Page 43 of Gracie Harris Is Under Construction

“Gracie, be for real right now. That man is crazy about you. I think at our age you just realize things sooner when you meet someone special.”

A tentative grin crosses my face. I stop walking for a moment, knowing the waterfall is just a few minutes away and wanting—no, needing—to ask her something before we get there.

“Felicity, can I ask you a question? Like, a really big question?”

“Of course,” she says.

“Once this book wraps, who am I?” I ask her. “And I don’t just mean a few months from now when the manuscript is officially finalized. Who am I next year after the book tour? Who am I when the interviews stop? What purpose do I serve for anyone if I’m not the sad grief lady?”

More than one question. Quite a few, actually.

And now I’m tearing up, choking back my emotions as usual.

I’m sure the leg will start up any time now.

Felicity doesn’t know about that yet; it’s a few chapters beyond what she read yesterday.

I’m still not certain I’ll keep that chapter, but it did feel cathartic to write it.

Felicity doesn’t step closer, doesn’t move in for a hug. Like me, she’s not someone who comforts others with her physicality. Instead, she uses her words.

“Gracie, this book is going to be really important to people. It’s going to matter, and that alone is a legacy worth being proud of,” she tells me. “Don’t diminish what you’ve done with the book—or your column, for that matter—by calling yourself the grief lady. You are so much more than that.”

“Thanks,” I tell her, catching my breath. I turn to keep walking and she signals for me to stay.

“I would not have taken you on as a client if I thought you only had one book in you,” she tells me.

When the whirlwind after the essay was at its wildest, I met with five different potential literary agents.

She was the only one who asked me about my long-term interests, things that I might want to write about in the future, and what crazy dreams I had.

At that point, it had only been six weeks since Ben died.

Felicity was the first person who gave me an opportunity to imagine a new path for myself.

“You have a gift, Gracie,” she continues.

“You have a voice and a unique point of view that can’t be taught.

I think that you are going to write a lot of books.

We’ll sell some, we’ll shelve some—and that’s perfectly fine.

That’s how this all works. But I will believe in you every step of the way.

This can be your career—your only career.

You could write a dating self-help book next, and people would love it.

Or fiction. We have the momentum to take the next step that we want to take. ”

“Thanks for being my biggest fan, Felicity,” I tell her. “But maybe I will hold off on giving dating advice until I make sure I’ve got good material to share.”

Once again, I motion to continue down the path and she stops me.

“What else is on your mind?”

“Why do you ask? You seem to be able to read my mind just fine.”

“True,” she says with a knowing smile.

“A few minutes ago, you said that Josh is crazy about me.”

“Yes, obviously,” she says with a nervous laugh.

I turn my head and stare off into the maze of trees around us, closing my eyes for a brief moment to listen for the waterfall set to reward us just a bit farther down the path.

“When I was sixteen, we spent the summer in Maine with some family friends,” I start.

“I fell in love for the first time with this sweet guy, Marshall. Marshall from Maine. It was special in a lot of ways. He was my first and really important to me. At the end of the summer, I went to my cousin, who was home from college, for advice. I asked all the usual stuff—how do we make this work, what’s long distance like, is he going to break my heart?

She listened to me blather on for about ten minutes—kind of like you right now.

And then she looked at me and said, ‘Gracie, sometimes you just need to let summer be summer.’?”

I see Felicity’s usual neutral expression drop ever so slightly, like she’s about to be disappointed by what comes next.

“And she was right. Because as hard as it was to get on a plane at sixteen and feel my heart break into a million pieces, I still to this day think of that summer as pure magic. It was the summer I went from girl to woman, and it’s cocooned in this safe little box in my mind.

If I had tried to make it something more, I’m certain it would feel very different now.

We would have tarnished the shine, the magic. Do you understand what I mean?”

“I do and I get that, Gracie,” she begins. “But you’re not sixteen, and Josh does not look at you like it’s just for the summer—and you don’t look at him like that, either. There’s a naturalness to the way you two interact. It feels rooted, Gracie, not temporary. There’s so much potential there.”

“I know and I feel that, too, but what if I’m not really the person that this summer has allowed me to be?”

“Can I say something very honest to you as a friend, not your agent?”

I nod, sensing a seriousness that I haven’t yet seen in Felicity.

“Don’t make summer an excuse. Frankly, don’t make excuses at all.

I think you feel stuck because you aren’t letting yourself move on.

And yes, I know that’s a bullshit phrase, but you physically bristled when I said ‘I like the new Gracie’ yesterday—don’t think I was too drunk to notice.

You have to figure out who you are after this book and after this summer.

These two things are related, girl. And no one can tell you who you are meant to be.

You’ve got to figure that part out. It feels like there is still something holding you back. ”

“It’s strange to have time with my own thoughts,” I tell her. “It’s like I traded worrying about the kids with all this existential dread for myself. I think I prefer being a worried mom all the time.”

“Gracie, you had the top one percent shittiest midlife crisis possible,” she says, her facial expression soft again and pivoting us to our comfort zone of joking about disaster. “Cut yourself some slack, and let’s keep walking.”

A few minutes later, we emerge into the clearing with the waterfall. We quickly glance at each other and run around the waterfall and pool with childlike enthusiasm. Nature has washed away whatever seriousness we were carrying down the path a few minutes ago.

“I really needed a break like this,” Felicity says sincerely, grabbing my hand. “Thanks for the invite and thank you for writing a bestselling book. I’m so proud. You are going to figure this all out.”

—

Felicity insists that I don’t need to walk her into the airport, so I throw the blinkers on and illegally park in the lane for a minute so we can say our goodbyes.

“Two things I want to say before I leave you,” Felicity says. “First, you still need a prologue. Don’t forget that.”

I nod and tell her that when I deliver the final manuscript in a few weeks, both my version (which I haven’t written) and Jeannie’s requested version (which I need to write for the fourth time) will be in the mix.

“Second, you’ve got this. All of it,” she says, reiterating what she told me on our lunch date at the start of the summer.

“The next time I see you, it will be as an author who has formally submitted her very first manuscript,” I say to Felicity, making her light up at the thought.

We hug across the seats and she jumps out, ready to go back to her normal life while I try to figure out what in the hell is going on in my new one.