“Wow,” I say. “Was it expensive?”
“Yes,” she says. “But it was fair. And Angeline, the author, she was so happy. Once the contract was signed, she fell into her agent’s arms crying. It was a huge moment for all of us.”
I nod, picturing it, three dedicated women knowing they were about to bring something wonderful into the world. It seems like a good thing to me. But I also know that this particular story doesn’t have a happy ending—at least not for Taylor.
“I was so happy,” she says. “It was an unorthodoxchoice, but I justknewit was going to hit right with readers.”
I brace myself for whatever is coming next.
“When my boss got back and saw what I’d bought and how much I’d spent, he was furious,” she says, shaking her head. “And the rest of the office was in stitches that I’d bought the biggest stinker at the fair. It was bad enough to get laughed at, but when he called me back to his office, he just looked betrayed.”
Her eyes are haunted now as she speaks. Publishing contracts and space unicorns might seem unimportant to a lot of people, but this was Taylor’s whole world, and I can feel her pain in every word.
“He said I might have ruined the company,” she goes on flatly. “He said they could have gotten ebook and paperback rights on three commercial manuscripts for what I’d spent on that one unproven piece, and that he’d trusted me to have Wish Tree’s best interests in mind.”
“Oh, Taylor,” I say, wishing I could take away the pain she must feel just remembering.
“And then he let me go, of course,” she says. “But he said he’d probably be letting everyone go soon, since there was no way he could recoup what I spent onStarhoof, let alone make enough profit to pay the bills.”
“That sounds kind of extreme,” I offer.
“He’s right,” she tells me. “I swung too hard. There’s a reason those fairytale romances with the girls in pretty dresses do so well. Everyone lovesthem. Who would love a story about unicorns in space?”
“I guess you’ll find out,” I say, nodding to her phone.
“Oh,” she says. “Right. Well, they aren’t putting anything into it—no advertising, no asking other genre authors to read it and say nice things, no blog tours, no radio ads, nothing. Angeline is a debut author, so she has no existing audience to tap. It’s just been dumped online with millions of other books. The cover isn’t even that good.”
She holds up her phone to show me the blandest looking cover I’ve ever seen. It’s pale blue with slightly less pale blue font. It looks more like a 1950s cookbook than a young adult adventure.
Taylor’s face is so sad—it’s like she can’t decide which to feel worse about, the author whose work is about to be buried under a million other books, or the company she clearly loves that she thinks she ruined.
“I’m sorry, Taylor,” I tell her. “For you, for the author, for your boss. He should have let you pitch the book.”
“He trusted me,” she says, shaking her head. “And I betrayed that trust. I knew it was an unusual choice. I should have insisted that he call me back. But… I was afraid someone else would buy those rights while I argued with him.”
She chuckles now at the idea that anyone else would have bought the book she loves so much, buther smile is bitter. I hate the idea of any kind of bitterness in this young woman who approaches everything with an open heart.
“Taylor, if you believed in that book, it has to be a good one,” I tell her firmly. “Whether it’s a commercial hit or not, isn’t it good that it’s out there for readers to find?”
She nods slowly, but she doesn’t look entirely convinced. And I don’t know what else to say.
“Anyway,” she says, wiping the tears from her cheeks and shaking her head as if to clear it. “Now you know everything. I’m the kind of person who can have her dream right in the palm of her hand and throw it away. I lost the trust of the person who believed in me most. And I guess I’ve lost trust in myself too.”
“I’ve done the same,” I say without thinking about it.
Her eyes meet mine and she leans toward me, her own troubles forgotten.
“How?” she asks me. “When?”
“I’m not a complicated man,” I tell her.
She looks like she’s going to smile at that, though I have no idea why.
“All I ever wanted was to grow trees and have a family,” I tell her. “I was born into the farm and I knew Erica all my life. We made a few mistakes, and Meg came along before we really meant her to. But that was just fine by me—marrying young and getting started on a family right away was all I’d ever wanted.”
Taylor nods, looking like she gets it. That’s a funny attitude for a city girl whose whole world was her career. But Taylor’s nothing if not sympathetic. Maybe it’s from reading all those books.
“Anyway, I thought things had fallen into place,” I go on. “And when Erica talked about wanting to leave Angel Mountain, see the world, andhave a life,I figured it was a pipe dream. I actually started setting aside a little something whenever I could—figured I’d take her on a vacation when I had enough. Mom and Dad would have watched Meg…”
