Madeline wrote her a mantra to make her brave. A mantra, not a story, for she didn’t need twists and turns, fairy tales. She needed simple truths.
The purple book was seven pages long. Each page had one sentence on it.
You are a lioness.
You are an Amazon.
You are a queen.
You are all the Greek goddesses combined, and the Roman ones too.
You are courage.
You are love.
You are the only one who gets to be you.
“It was the only time I wrote anything short enough that the client could read it in front of me. She cried when she finished it. After that I never heard from her again.”
Alice typed Dee Raymond’s name into her phone, found no profiles on social media, no bios on LinkedIn. No pictures on the boards of nonprofits, inclusions on galleries or museum exhibitions. No death records, divorce or marriage certificates. Dee was a ghost.
“She worked part-time at her sister’s diner. The name of it was a gemstone. Diamond’s Diner. Or Emerald? Everyone assumed it was named for the owner, but it was really her dog.”
“Ruby’s Diner?” Alice guessed, not expecting to be right.
Madeline snapped. “That’s the one.”
Alice tucked the book under her arm. “Lucky for you, I know it well.” Alice’s father often took her there after school. They had the best egg creams, her father’s favorite.
“You could put some of your writing proceeds toward something a little more modern,” Madeline said as she climbed into Alice’s passenger seat. Since that first trip to Abigail Herkowitz’s, Alice had not let her drive again.
“I like my car,” Alice said, putting her car into Drive.
“And do your clients like it? Haven’t you learned the value of appearance?”
“Anyone who would judge me by my car is both a bad judge of character and not someone I’d want to work with.”
“Fair enough.”
Alice took each curve along Stagecoach Road slowly. They drove beneath the highway bridge until Cold Spring Tavern was upon them. Alice clutched the wheel. That familiar tightness took hold in her chest. She focused on deep breaths until the tavern was out of view.
“Why do you do that?” Madeline asked when they stopped at the intersection with 154, waiting for a break in traffic.
“Do what?”
Madeline gave a tiny yelp. “That noise, each time we drive by the tavern.”
“Do I?” Alice said, merging onto the highway. She pressed down on the gas pedal, and the old beast flew.
“Every time. Didn’t you say you used to come up here with your father?”
“Every Sunday,” Alice reminded her. As soon as her mind returned to those afternoons, something released in her chest and she found herself wanting to tell Madeline more about her father and their trips to Cold Spring Tavern, the time he saved a child from falling onto the open grill, how he’d bounded on stage uninvited to sing with the band. Somehow he always won them over, even though he had at best an average singing voice. She told Madeline about their biker family of mechanics, dentists, chemistry teachers, and pharmacists, their secret society of Sunday afternoon riders. To Alice’s knowledge, her father never spoke to any of them except at those outings, yet he considered them some of his closest friends. They had not attended his funeral. When her father died, Alice had no way of contacting them. Bobby had not known they existed.
“So why do you treat it like a graveyard?” Madeline asked. “If it’s a vestige of happy memories, why do you hold your breath whenever you pass?”
“It scares me, I guess,” Alice admitted.
“Happy memories shouldn’t scare you. They are all we have.” Madeline surveyed the ocean view below them, perhaps getting lost in her own happy memories.
