Page 4

Story: The Page Turner

Chapter Four

GiGi used to tell me she always heard a profound silence at the end of a great sentence.

“That period is almost like the final note a symphony plays. It hangs in the air for the longest time, slowly fading away, and yet you can still feel that reverberation even in the silence,” she said. “That period is not just perfunctory punctuation. It serves as a visual stopping point to consider what has come before and what is yet to come. We need such stopping moments in both life and writing, and yet we treat a simple period as if it’s nothing special at all.”

I open my eyes.

It is dawn, and the waking world’s orchestra echoes.

The locusts in the trees buzz, the tree frogs groan, cicadas moan, the dune grass whispers and the cottage creaks in the breeze.

These are sounds of a South Haven summer.

The sounds of a stopping moment that don’t come often enough in life.

My parents love great writing. They admire the perfect setting. But I have a feeling—as clear and concise as the perfect ending to a book—that they are more and more willing to close this particular chapter on their lives.

They have been spending more and more time in the Hamptons. I overheard a guest say last night that my father’s event was a “goodbye party” to Michigan. I thought he was speaking to my father’s busy schedule, or being overtly literal in reference to my father’s novel, but my gut tells me otherwise.

I think of Marcus.

My gut is rarely wrong.

Between Marcus, Jess and my growing uncertainty about the stability of The Mighty Pages, I tossed and turned all night long even after a few drinks.

I sit up in bed.

The silence is very, very loud now that the guests have gone and the cottage can speak again and be heard.

It needs to be heard.

I glance at the clock: 6:17 a.m.

The old stereotype that college kids stay up all night drinking and then sleep until noon is largely a myth. Yes, we have our fun, yes, I have a bit of a hangover, but there is great pressure of going to a great school and, well, doing great in life. There is great pressure in trying to make a mark in a family that expects greatness.

In reality, I—like so many of my peers—am used to staying up late only to cram and study, waking at dawn for classes or internships and using my hours wisely so that I can land the best possible job out of college.

Please our parents. Impress the world. Make tons of money. Pay off those student loans.

Life is filled with—to pardon the obvious pun—many chapters and many periods. Some chapters are short, some are long, but there is always a period.

I am in the middle of a profound silence right now, caught between college and real life, the family I have and the one I created in college, my present and my future which sits before me like the horizon, so close and yet so far away.

I reach my hand out to touch the air.

I have job interviews lined up, including one with my parents.

But I don’t know yet if I want any of them. I realize that I am blessed, spoiled, entitled—#NepoBaby—whatever you wish to call it, but I simply want to make the right decision with the next step in my life. I feel as if my entire life, like so many of my peers, has been plotted out for me until now: the right private school, the right college, the right graduate school, the right internships, the right job, the right husband, the right house. Some were predetermined to be an attorney or a doctor before they even learned to jump rope.

Whatever happened to the right fit?

Gin’s parents are both doctors. Juice’s father works on Wall Street.

Gin infuriated her family when she majored in journalism.

“We didn’t spend a fortune on your education so you could grow up to be poor!” I heard her father yell over her cell one night.

But she wants to better the world.

Juice followed in her father’s footsteps, no questions asked. Is she happy? I don’t truly think so, but she believes money is power in America, and she wants to live her life on her own terms, even outside of her father’s influence.

This is why I never shared with my parents that I am writing a book. I still marvel at the power it took Mamie Gummer, Meryl Streep’s daughter, to say, “Hey, Mom, I want to act, too.”

I know my parents wouldn’t just hate the type of book I’m writing, they would utterly dismiss it as if it didn’t exist.

And I don’t know if I have the strength to endure that type of silence.

I reach over and grab my cell. Although it’s early, I know Gin and Juice are not only awake but also likely headed to or at work.

How’s the real world?

Gin is the first to respond.

Like college. But with money. And Southern men. Who have money. And act like fraternity boys. It’s like living in the reality show Southern Charm.

LOL! I respond.

Juice chimes in.

Like college. But with money. And New York men who act like Roman emperors who just got out of a fraternity. It’s like living in a movie version of Wall Street and Caligula.

