the moment went away.

It wasn’t painful, exactly; more like something her body did just to remind her how little control she had over the whole thing, like it did with all humans occasionally. She figured that stuff like this would happen more and more the older she got, so she might as well get used to it and refocus on her important phone call.

“Have you ever even written any romance before?”

“Not really, no. I mean, there’s that subplot in the draft of my first book.”

“That was the part of the book we had you edit out.” The woman chuckled.

“Because it wasn’t needed in that book, but not because it was bad,” she replied. “Right?”

Abby worried that maybe her editor had been nice to her and just suggested that the subplot, which she felt should have been included in her first book, had been unnecessary to the main plot instead of telling her that she didn’t know how to write romance at all .

“It was fine. We just didn’t think it was needed. Besides, you were already long, so it was an easy cut that didn’t lose anything from the book.”

“Easy? I didn’t see you in the manuscript file, chopping out whole sections and reconnecting the dots after I lost an entire subplot,” she joked.

“Abby, what brought this on? You’re supposed to be getting pages ready for the editor. You’ve got a deadline. Are you planning on writing this as the third book and wanted to let me know? Please tell me that’s what this is and that your second, masterful work of prose is in my inbox right now, with your editor CCed.”

“It’s not,” Abby admitted. “I’ve been blocked recently. Today, though, I went on a walk. I took my mother’s advice, for once, and I actually walked into this old antique shop.” She smiled at the memory of Quinn Jordan appearing behind the counter and startling her, not just because she’d come out of nowhere but also because she was so beautiful and familiar and maybe even perfect, which was a weird thing for Abby to be doing, thinking about a woman she’d just met or anyone at all, for that matter. “I found something that sparked a story.”

“Sparked a romance between two women in the 1930s? What did you find in this shop, exactly? The very first lesbian flag?”

Abby laughed at the joke and replied, “No, it was a picture.”

“Of two women?”

“No. It’s on a front porch, and it’s of a bride and a groom.”

“I am so confused…” Her publisher let out an exasperated sigh.

“There’s a woman in this picture, probably her maid of honor or something, and she’s standing off to the side, looking pretty displeased that those two just got married.”

“And you think that’s because she’s in love with the bride? Why not the groom? ”

“She’s glaring at him ,” Abby explained, staring down at the photo in her hand. “And I didn’t notice it until after I got home, but both women are wearing matching bracelets. They look like yarn or thread or something, nothing expensive. The picture’s too old to tell, but there’s something to that, I think.”

“Yeah, they’re probably sisters.”

“They don’t look anything alike.”

“Close cousins, then. Maybe they just made themselves friendship bracelets or something. You want to write a book about what here, exactly? The two women being together before one gets married? Because that’ll have a sad ending, like most relationships between women back then. Are you going for a sad ending? We barely had the right to vote in the 1930s.”

“I don’t know if it’ll be happy or sad just yet. It has to be realistic to the time period, though. I want something that people will carry with them, you know? That perfect ending with a resolution, but also with things still open a little, at least, so that people can imagine their own endings, too. I haven’t started outlining yet, but I’m going to do that tonight. I feel like pages will just fly out of me with this idea.”

“Will the romance be the main plot?”

“Probably. I still have all my research on the time period from the last book, so it’ll definitely have historical elements in it. That one was based in New York City, but this one will be in a rural community.”

“I knew moving back to that tiny town you came from would impact your writing.”

“It could impact it for the better. And the setting is because of the porch in the picture. It’s hard to tell, but it reminds me of those old farmhouses around here. There’s a screen door behind them, and I can’t see much else because the people are blocking things, but I’m getting a farm vibe. And the dresses and suit they are wearing feel pretty simple to me, not at all like people in the upper crust of Manhattan society would’ve worn in the 30s.”

“What do you know about farm life in the 30s? ”

Abby thought about that for a moment, and while she couldn’t say she’d been a farmer in the 1930s, she felt pretty comfortable with her farm knowledge and with her 1930s American knowledge.

“My dad was a farmer. My grandpa was a farmer. His father, my great-grandfather, started the farm they would both work on. My dad sold it when me and my siblings had no interest in working on it ourselves, but I technically grew up on a farm about twenty minutes away from here. They sold it when I was fifteen, but before that, I milked cows, fed pigs, and picked up eggs every day, having to wake up around five in the morning to do it all. That’s pretty normal for people out here, though.”

“God, that sounds horrible. When I wake up at five in the morning, it better be because I’m about to have mind-blowing morning sex.”

Abby laughed and said, “Well, I can agree to that.”

“Can you still stick to your deadline, or do we need to push?”

“Can I let you know? Once I have the outline done and start working, I’ll know more. If the words don’t flow how I think they will, I’ll probably have to push.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to everyone I need to talk to here, then. I want to chat specifically with our romance department. This is a different genre, so I want to check their schedule and see when they have room for you. It’s possible that we’ll have to push either way, but you still need to focus on hitting that deadline and getting it to the editor because you’ve never written romance before, and it might need major rewrites.”

“Thanks for your vote of confidence,” she joked.

“Hey, I’ve worked with some of the most well-known authors, and if you ever want to have a laugh, ask me to tell you how many complete overhauls we had to get them to do with their books before they were ready to publish. Over drinks when you come to New York next?”

“Sure,” Abby replied.

“I know you don’t like it here – it’s too busy for you – and we can do everything remotely now, but you really should give this city another chance. It has its downsides, yeah, but it’s also pretty magical at the same time.”

