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“What do you know about farm life in the 30s?”

Abby thought about that for a moment, and while she couldn’t say she’d been a farmer in the 1930s, she felt pretty comfortable with her farm knowledge and with her 1930s American knowledge.

“My dad was a farmer. My grandpa was a farmer. His father, my great-grandfather, started the farm they would both work on. My dad sold it when me and my siblings had no interest in working on it ourselves, but I technically grew up on a farm about twenty minutes away from here. They sold it when I was fifteen, but before that, I milked cows, fed pigs, and picked up eggs every day, having to wake up around five in the morning to do it all. That’s pretty normal for people out here, though.”

“God, that sounds horrible. When I wake up at five in the morning, it better be because I’m about to have mind-blowing morning sex.”

Abby laughed and said, “Well, I can agree to that.”

“Can you still stick to your deadline, or do we need to push?”

“Can I let you know? Once I have the outline done and start working, I’ll know more. If the words don’t flow how I think they will, I’ll probably have to push.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to everyone I need to talk to here, then. I want to chat specifically with our romance department. This is a different genre, so I want to check their schedule and see when they have room for you. It’s possible that we’ll have to push either way, but you still need to focus on hitting that deadline and getting it to the editor because you’ve never written romance before, and it might need major rewrites.”

“Thanks for your vote of confidence,” she joked.

“Hey, I’ve worked with some of the most well-known authors, and if you ever want to have a laugh, ask me to tell you how many complete overhauls we had to get them to do with their books before they were ready to publish. Over drinks when you come to New York next?”

“Sure,” Abby replied.

“I know you don’t like it here – it’s too busy for you –and we can do everything remotely now, but you really should give this city another chance. It has its downsides, yeah, but it’s also pretty magical at the same time.”

“I’m starting to think that there’s a reason I came back home, and I’m getting a real magical vibe here, too.”

“Magical? Your romance is not going to havemagicin it, is it? That’s a whole other thing, Abby.”

Abby chuckled and said, “No, no actual magic. I just… I had a really good day today. That’s all. The reasons I left here, to begin with, turned out to be the reasons I came back home.”

“Well, the offer to go to drinks when you’re here next still stands.”

“I know. Thanks,” she replied. “Now, I should get back to it. I’ve been staring at the picture for hours, and I think I’m ready to start fleshing out my outline.”

“I’ll let you go, then. Keep me posted, okay?”

“I will.”

After they hung up, Abby remained on her sofa, staring down at the picture. She’d noticed the bracelet on the bride’s wrist first and hadn’t thought anything of it, but when she’d been scanning the other woman again, for at least the hundredth time, she’d caught something in the faded, black-and-white image. The woman in the back was wearing a bracelet, too, and it looked the same as the one on the bride’s wrist.

It was then that Abby had gone from studying the maid of honor’s face to the groom’s. Not knowing the situation surrounding this marriage but knowing enough of the time period and how women were still treated in the 30s, she guessed by their reactions that it wasn’t a marriage of love or even convenience. The groom looked pensive, like he was told to stand tall and look manly, so that was what he was doing. All three people in the picture were young, in their early twenties, at most, but Abby had always been terrible at guessing people’s ages.

The bride, when she took a closer look at her, didn’t look happy, either. Her smile was straight-lined and forced.She wasn’t holding her new husband’s hand, nor did he have an arm around her shoulders. They were pressed together at their sides more than anything. This looked more and more like an arranged marriage between two farmers who had kids around the same age and decided to put them together so that the farms or ranches would stay in the families. If there was no male heir for the bride’s family’s farm, the man she’d just married would eventually own that one, too, but she’d done her job by marrying him. She’d pop out several little kids, the future grandparents would all pray for boys, and she’d work in the kitchen, raise the kids, and follow her husband’s lead.

“Fuck that,” Abby said to herself.

Not in her version of the story. She rose from the sofa, carried the photo and her glass of cheap red wine into her office, which wasn’t exactly neat or organized, and set the wine down on her desk. She didn’t want to damage the photo, so she wouldn’t pin it to her wall where she pinned other things for her work. Instead, she set it on the table by her loveseat, which lined the wall opposite where she hung pieces of paper and Post-it notes she’d scribbled on along with paint swatches of colors she liked and wanted to use in stories. Over time, the wall had become her own real-life Pinterest board. Most authors used technology to plan and outline, but Abby had always preferred to go old-school. She still typed some things out, but other things, she needed to see right in front of her face. She needed to feel them with her fingers, press them to the wall and into existence, for them to feel real to her at all.

“Okay. I need names.”

She always started with names. It helped her begin to imagine the characters who had them. She needed at least three, for the two women and the man in the image, but she’d also need a lot of side characters’ names, probably the men who worked on the farm, the moms and the dads of the bride and groom, and a few extra to have on hand so that coming up with another name didn’t stop her in her tracks later when she was writing.

“Where did I put you?” she said as she approached herwall and found a few pieces of paper covering another piece of paper. “Ah.”

She removed the tack from the paper underneath and re-tacked it off to the side so that she could check the list of names she’d researched before. Period-appropriate names helped people put themselves into the story. If she had a character named Madison or Addison on a 1930s farm, readers might laugh at her.

“Who are you kidding? That wouldn’t even make it past your editor.” She chuckled at her own joke.

She had a column for female names and one for male names. Abby picked up a scrap piece of notebook paper she had lying around and pinned it to the wall next to the list. Grabbing a black pen, she went through each name on the list, checking the feel of it in her mind, trying to match it with a farm girl or farm boy, and then she either wrote it down on the scrap piece of paper, or she didn’t. In the end, she had a list of eleven female and nine male first names. That would be enough to get her started there, but she also needed last names, too, so off she went to find the paper where she’d written a list of those.