I lower my head into my hands and laugh like I haven’t since we said goodbye.

How’s life in Michigan? Juice asks.

How was your father’s book launch? Gin follows.

Let me sum it up this way: I think Marcus Flare—the famous author—was either trying to hit on me or take possession of my soul. Both options were super creepy.

A string of laughing emojis fills my phone.

When they stop, Gin texts: The world is a never-ending college exam. A constant Bechdel Test.

Remember why you’re there , Juice adds. You are a writer. Shut out all the noise! WRITE!

I send a row of hearts and final note: MISS YOU! LOVE YOU!

They thumbs-up my text, and my cell goes quiet.

I grab my laptop from the designer nightstand. I joke that my mother should have renamed me and Jess Serena now their dream had been reduced to a profit-and-loss statement drenched in red.

And that’s when I began to doubt that I had a golden key inside of me.

My entire life I’ve seen the rejection that authors experience. It is a battering tide. And publishing is undergoing a sea change: shrinking sales for most authors, domination by a few, booksellers holding less inventory, publicity coverage shrinking.

Moreover, I’ve been told my entire life by friends and teachers that, while writing is a nice hobby, a career it does not make.

“Get a real job, make real money,” my college classmates told me.

But what if that real job doesn’t make you happy?

Won’t you end up with a very unhappy ending at some point in the not-too-distant future?

And let’s be honest: Where would my parents be right now without having used and leveraged my grandmother’s money? Unpublished authors living in an apartment somewhere? Working odd jobs to finish that next manuscript?

I don’t want success handed to me as a gift from my parents. I don’t want to be a nepo baby. I want my accomplishments to be my own. I want my book to make its way in the world on its own merits. Otherwise, how will I ever know if I’m any good? I want to earn it. I’ve spent the last four years writing it.

And now?

I’m pushing commas and periods around.

I read the opening to my novel, “The Summer of Seagulls,” for the millionth time.

The first word I said as a child was not Ma or Da, but Sis.

My sister had been my best friend since I opened my eyes and saw her beaming upon me.

“I finally have a sister.”

You might not believe me, but I can still hear Mia’s voice saying that to me when I was but a few days old. It’s the first moment that Mia—hovering above me like the mobile of books my parents placed over my crib—became my entire world.

But that’s the thing about memories and sisters: we distort and rewrite them until they become what we need them to be in order to survive.

I shut my eyes after the final period.

I hear…

Profound silence.

I hear…

The judgment of my parents.

We gave our daughter every academic advantage to write a silly novel? A book filled with sentimentality and a happy ending? Hell has certainly frozen over.

I open my eyes. The light from the lake glints into the bedroom. It moves and shape-shifts on the comforter, walls and ceiling. I think of GiGi dancing by the lake.

Guide me, Grandma.

I shut the laptop, ease out of bed in and into a pair of shorts and a Michigan sweatshirt. I slip on my Vionic terry cloth slippers that feel like a cloud, hit the bathroom, and then search through the piles of books stacked on the shelves and floor of my room. I need a distraction from my own work. And there is only one place to turn: my grandma’s favorite author, S. I. Quaeris.

I’ve squirreled away hundreds of books in my room, nearly all summer novels with pretty beach covers, romance novels, so my parents wouldn’t have a truck come and haul the rest of them away to the local Goodwill.

“Romance novels,” my parents always say in that tone they also use to utter “Hallmark movie” or “What do you mean you’re all out of the sea bass?”

I grab a book I haven’t read titled Summer’s Promise and tiptoe out of my room and down the stairs, navigating them in a snaking pattern to avoid the ones that shudder and moan if I step on them.

The kitchen is at the back of the cottage, with wide windows above the sink and counters overlooking the lake. It’s a hearth room kitchen with an old fireplace made of lake stones, blackened from years of roaring fires on cold days. Shelves filled with cookbooks flank the fireplace. Pots and pans hang from a large rack above the island. GiGi’s beloved blue Spode plates—mimicking the color of the lake—are displayed on the walls. My parents have updated the counters and island with a beautiful granite, new appliances and lighting, but the original kitchen remains largely intact. I didn’t have to stage a sit-in here. My parents love this kitchen as much as I do.

