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“Hello to you, too,” Abby replied and sniffled again.

“Are you all right? Are you getting sick? Don’t get sick. You need to finish this damn book. It’s really good, Abby. So different than your last one, but I think this one is even better.”

“Better?” she asked.

“It’s so raw and real without being too depressing. I love how they end up. They’re happy and together, and they have their son. It’s great, Abby. Are you going to get me the rest of it anytime soon?”

“The rest of it?” Abby asked.

As she reached for a box of tissues on her desk, she thought about a time when Harriet had handed Deb a handkerchief. She was back in that moment then, but it quickly turned into a moment between Isabella and Maria. It was blurrier. She couldn’t see much. She could only tell it was them, and Isabella, still required to serve her wife in public, offered a handkerchief to Maria while they were at dinner with the rest of the nuns.

“Abby? Are you there?”

“What? Yes, I’m here. What did you say?”

“You’re not writing a novella, so where arethe rest of the pages? Are you still on track?”

“Oh,” she uttered. “Uh… You have all I’ve written so far.”

“I thought you would’ve made more progress by now,” Margo said.

“Yeah, I… got a little sidetracked.”

“Sidetracked with what?”

Abby wiped at her nose and replied, “Nothing. It’s fine now. I’ll get back to it.”

“Are you sure? You wrote this book very differently than your first. You have the ending done, but there’s not a lot of stuff in the middle. It’s just the main events, so you’ve got a lot to flesh out here.”

“I know. I will. I… I started working on my next one. That’s the thing I got sidetracked on.”

Why had she just said that?She smacked her forehead at the thought.

“I’m sorry… You haven’t finished the second one, but you’re writing the third?”

“Yes, I had an idea, so I ran with it. That’s good, right?”

“I guess so. But we still need the second book finished because we have to actually publish the thing.”

“I know. I’m on it. I can take a pause on the third one. I have some changes to make on the one I sent you, so I’ll get moving on those first and then get the rest of the story to you as soon as I can.”

“What do you need to fix? The editor hasn’t even gotten anything back to you yet.”

“Just a few things I don’t like. Nothing major. I’ll have the revised pages and the rest of the draft to you all by the deadline,” she said.

She needed to change the names of the very real people in her stories since she hadn’t known that Deb and Harriet had existed when she’d written the pages that she’d then sent to her publisher without thought. She’d also have to change the names in the newest story that she’d been working on and had just finished.

“I trust you, Abby, but are you sure you’re okay? You sound, I don’t know,sadright now. I thought you were sick or something, but were you crying?”

“I’m okay. I just wrote a difficult scene to get through, but I’m all good.”

“Okay. Well, I look forward to reading the rest of this book and the other one you’re, apparently, working on, too,” Margo said.

“I’m looking forward to getting everyone’s thoughts,” she replied.

They hung up, and she blew her nose into the Kleenex. She hadn’t meant to tell her publisher that she was already hard at work on another book. She wasn’t even sure that she could publish this one, too, given the topic of the second book. She supposed that they could be connected somehow; maybe as part of a series about women falling in love after discovering they were reincarnated. It would be a little close to home, though, and it wasn’t just her decision to make.

“Dinner! Shit!”