I log out of my email, close my laptop, pull out one of my new stationery pages and a black fountain pen, and begin a furious response to Brad.
A soft rap on my door, and my department chair, Patrick, enters, steam wafting from the top of his Edgar Allan Poe mug.
“Letters only?”
“This first one is going to Brad McGregor.”
“He’s theworst.” Patrick groans and takes a sip of coffee as he slumps in the worn leather armchair opposite my desk. “I hadhim in American lit last semester. He came to class smelling like weed, called Edith Wharton a frigid old spinster, and I’m pretty sure he slept with my TA.”
I see red as I stare down at my angry letter.
Patrick’s quiet. Although my age, thirty-nine, he sports a graying beard. He strokes it for a few seconds as he considers me worriedly. He’s trying not to look at my new black blouse with ruffled wrist sleeves and black pencil skirt. Imighthave gone on a widow shopping spree for black clothes in the days after Philip’s death. Patrick doesn’t need to know about the small silver bird keepsake urn containing Philip’s ashes in my leather satchel. That might make me too peculiar.
He clears his throat awkwardly and gazes into his coffee.
“You doing okay, Lizzie? I mean... I know you’re just back from leave, but you can take more time...”
I wave my hand dismissively. “Everything will be worse if I don’t work. It will be all-day pajamas, and tears, and bingeingOutlanderepisodes.”
“Well, if there’s anything I can do for you—watch Heathcliff, send takeout... If there’s anything I can do to lighten your load, just let me know. I’ve already taken you off the Curriculum Management Committee and the Committee Oversight Committee.”
“Thanks,” I mutter, bewildered, as always, at how my studies of Brontë and Dickens novels prepared me for such gripping daily tasks.
I shift the topic away from me and my ongoing sadness. “Did you have your meeting with the provost today?”
He gives me the dismal summary of this month’s meeting.
Each monthly provost report becomes a little more doomsday than the one before, and the jumpy junior faculty start sending out résumés to community colleges and local high schools. In our department, we just lost a fairly new full-time hire toa neighboring new technical school. (Teaching business writing is more lucrative...she’d said. I had no counterargument.) Now the tiny English department is just me, Patrick, a small army of adjuncts, and our MAGA-supporting administrative assistant, Sandra. (Every time I pass her desk, I try not to look at the framed illustration of Jesus sitting on a bench by the White House.)
“But it looks like Willoughby will stay open for at least another year?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Let’s just say I’m keeping my résumé updated.” He glances up at Everett Dane’s searing blue eyes. “You, on the other hand, will have plenty of options should the ship sink.”
It’s true. AlthoughThe Heathcliff Sagahadn’t exactly made me rich, as the only faculty member to appear inPeoplemagazine, I’m a reluctant darling to a struggling institution. And plenty of other schools will take me if we close.
After he leaves, I finish penning my letter to Brad. I worry it’s a bit too harsh, so I slip it into my bag.
I can always revise later.
I take a late lunch outside, numb after the latest Fiscal Oversight Committee meeting, where the provost announced proudly that she was siphoning off 90 percent of the humanities department budgets for an Admissions Advancement Task Force. Her lipstick-rimmed Cheshire-cat grin stretched wider, looking directly at me as she said it. Everyone waited breathlessly for me, the committee chair, to retort. Instead, in front of all thirty faculty and ten administrators, I pulled my favorite lavender-scented ChapStick from my sweater pocket next to Philip’s miniature keepsake bird urn. I applied it thoroughly and carefully amid the silence, snapped the cap back on, and said nothing just to show how few fucks I give anymore.
Alone, in the campus garden, I sit on a mossy stone bench in the shade of an oak. Bees hum loudly through the blue flagirises and bulblike pink blossoms of the small magnolia near me. I open my Tupperware dish of macaroni casserole. As a Midwest transplant, I’m always amazed at Southerners’ culinary zest for the grieving. I have about twelve macaroni casseroles and five lasagnas in my freezer. Heathcliff can’t digest dairy, so I’ll be eating these myself in the forthcoming weeks.
Even in the shade, my armpits sweat in this Carolina May heat. Still, I’d choose this over my windowless office any day. Through the garden gate, I see Bill Rhodes storming into the administration building—no doubt to unload on the president about me and Patrick. I can’t care. No one will ever option film rights for his latest book—Metaphysical Intellectualism in Neoclassical England.
Last fall was such a bright star for me whenThe Heathcliff Sagafilm premiered and my book spent several weeks on theNew York Timesbestseller list. Writing that book six years ago, postpartum, kept me sane. I gave everyone A’s that semester. With the hormone shifts, lack of sleep each night, and an insatiable Heathcliff hanging off my breast, I’d escape into my alternativeWuthering Heightsworld. In my book, Emily Brontë’s love-triangled teenagers learn that Heathcliff inherited warlock powers from a distant Yorkshire ancestor. My Linwood is less milquetoast than the original character. He bastardizes ancient Fae supernatural powers from the moorlands and starts a spell war with Heathcliff. Cathy, caught in the middle, asks Nelly Dean to train her in the supernatural arts. She teams up with Heathcliff, helping him purge Linwood’s magical darkness for good. There’s lots of teen angst, desperate kissing, and disengaged parents. The adults churn butter and argue with no idea their teens could destroy Great Britain with their dark fairy-arts war.
My literary agent, Sarah, took me on and sold the book in two days. I loved my editor, my only complaint being that hewanted to change the title fromThe Cathy SagatoThe Heathcliff Saga.I groused. After all, I wanted my heroine to be the book’s star. But he said “Cathy” wasn’t distinct enough—it sounded like the comic-strip character—and he wanted my Heathcliff to be the new Edward Cullen.
Then I thought about my forthcoming advance check and gave in.
The timing couldn’t have been better. Over the next few years, film rights sold, then foreign rights in Spain, Germany, and Japan. By the time the movie came out last year and I had my red-carpet moment, Willoughby’s president offered me immediate tenure and a promotion.
Putting the lid on my Tupperware, I scroll fondly through my Instagram page. Thanks to the movie, I have about 100,000 followers, and I pick up a few hundred more every time one of the stars tags me. My last Instagram post was a repost of Everett Dane’s pic of him hugging me at the premiere after-party: “Love this woman!Brainiest person I’ve ever known.”
I’m suddenly back in that moment, slight champagne buzz, surrounded by the glamorous and Botoxed. I wore a rented teal Vera Wang and teetered on strappy gold Jimmy Choos; I was in this young British heartthrob’s arms, and yet I locked eyes with Philip, standing just beyond the photo’s edge. With his soft, sandy blond hair and glasses, my shy lawyer husband never seemed more mine than in that moment. He wasn’t a crier—ever. It’s a weird Southern guy thing. But his eyes shone happy tears. There was no professional or personal jealousy there; it was pure celebration of me, ofus—of how profoundly lucky we were to have each other and that moment.
My phone dings.