How do you perfect perfection?

I start the coffee and lean against the counter.

My grandma made breakfasts in this exact spot for her family and her boarders every day for decades: pancakes, French toast, muffins, casseroles, coffee cakes, fresh Michigan fruit.

Mornings were my grandmother’s special time. She rose before dawn and slipped away to her office usually by 4 a.m. to work for hours before the sun even thought of waking. She loved the dawn of a new day. GiGi used to tell me, “A new day is an unwritten book, filled with promise and possibility.”

I pull a mug from the cabinet and fill it with coffee. I take a sip, and I can feel my eyes widen. I make it too strong, like my grandma and my dad.

I head toward the deck.

The house is pristine, as if no one was here just a few hours ago.

I take a seat on a blue-and-white-striped outdoor sofa overlooking the lake. The cushion is still damp from the dew, and I jump up quickly—nearly spilling my coffee—and wipe the moisture off in quick strokes with my bare hand.

The view from Eyebrow Cottage is breathtaking. A long, sandy stretch of beach that leads in the distance to the South Haven Pier, a postcard-perfect, bright red lighthouse with a long pier that has gathered tourists and beachgoers for nearly 125 years. The area, as I was taught by GiGi, was first developed by Native American tribes who named the land Ni-No-Kong or “beautiful sunsets.”

They, too, loved the final wink.

GiGi loved to read out here in the morning after she left her office and made breakfast. I am a chip off the old library card.

I pick up the novel.

The cover is a throwback, the title and author’s name—S. I. Quaeris—are designed in a vintage typeface where the r ’s are stretched like bird wings, the dots on the i ’s are big suns, and the ends of all the letters look like Aladdin’s shoes. The image is of a sunset over a red lighthouse. I glance down the beach.

This red lighthouse .

In the foreground, a woman scans the horizon. From behind, I can’t help but think that she looks like me.

I try to remember how GiGi pronounced the author’s last name. I whisper it to the wind.

“Kware-dis,” I whisper. “Kware-dis.”

I open the cover to read.

I start with the Acknowledgments.

I first must thank my readers. Without you, I would not be able to live my dream. Writing is what keeps me sane, how I make sense of an often senseless world. Books are the great connector. They bring us closer, bridge the gap, remind us that we have more in common than what divides us. My novels are about family, friends, the wisdom of our elders, the overlooked women in our lives, the overlooked soul within you, and I write them to remind you that you matter, and that it is the little things in life that mean the most: A sunrise. A sunset. Love. Happy endings. Each other. My little novels are meant as threads of hope and beacons of light for those who are drowning in the world. Know there will be a better day. And that can start right now by escaping into a better one.

I look up and stare at the lake, the lighthouse down the beach.

Her words are beautiful and heartfelt. And this is just the acknowledgments page. No wonder my grandma loved this author so much.

A big thank-you as well to my team: Harlequin (and now Silhouette), you are the best publisher an author could dream of having. You give a voice to women, their issues and their hearts, and I could not be more proud to call you my home away from home and my literary soul sister.

I turn the book and look at the publisher’s logo on the spine. So much has changed in publishing over the years. I’ve seen it firsthand. Mergers. Disbanded imprints. Layoffs. Fewer options for writers to have their work discovered and published. How wonderful for this author to feel so loved for so long.

“Men know best about everything, except what women know better.” That’s a quote from George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans, the author of Middlemarch ) and a favorite of mine. I keep that in mind with every book I write.

I laugh out loud. “Atta’girl,” I say. I look at the author’s name again. “Or boy.”

I flip to the author bio, which simply reads, S. I. Quaeris is the author of over forty novels and one of America’s most beloved romance writers. The author lives and writes in a remote and beautiful setting which inspires their novels. They do not make appearances. “I prefer that my work do all the speaking for me.”

I flip back to the Acknowledgments.

