“Are you sure?”she asked, not a challenge, an outstretched palm.
“I’m sure.”I swallowed.“And then I’m going home.No more after this.”
“Then we go,” she said.
Brody wasn't enthusiastic about the added tour dates, but he understood and admitted his mom and brother were plague-level sick, and he was happy he could be home to help out his family.
The days and cities blurred until I was in yet another hotel bed, on my nightly call with Brody.He told me about Judy trying to evict him from the kitchen and about Dean’s resigned joy at finding the perfect frost cloth in the barn and about Adam, croaking, “I can run the pub via text,” from his couch like a tyrant quashing a rebellion.We laughed until my eyes watered.
“I cannot wait for you to come home,” he said.“Then I can have you in my arms again.”
“I can't wait,” I echoed, the room quiet around me, as I let Brody's voice soothe me.
Chapter 50
The second leg of the tour didn’t feel like survival anymore.It felt like movement, forward, steady, alive.Me.
Everywhere I went, there were faces.Crowds spilling into hallways, laughter threading through the air before events even began.People carried my book as if it were something breakable.Dog-eared pages, underlined sentences, sticky notes flagging favourite lines.They came to tell me about themselves, about what the story had cracked open.
In Ottawa, a woman in her sixties stood trembling as she told me she’d finally left a man who’d been dimming her light for thirty years.
In Chicago, a teenager whispered that she’d started therapy because of a line she’d highlighted in chapter nine.
In Detroit, a man came through with a copy worn so soft the cover bent backward, saying,“You helped my wife forgive herself.”
Every story left fingerprints.Each one stacked inside me until I could feel them like bricks, the foundation of something steadier than I’d ever had before.
Somewhere between Toronto and Boston, I realized I’d stopped feeling like an imposter.I wasn’t “the girl who wrote about her pain as a form of therapy” anymore.I was an author, one who’d given a voice to something people had been too afraid to name.
Marin stayed close as the venues grew, always half a step behind me, eyes sharp.The publisher had added extra security, which I didn’t argue with.Men in polos by the stage doors, another pacing the corridor.It was a precaution, they said.I knew it was more than that, but it didn’t scare me the way it used to.
“This is just routine,” one handler chirped in Chicago.“Biggest crowds yet!Great problem to have, Ms.Morgan.”
I smiled, nodded, and thought:Yeah, it is.
Because this was it, I was doing it.Living my dream.
Brody texted me every morning before I was even out of bed.Proud of you.You looked amazing on that livestream.You’re doing it, Cass.
Sometimes he sent photos, our maple tree turning a candy apple red, him and his dad in a field, the sun shining on dirt-streaked brows, but genuine happiness shone through the photo.Once, a picture of Jackson holding up a construction-paper heart that saidCome home soon, Aunt Cass.
He called when he could, voice warm and rough, always ending with“I love you.”
When I forgot to eat, which happened more than I wanted to admit...apparently, you had to pause from girlbossing too hard to eat, Marin’s phone would buzz with a message I knew was coming from Brody, again.Checking in.Has she eaten?Water?And within the hour, a knock would sound.Room service, or sometimes a courier with take-out from one of my favourite spots.In Ottawa, it was pho.In Halifax, a lobster roll from the café I’d gone to once with Clara and Mason and told him I had been craving but didn't know if I would have time to get to.He always picked right.
He didn’t hover; he anchored.He took care of me even from afar.
The messages from home poured in, too.
A selfie from Mom, surrounded by the book-club ladies at the local store, my novel in all their hands and pride in every wrinkle around their eyes.
A video from Clara’s café, she’d added a little shelf by the counter.My book lined up beside the muffins, a tiny chalkboard above it readingLocal Author — We’re so proud of you!
A text from Dad that just said,Your mother has a case of your books that she keeps in her car.She has been leaving them in those little outdoor libraries, and there may be a copy in every waiting room in town.
It all felt… solid.Like I’d built something real, and it was holding me now.
The schedule was relentless, but it no longer drained me.It fueled me.The signings blurred into cities, the hotel rooms into numbers, but the people, they stayed.I listened to their stories until my throat ached, laughed until I forgot the cameras.
