“Influence,” she repeats.
“How much do you edit? Do you start when he thinks of an idea?” he asks. “I want to hear everything.”
She sits gingerly on one of the chairs on the deck and places her hands on her knees. “Miguel, I think you should sit down.”
“What is it? Are you all right? Should I bring you something to drink?” he asks, taking the chair beside her.
“No, it’s not that. I…think there’s been a misunderstanding.”
He leans toward her, concerned. “How so? What can I do to help?”
“I didn’t edit the story you just read.” In a near-whisper, she says, “Iwrote it.”
He pulls his head back almost violently. “I don’t understand.”
“When you just said you knew it was me, I thought you meant you knew I’d written the story, andMissing Person.Honestly, I assumed you’d known since we talked about literature at my house. It felt like you were peering right into my heart and were only waiting for me to find the courage to reveal it to you.”
“No—I—I don’t get it,” he says haltingly. “YouwroteMissing Person? Did you writeI, Edward,too? AndThe Way We Weren’t?”
“Yes. I mean, it’s complicated.” She’s gripping her hands together tightly. “Missing Personis the book of my soul, but Jon has a remarkable memory, and he helped me with the details because I forgot a lot of what happened, probably from the trauma. In that way, he practically wrote it with me.”
Miguel looks as though he’s awoken from a deep sleep and is having trouble telling what’s a dream and what’s reality. I’m starting to feel a wee bit dizzy myself. What happened to the tingles, to their connection? They should be professing their love right now—not confessing that they’ve completely miscalculated each other.
He stands from his chair and takes a step away from her. “Who knows about this?”
“You’re the first person I’ve told,” she says. “Vik knew fromthe start—he’d pushed Jon to give up the charade so they could enjoy their life together without constantly being under a microscope. Yet I’ve never breathed a word of this to anyone. It’s an incredible relief to say it aloud.”
But she doesn’t look relieved. And it’s probably because his face is twisted up in pain.
He curses quietly in Spanish. “I always wondered how a twenty-two-year-old could have possibly writtenMissing Person.The answer is, he couldn’t—and he didn’t. Why didn’t you tell me when I told you about my parents, and how much that story meant to me?”
“I tried to,” she says, wincing. Why isn’t he consoling her like he did when she told him she hadn’t been taken seriously, or at least touching her to tell her it’s going to be all right? “I’ve been trying to summon the courage nearly every time we’ve been together. I was just…afraid.”
“The girl doesn’t know, then,” he says plainly.
Fiona lowers her head momentarily. “Amelia Mae is quite clever, as you’ve probably gathered. Now that she’s older, it’s clear she has her suspicions. Jon and I were going to tell her together, but then…he left.”
“Is that why your brother ran off to Europe? Because he didn’t want to fess up?” He rubs his forehead and doesn’t wait for an answer. “And is that why you wanted to write the bookstore a check—because it’s reallyyourmoney? After all, you’re the one who built JMB’s entire legacy, and your brother’s the front man. No wonder you read the article I wrote.”
“Miguel, neither Jon nor I wanted to keep this up. We had no idea that it would come to this. But you don’t know what it was like for us,” she says with newfound urgency. “My ex-husband ran off the minute he found out I was pregnant withAmelia Mae. A few months later, my employer pink-slipped me because they thought I couldn’t do the type of reporting I’d been doing if I was expecting or worrying about childcare—they actually said that, though of course they didn’t put it in writing, so I couldn’t sue them. I had bills to pay and a young child to care for. Jon helped me with Amelia Mae when I could barely look after myself, let alone an infant. Really, he nearly saved our lives. But he was working at Burger King at night and studying during the day, and we desperately needed money. The manuscript I’d written a few years earlier was just sitting in a drawer, and even though it had been rejected by dozens of literary agents, I knew in my soul it was good. Really good. Except no one would give me the time of day.”
Miguel exhales loudly, waiting for her to finish.
“So, I made the protagonist male and gave him a sister instead of a brother. Then I asked Jon if I could use his name, since it was really his story, too—after all, we’d lived through it together, and he’d supplied so many of the specifics that my mind refused to remember. When the first few queries didn’t get a response, I mailed a photo of him with the next letters I sent to literary agents, knowing that his youth and good looks would be the foot in the door we needed to get someone to read the whole manuscript and see its potential. I doubt we could’ve gotten away with it now, but it worked then. Ten days later, he’d signed with Bunny, and a week after that, boom—afive-way auction for the manuscript that I’d repeatedly been told ‘lacks imagination’ and ‘isn’t salable,’ ” says Fiona, making little motions in the air with her fingers. “That’s not even including the foreign rights and then all the film stuff and the prizes.Nowdo you get it? We were both broke and beatendown, and just hoping to survive and give Amelia Mae a good life, Miguel. But…”
“One book turned into three,” he says quietly.
“Yes,” she concedes. “I’d call it golden handcuffs, but after a while, I began to recover from my ex leaving and the depression I’d experienced over him and losing my job and what felt like everything else. I finally had the time and money to write fiction, as I’d always wanted to. Truly, I don’t know if I could have stopped if I’d tried. But over the past couple years, Jon has been convinced we were on the verge of being found out because so much is on the internet. My poor brother, who wants nothing more than to be left alone, has entire AOL chat boards dedicated to him!”
Miguel grimaces, but he still doesn’t go to her.
Fiona continues. “He panicked, and thenIfreaked out when I realized what this could cost us—which led to a year of writer’s block. I haven’t been able to write…until you showed up at his door. Then it was like the floodgates had opened back up. I can’t tell you how much that means to me. I feel like myself again, when I haven’t in the longest time. Was I incorrect in thinking that maybe you did, too?”
Miguel says nothing now.
“I’m truly sorry you feel deceived,” she tells him. “That’s the last thing I wanted.”
“Thank you.” He squeezes his lids closed. “But why did you call me and offer to have Jonathan do an event at Lakeside?”