Gratitude! This is the motto by which I live. I am grateful for each sunrise and sunset. I am grateful for each day I get to watch my family grow and laugh. I am grateful, despite all that life has thrown my way. Mostly, I’m grateful that my simple stories will, hopefully, live forever, something none of us can do.

I am eternally grateful for my friends and family, who inspire me daily and support my dream. I’m also grateful they continue to speak to me even after I’ve written about them (names were changed!).

I laugh again.

Grateful for all of you! Every single one of you. Your letters that the publisher forwards to me are hugs, constant reaffirmation that my novels are touching you, helping you, changing you. As a result, they save and change me, too.

I must also thank my “invisible team,” who helps me write two books a year. They plot while I “pants.” They edit as I write. They are the foundation of this big, beautiful dream.

Page by page, word by word, sentence by sentence…that is how each and every one of my glorious days are filled (oh, and with some coffee and wine, too!). I race out of bed every morning, excited and humbled to begin my days. I get lost in my stories. I become my characters. I pour out my heart and my secrets. And, oh, what a glorious way to live!

A final nod to home, a place I love (and never leave) more than any. This place inspires me, fills my soul, and when I sink my toes in the sand, or dive into the crystal water, I know I am part of this place, and it is a part of me, and we will forever be one.

Go now and read! Anything and everything! Hug your librarian! Support your local bookseller! And go to places you never imagined, be people you never dreamed, walk in shoes to places you thought you’d never travel, experience the world, and be changed. It is a privilege to evolve and change. We should never be the same people we were. Books help us on that journey.

Eliot again writes, “It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.” Books saved my life. And I believe they just might save the world. XOXO!

I have tears in my eyes. My heart is in my throat.

I grab my cell to google S. I. Quaeris. I did in college, but I shoved the author to the back of my memory banks after my fight with GiGi that day on campus. There is no author website. There is a generic author page on the publisher website, and a Wikipedia page devoted to the author’s books.

Prolific romance author… Secretive…not much known about their personal life…

There is a list of all the novels the author has written. I begin to count, trying to keep my eyes from blurring. I stop at eighty-two.

Eighty! Two!

“I still have a long way to go, S. I.,” I say. “Impressive.”

I cannot wait to start the novel.

I turn to the first page.

The patio door slides open.

My parents emerge, holding matching coffee cups, looking like literary Ken and Barbie.

I subtly tuck the book I am reading underneath my legs.

“You both look nice,” I say to cover, realizing too late that nice is an adjective my mother despises more than a Target run.

“Dapper,” I suddenly add. “Dapper and beautiful.”

“ Nice save,” my mother says with a chuckle. “You remember.”

This memory seems to touch her, and her face softens.

“Thank you anyway,” she adds.

Mother-daughter moment over.

My father is wearing a lovely linen suit. On anyone else, the outfit would be a wrinkled disaster by the time he reached Chicago, but I know my father will emerge from the town car looking as if it were just ironed.

Meanwhile, my mother is sporting a crisp white pantsuit that is one coffee drop away from being a thousand-dollar donation.

But my mother even sips her coffee elegantly. Her every move is as beautiful, deft and choreographed as The Nutcracker ballet.

“Anderson’s Bookshop today, right?” I ask.

“Yes,” my mother says. “We were able to wrangle Gillian Flynn to do an in-conversation.”

My sister actually wrangled it, but my mother would never admit that out loud.

“So you know our schedule,” my father says. “Chicago today, Cuyahoga Public Library in Cleveland tomorrow, then the book tour swings through the Northeast: Browseabout and Bethany Beach Books in Rehoboth Beach, Thunder Road Books in Spring Lake, New Jersey, then back to New York for a few events and parties.”

“Your sister is leaving later today, so you’re on your own,” my mom reminds me. “Be a good girl.”

I smile. I know that is code for Jess told us what you said to Marcus Flare last night and then I saw you talking with him and have no idea what happened so don’t fuck anything else up, okay?

“Jess has a big mouth,” I say. “Guess it’s what made her famous.”

“Emma,” my mother scolds. “She’s just concerned about you. Navigating the world is not like navigating a college campus. You have to learn to play the game.”

