Page 4 of The English Bookstore in Bologna

Because when you’re about to kill yourself, you wonder who will find you and what shape your body will be in and how the experience might affect them. He’d studied and found that he’d likely empty his bladder and bowels. Rigor mortis would set in within two to six hours.

He’d decided the best course of action would be to preemptively call 911 and spare his housekeeper, who had a seven-year-old daughter, from finding him. That’s why he had his phone resting next to the coaster. One more handful, once he was past the point of no return, he’d make the call.

Sorry for the mess.

His eyes watered as he lifted the second handful to his mouth. He pushed the pills in, whispering apologies. His hands shook as he chased them with water. Killing yourself was awful business. Though it was dead quiet, he was screaming inside.

Ping.

His phone lit up with a text.

He was tempted not to look, not to get sidetracked.

But out of the corner of his eye, as the pills reached his belly, he saw that it was Bianca. He managed to find a way to feel even worse, dumping more guilt onto the depression that had filled his days after getting axed.

He reached for the phone and opened the message.

Hey Dad, letting you know I’m sticking an ARC (advance reader copy) of my book in the mail today. Don’t feel like you have to read it, but I wanted to share. Thirty-two years old, and I still want my dad to be proud of me.

A sigh escaped him as he set the phone back down. Perhaps it was psychosomatic, but he felt the rumble of the pills as they began to break up in his stomach.

Proud of her? Yeah, he was proud of her. How could he not be? She’d conquered the world! Grad school, starting her own business, building it up so successfully, and writing a book. In a world that was black and ugly, she was its one redeeming feature, the one light that never faded.

Guilt and shame poured over him, the gravity of what he was doing hitting even harder. He’d break her heart and brand her the daughter of a man who took his own life. Sure, she might understand, but she damn well might wrestle with it the rest of her life.

He shook his head, hearing his stomach gurgle. “What have I done?” he whispered, sadness sinking into his belly, caving in his chest. “What have I done?”

Chapter 2

The Scenic Road to Sanity

Slouched over, heart puttering like a car running on empty, Bianca Briggs let the newest one-star Amazon review of her first and definitely last book run through her, hacking away at her self-confidence, filling her with regret.

It was mid-April, and she was in the office of her psychotherapy practice in Austin. She corralled her thick, dark hair into a bun to get it out of the way; she’d let it back down before her next client.

Her agent had told her not to read reviews, so why was she doing this to herself? Because it was a grrrrreat way to start her workday. Because it was a degree more painful than self-flagellation.

Mostly, because she couldn’t help it, like watching the aftermath of her own head-on collision. Couldn’t readers keep their stupid opinions to themselves? Having put everything into what she now knew was her failed attempt at a contribution to the self-development genre, she was in a perpetual state of shock from the angry reception and lackluster sales.

She should have stayed in her lane and been satisfied with the successful psychotherapy practice that she’d created in the last seven years here in Austin. Why on earth had she thought that she needed more, that she needed to be the next Mel Robbins or Dr. Nicole LePera?

How could people be so mean, so evil? If she could speak to each person who’d torn her apart in the two weeks since release, she’d say, “If you only knew how much love and thought and care I put into what feels like a baby to me; if you only knew how much self-doubt I waded through, you wouldn’t write such hateful things. I was just trying to help people.”

As if taking another step on hot coals, she read the one-star review again.

By the time I gave up on From Meh to Megawatt: Supercharge Your Life, I’d found myself in such a panic that I had to crush up and snort a Xanax. There is such a thing as over-self-actualizing. Who has the time to do everything the author prescribes? She definitely doesn’t have children. I’m exhausted even typing this. Don’t even get me started on the cheesiness of the Peggy Meh character. What am I? Four?

Each review came with its own accented voice; this one was the rant of a witchy British schoolteacher with a hairy wart on her nose. And obviously a girthy broom rammed up her saggy tush.

Bianca thought she would have gotten used to it by now, but each bad review cut deeper than the last. Why? Oh, she knew why.

Because the motherfucking witch was right.

So many of the one- and two-star reviews were right. Using an uber-flawed, anonymized client named Peggy Meh as the device for sharing Bianca’s methods had been a terrible idea. And there probably was too much information, an overprescription of holistic garbage, as another had put it. Not everyone could keep up with Bianca’s pace. Three days ago, she’d said to her mother, “If you want to tear open your wounds and expose your flaws, there is no better way than to write a book.”

Only in the last few days—with the help of an army of insensitive, albeit accurate, psychopaths—er, reviewers—had she woken from this ten-year trance to realize the truth. She’d become exactly the person she didn’t want to be: a rabid go-getter like her father, always attempting to do more. She never should have let herself think she had what it took to become an author.

Bianca set her phone down and picked up the framed photograph she’d asked her mom to send from Palm Springs. It had come in yesterday’s mail and had kept Bianca up all night. As she looked at it for the hundredth time, she thought, I dare you, Bianca.