“I’m starting to think that there’s a reason I came back home, and I’m getting a real magical vibe here, too.”

“Magical? Your romance is not going to have magic in it, is it? That’s a whole other thing, Abby.”

Abby chuckled and said, “No, no actual magic. I just… I had a really good day today. That’s all. The reasons I left here, to begin with, turned out to be the reasons I came back home.”

“Well, the offer to go to drinks when you’re here next still stands.”

“I know. Thanks,” she replied. “Now, I should get back to it. I’ve been staring at the picture for hours, and I think I’m ready to start fleshing out my outline.”

“I’ll let you go, then. Keep me posted, okay?”

“I will.”

After they hung up, Abby remained on her sofa, staring down at the picture. She’d noticed the bracelet on the bride’s wrist first and hadn’t thought anything of it, but when she’d been scanning the other woman again, for at least the hundredth time, she’d caught something in the faded, black-and-white image. The woman in the back was wearing a bracelet, too, and it looked the same as the one on the bride’s wrist.

It was then that Abby had gone from studying the maid of honor’s face to the groom’s. Not knowing the situation surrounding this marriage but knowing enough of the time period and how women were still treated in the 30s, she guessed by their reactions that it wasn’t a marriage of love or even convenience. The groom looked pensive, like he was told to stand tall and look manly, so that was what he was doing. All three people in the picture were young, in their early twenties, at most, but Abby had always been terrible at guessing people’s ages.

The bride, when she took a closer look at her, didn’t look happy, either. Her smile was straight-lined and forced. She wasn’t holding her new husband’s hand, nor did he have an arm around her shoulders. They were pressed together at their sides more than anything. This looked more and more like an arranged marriage between two farmers who had kids around the same age and decided to put them together so that the farms or ranches would stay in the families. If there was no male heir for the bride’s family’s farm, the man she’d just married would eventually own that one, too, but she’d done her job by marrying him. She’d pop out several little kids, the future grandparents would all pray for boys, and she’d work in the kitchen, raise the kids, and follow her husband’s lead.

“Fuck that,” Abby said to herself.

Not in her version of the story. She rose from the sofa, carried the photo and her glass of cheap red wine into her office, which wasn’t exactly neat or organized, and set the wine down on her desk. She didn’t want to damage the photo, so she wouldn’t pin it to her wall where she pinned other things for her work. Instead, she set it on the table by her loveseat, which lined the wall opposite where she hung pieces of paper and Post-it notes she’d scribbled on along with paint swatches of colors she liked and wanted to use in stories. Over time, the wall had become her own real-life Pinterest board. Most authors used technology to plan and outline, but Abby had always preferred to go old-school. She still typed some things out, but other things, she needed to see right in front of her face. She needed to feel them with her fingers, press them to the wall and into existence, for them to feel real to her at all.

“Okay. I need names.”

She always started with names. It helped her begin to imagine the characters who had them. She needed at least three, for the two women and the man in the image, but she’d also need a lot of side characters’ names, probably the men who worked on the farm, the moms and the dads of the bride and groom, and a few extra to have on hand so that coming up with another name didn’t stop her in her tracks later when she was writing.

“Where did I put you?” she said as she approached her wall and found a few pieces of paper covering another piece of paper. “Ah.”

She removed the tack from the paper underneath and re-tacked it off to the side so that she could check the list of names she’d researched before. Period-appropriate names helped people put themselves into the story. If she had a character named Madison or Addison on a 1930s farm, readers might laugh at her.

“Who are you kidding? That wouldn’t even make it past your editor.” She chuckled at her own joke.

She had a column for female names and one for male names. Abby picked up a scrap piece of notebook paper she had lying around and pinned it to the wall next to the list. Grabbing a black pen, she went through each name on the list, checking the feel of it in her mind, trying to match it with a farm girl or farm boy, and then she either wrote it down on the scrap piece of paper, or she didn’t. In the end, she had a list of eleven female and nine male first names. That would be enough to get her started there, but she also needed last names, too, so off she went to find the paper where she’d written a list of those.

Eventually, she had five surnames that would work, and she probably wouldn’t need all of them. She paired them with the bride, groom, and the woman whom she’d decided to make the best friend of the bride and not a relative, for obvious reasons, and she stood back to say them out loud to herself. She had to know how they would all sound when spoken. It was true that there would be author readings and an audiobook, but this was more for her than for either of those purposes.

“Harriet,” she said softly to herself.

It felt right to have the maid of honor’s name be Harriet. Abby didn’t understand why, but she liked how it rolled off her tongue. It actually made her smile.

“Deborah,” she said next.

She didn’t like that name as much for the bride, but for some reason, she didn’t want to change it, either. She’d never been a big fan of her own name but had no real reason not to be. Abigail was just a pretty standard name around these parts, and she’d had three other Abbys in her school class alone. She’d been Abby B. to help them know when people were talking to her. Deborah seemed pretty standard, too, and she knew she’d keep it, but there was something about it that felt pushed on her, which she couldn’t explain. It was as if someone had named her after someone else and hadn’t allowed her to have any nicknames.

“Your name is Deborah. Not Deb or Debbie. Why do you insist on making everything in this life, even your own name, so difficult?” she said to herself as one of her future characters.

And that was it. She understood part of the story now. So, Abby sat down at her desk, opened her laptop, and instead of outlining the book, she began with chapter one.