“I actually don’t think the two worlds are all that different,” I say. “Believe me, I had to learn to play a game or two. But I was always honest about the game I was playing.”

My parents exchange a look.

“Well, good. It’s the way the world works,” my mother says with a sigh, focusing on any positivity she can take from my inference.

“Well, the world needs a solid rewrite,” I say. “And—just to ease your minds—I didn’t do anything wrong. I just don’t understand why you would invite Marcus Flare. He’s a lech.”

“Obviously, our money was well spent on that English degree from Michigan,” my mother says archly, shaking her head, completely over this turn in the conversation.

“Okay, creep, then. Or, how about predator? Pompous ass? Any of those better?” I ask. “I know not to use the verb get , as it’s so lazy, but I’m having trouble describing Marcus. Perhaps you, as a writer and editor, can help me?”

My mother’s eyes actually rotate in her pretty head.

“That attitude is exactly why your sister is concerned,” my mother says. She brushes off an invisible piece of lint from her jacket. “You expect to get a job just saying whatever comes into that dark trap of a mind of yours? You want to be a success in publishing? You have to learn to edit not only what’s on the page but what leaves your mouth.”

“Really, Mother?” I blurt. “Perhaps you should take your own advice. Everything that shoots from your mouth leaves shrapnel.”

My mother inhales all of the air in Michigan and releases it very slowly to calm herself.

“Okay, you two,” my father says in a diplomatic tone. “You both love using words. Often—too often—as weapons. Some are well chosen, some are not. Let’s restart, shall we?”

He looks at my mother. She nods to make peace.

“We just want the best for you, Emma,” she says.

“I know,” I concede. “And I want the same for you.” I look at my dad. “So, in keeping with that sentiment, why was Marcus here? I feel like you’re keeping a secret from me. You know I hate secrets.”

“Oh, my God, Emma,” my mother says, “you are like a dog with a bone.”

“Woof woof,” I say.

“He was here as a favor to me,” my father says. “He’s going to post about my novel. He has a few million followers, Emma. He does the summer book picks for the Today show. I need as many eyes on this book as possible. The Mighty Pages needs the eyes, too. He can provide that.”

I nod, though I don’t truly believe what my father is telling me.

“Marcus did tell me last night after he spoke that you were… Oh, hold on, I want to make sure I get this right—” my mother pauses as she thinks “—‘a very clever girl.’ He said you had a deeply personal conversation on the beach. What did you discuss with him, Emma?”

“What does it matter?”

“Tell me,” she presses.

“See? There is something going on. I knew it.”

My mother stares me down while picking more invisible lint off her body.

“I told him I read his work in one of my classes,” I say innocently. “I told him how much I admired his work.”

My mother gives me her I-don’t-believe-you-young-lady look.

“I told him how much I loved reading on the beach,” I add. “He liked that. He said he met his wife on the beach in the Hamptons.” I smile at my innocent lie. “Didn’t you two meet on the beach?”

I’m good at changing the plot line.

My dad hates that about me as much as my mother hates to discuss that part of her history.

My mom and dad glance at one another again. They look so young all of a sudden just standing here before the lake on a beautiful summer morning. They’ve gotten a little color on their faces, and urbanites look so much more alive when they get a little sun-kissed.

“You know the story,” my mother says dismissively.

“Tell me again,” I say. “Please.”

“Why?” she asks. She lifts the glasses dangling from a chain around her neck onto her nose to study my intent, then pushes them to the top of her head, a literary headband.

“So I can lock it in my memory, right here, in this moment, forever.”

“You’re such a romantic,” my father says to me.

“Weren’t you?” I ask.

They look at each other even longer this time, and, for a flash, I see it.

A spark!

My dad places his hand on my mother’s lower back, and my heart melts.

My parents are not demonstrative with their affection like my grandmother was. She could be stern, but she hugged everyone, told everybody she met that she loved them. She wanted them to walk away feeling it, so that even when she was no longer there, they still felt the love.

My mother has always hated what she calls PDAs, admonishing my sister and I for kissing high school boyfriends in public, or hanging on to them at restaurants.

My handsome father tilts his head at my mom, and the distance that separates them defined by the comma of light from the lake between their bodies closes just a touch as my mom leans into him.

“We met on a perfect summer day, just like this,” my father says.

“Phillip,” my mother interrupts. Her voice is higher than normal.

“Your mother was so…” my father continues, eyes on her.

Suddenly, his phone trills. He looks down at the screen. “I’ve got to take this.”

Moment over.

He steps away to the other side of the deck, and I watch my mother watching him go, mouth wide-open, a figure in a relief painting staring into nothing, waiting for the unsaid word.

Beautiful?

Magical?

Breathtaking?

Intelligent?

Now forever an incomplete sentence.

She finally closes her mouth, clears her throat and smiles. “Well, we’ll see you in two weeks. I’ve left some cash in your account. This will give you a little alone time to think seriously about what you want to do. I know you have interviews set up already, including the ones with the big five publishers that we helped arrange. But you know we’d love to have you on our team, and I can’t wait for you to meet everyone and talk. The decision is yours and yours alone.”

Is it ever?

“I know.”

“It’s okay to let us help you,” my mother says. “You’re so full of pride.”

I smile at my mom. “That actually means full of crap , right, Mom?”

“No, Emma, it doesn’t. That mouth of yours is going to get you in trouble,” she admonishes. “I just know you want to do things your way. You’re just like your grandmother. Let us help pave the way for you.”

My father returns to find my mother and me staring at one another in a silent standoff. “I obviously missed something,” he says.

“My prideful ways,” I say. “And my mouth.”

“Same old story,” he says with a laugh and wink.

“Story as old as time, right, Dad?”

He looks at me curiously, takes a breath and asks, “You didn’t like my new book, did you?”

I’m going to kill Jess. But I will give my father points for bravery and honesty.

“I’m so sorry,” I say, “but I didn’t love it, Dad.”

“That’s okay. Books affect each of us differently. May I ask why?”

I look at him and my sudden nervousness at being so direct with my own father causes me to shift uncomfortably. My contraband book pops free.

It’s too late.

My parents look down at the cover, then at each other before gazing upon me again, waiting for me to answer.

“A little boy wouldn’t talk like that,” I start. “And there was no one to root for in the book. Every character was icky.”

“Icky?” my mother asks. “Again. Money well spent.”

“No,” I say. “Icky seems fitting.” I have to force myself to look at my dad. “I don’t want to upset you, but it just didn’t work for me. And I don’t think you truly love it either.”

Silence. For the longest time. But on my father’s face, I can see his eyes lift, then drift, and then return to me. He knows I’m right.

“That’s hard to hear from my own daughter,” he begins. “It always hurts from those you love most. You know how much I trust your opinion.”

His voice is quiet, and my heart cracks right down the middle, a fragile vase forever damaged.

My mother is right. My mouth will get me into trouble.

My dad begins to open his mouth to say something else.

“But you can read a book like that?” my mother interjects angrily, her hand gesturing at the novel in my lap.

“I haven’t started this one yet,” I say, “but I can tell you that I do love this author. Remember how much GiGi loved all of these books? I did, too, growing up, and then I just set them aside. I have to tell you, the acknowledgment and author’s note are works of art all on their own. They almost brought me to tears. I just needed to read a book where I could escape for a little while.”

“Escape from what?” my mother asks, astonished. “The indignity of spending the summer after graduating college on the beach? Deciding when you want to go to work?”

“Piper,” my father says. “Don’t punish her for speaking her mind.”

“And you’re grown-up now,” my mother carries on anyway. “There are actually grown-up books for grown-up people that your parents publish. That book is not a work of art, Emma.”

My mother glares at me, glasses now back on her nose, her eyes magnified, blue microscopes trained on my soul.

Would it be wrong for me to push my mother off the deck and into the sand just to shut her up?

She’s angry at me for reading a book like this?

I can imagine how angry she’d be to read “The Summer of Seagulls,” how ashamed she’d be that her daughter wrote a romance novel.

She would probably require a face transplant if she were pictured in the press holding my novel.

Piper Page! Romance Reader!

The horror!

I think back to college and Virginia Woolf. Part of me would like to send my manuscript to my parents under the pen name E. V. Odle just to see if they would take it—and me—seriously.

Part of me would love to see The Mighty Pages deign to publish my pages. “Who decides what’s a work of art, Mom?” I finally answer, trying to keep my voice unemotional. I can hear it rise. I fail every time. “A few chosen critics who despise happy endings? Reviewers who pick apart books because they would have written them differently? Why can’t a work of art simply be something that touches your heart?”

“Because nice is not extraordinary, Emma,” my mother says.

“You sound like a snobbish high-brow elitist,” I say.

“Thank you,” she says.

I refuse to let her trump me.

“But you’re just out of touch with the real world. You know, those people who do their own laundry, push a cart around the grocery store, worry about the price of gas.”

“I don’t believe our electric car uses gas.”

“You’re just proving my point, Mother. You’ve become part of the ‘intellectual elite’ many people despise in the world today. You have deemed that in order for a writer to be ‘literary’ she must reflect not the world she sees or dreams, but the world you see.”

“That’s my right as a publisher and editor.”

I take a breath. “But you, Mother, believe that world is full of pain, loneliness, hopelessness, awfulness and despair. As a result, only books that mirror your point of view receive the hot fudge sundae with the cherry on top: the New York Times reviews and bestseller lists, the Pulitzer Prizes, the National Book Awards, as well as a contract to publish with The Mighty Pages. But those aren’t always the books people like to read.”

I wait a beat to finish for drama’s sake.

“And you’re learning that a bit too late, aren’t you?”

“Please,” my mother says even more dramatically. “Go on. Enlighten us with all the wisdom you’ve gained the past twenty-two years of life.”

My eyes flash.

“I shall, Mother,” I say. “When—and more importantly, why—did sentimentality and emotion become curse words in critical review and critical respect, considering some of our greatest books and movies are steeped in sentimentality? Why is saying ‘I love you’ or a happy ending seen as a literary weakness because you and elite reviewers see it as a cop-out? I personally think that life has beaten the crap out of most of us and made us scared to open our hearts again, which, in turn, has made too many of us unsentimental and believers that arm’s length is better than a hug.”

My mother crosses her arms. I’ve hit a nerve. I continue.

“That’s why intellectuals often act so unfeeling, isn’t it? It’s not because they’re superior, it’s because they’re afraid, and so they use their supposed intellect to keep emotion at a distance. But if intellectual distance and posturing is not the best way for humans to navigate life, why is it seen as a strength in the narrative that parallels our existence?”

I pick up the paperback and shake it at my mom.

“Sometimes, we just need a hug instead of a lesson, Mom,” I forge on. “Sometimes, we just need to escape. Sometimes, we just need to be reminded that the life and the world will be okay.”

My mom reaches down and nabs the book off my lap.

“You’re a Michigan grad. This is not what Michigan grads read.”

My nostrils flare. “You know, I told my lit professors that they need to add a few more women to their syllabus,” I say. “It’s 2024, and we’re still reading about old men writing about death and war. I suggested they add a little Joan Didion, Nora Ephron and Erma Bombeck.”

“And that’s why you got your only B minus, isn’t it?” she asks. “We’ve given you every advantage in the world. You can’t live your life like it’s some Hallmark movie. This ,” my mother says, shaking the book, “is for the masses. We write and publish works of great erudition and originality for bibliophiles. Can you imagine if one of The Swans took a photo of you reading this and posted it online? ‘Daughter of The Mighty Pages reads… fluff ’?”

Bingo! I knew it.

My mother looks at the cover of the novel and shakes her head. “I thought we’d seen the last of these trashy novels. And yet you pluck them from the heap every summer.”

I can feel my cheeks flush.

“It’s not a requirement for readers to have a PhD, Mother! A bibliophile, by the way, is any person— any person! —who has a great love of books, no matter what they read, or where they buy them!” I take a quick breath and continue. “GiGi didn’t even finish high school, and she loved to read. That common woman, as you would call her, pushed books in my hands. She read with me. She read with you! She started our love of reading, she started my love of writing. That common woman earned all of this on her own-—” I gesture all around me, from Eyebrow Cottage to the swath of lakeshore before us “—that woman of the masses, who never asked for a damn thing her entire life, who never judged a soul, gave you the money to be an elitist snob, so I’d be as careful with the words you use as much as the ones you’re so proud to publish.”

I grab the book back.

My mother pushes her glasses back onto her head. She smooths the front of her pantsuit and smiles. “Such a beautiful morning, isn’t it?”

My mother can only handle extreme conflict in a novel.

“I think I heard the bell ending the first round,” my father says, joking to break the tension. He takes a seat and reaches to jostle one of my feet in a gesture of reconciliation.

“You’re such a smart young woman, Emma. I worry that you’re going to get hurt wearing your heart on your sleeve. You have to bury that emotion just a little to survive today. It’s a tough world.” He sighs. “You need to plot it out, Emma. Life just can’t happen.”

Plot it out.

I see myself reflected in my mother’s glasses. She’s trying so hard not to shake her head at me.

“Why not?” I ask. “Why can’t you listen to your heart? Why can’t that guide you? It worked for GiGi. After Grampa died, she had nothing, no plan, no education, no job and yet she refused to lose this cottage. She took in boarders, she bought stocks, she purchased lakefront property from those earnings, she made her own way.” I stop. “She never had a plan, and she was able to write her own happy ending. She did it by listening to her gut and her heart and that voice that said, ‘Don’t give up, GiGi.’”

“Your mother and I know you are still grieving her loss,” my dad says. “It hasn’t been that long. We know how much you loved her, and how much she loved you. She helped raise you. You spent your summers with her while we were working in the city. We get that. But we’re your parents, and we only want the best for you. That will never change. If we’re hard on you it’s only because we love you so, so much.”

My father is so adept at emotional CliffsNotes.

I look at my parents look at each other. Emotional Emma , they silently say to each other. Let her get it all out. She’ll come back eventually.

Ironically, my parents were actually once grunge kids. Nirvana fans. They wore baggy cardigans over vintage T-shirts, flannel shirts, baggy jeans, floppy hair. GiGi showed me all the pictures. They were a very literary, post– Daisy Jones & the Six couple. They penned poetry. They started The Mighty Pages to publish unconventional work.

GiGi once quoted Linda Ellis—when writing her obituary long before she passed to save us the pain of doing so, a true sign of inner strength and self-awareness if there ever was one—that it is not the date you were born or died that matters, it’s the dash in between.

At some point, my parents’ dash changed to a dollar sign.

“You’re right. I’ll get my act together,” I finally say to appease them. “I promise to be a nice girl.”

My mother smiles at my word choice and then lowers her glasses to inspect me. Is my little girl telling the truth?

I blink out a tear. It’s not a real one. I’ve been staring into the sun waiting for this moment. “I miss her so much. It still seems like yesterday she was here.”

“Oh, honey,” my mother coos. She reaches out to caress the air between us with her perfect manicure, a substitute for actually touching me. My dad jostles my foot again.

“That’s my Emma,” he says.

He stands, pleased at how this scene has ended.

“We’ll see you in two weeks,” my mother says again. “I’ll have Carrie send you some books from our fall list to read. I think you’ll quite enjoy them. They’ll challenge you.”

I nod. “Thanks, Mom.”

She heads inside. My father stands and follows her. He stops by the patio door.

“Give my novel another read,” he urges. “Great books often require a second read.”

“I will,” I say with a smile. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so harsh. I didn’t mean it. You’re an extraordinary writer.” I stop. “And father.”

They exit, a trail of Tom Ford cologne and Maison Francis Kurkdjian perfume dissipating in the lake breeze.

I wait for their footsteps to grow quieter, then—when they’re gone—pick up the novel to continue reading.

“You’re an even better bullshitter than I am,” my sister calls from an upstairs window. “You should write a novel.”