The Inn(63)

“You and me both,” I said. I had walked to Nick’s room and knocked on the door, found him sitting on the bed. We agreed to meet on the porch later that morning and go to the psychiatry clinic at the VA hospital.

I made coffee in the kitchen. Vinny and Angelica were at the dining-room table together, Vinny’s leathery cheeks glowing pink as he jabbed at the laptop between them.

“Not there, there,” Angelica said, pointing at the screen with her broken finger. She tried to move the laptop mouse but Vinny swept her hand away. “The little envelope symbol. Mail. Sign in.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve got a new job, Vin.” I smiled, blew the steam off the coffee I’d made. “Angelica’s personal assistant. Are you going to take dictation of the novels?”

“I’m trying to check this vegan-activist-bullshit-provocateur’s e-mail for her,” he growled, swiping Angelica’s hand away again. “You ask for my help and then you don’t want it. What’s wrong with you, woman? I know how to use this piece of crap.”

Angelica let her hand fall, rolled her eyes at me. There was something comforting in the bickering of the two people at the table. Susan had told them that last night’s gunfire was due to Nick getting a little confused again, shooting in the dark. With all that was happening with Cline, they seemed to take the incident in stride. This was what my household had become.

“It’s i-c-a, not i-k-a.” Angelica sighed. “Angelica. Like Angelica Garnett.”

“Who the fuck is Angelica Garnett?”

Angelica slumped in her chair and stared morosely at the carpet while Vinny tapped on the keyboard. I looked out the window and saw Nick waiting for me on the porch, his big hands gripping the arms of a wicker chair like a man on the witness stand. He was watching something across the driveway—a couple of squirrels tussling on the grass.

“You’ve got renewals for a bunch of subscriptions to crappy literary magazines,” Vinny reported. “And there’s an e-mail here from the Richmond-Sotherbury publishing house.”

“Oh.” Angelica picked at the lace on her skirt. “What’s that one say?”

I sipped my coffee while Vinny read silently.

“Says they tried to call you but you didn’t answer.” Vinny yawned, scrolling through pages. “They want to make you an offer.”

Angelica’s back straightened slowly. She looked at the screen, then she pulled the laptop toward her. Vinny and I watched as she read the e-mail he’d opened. She seemed to read it a few times, looking away and then looking back, blinking. Her eyes narrowed, then widened, and then her mouth turned down and opened until it was a dark cave.

She hung her head down and burst into loud, heaving sobs. Vinny and I looked at each other.

“Oh my God.” I put my coffee down and went to Angelica. Vinny tried to turn his broken wheelchair, making the poorly fitted bolt clunk. “Is it bad news?”

“No, no, no.” Angelica sobbed, grabbing my shoulder as I crouched before her. “It’s—it’s—it’s—I’m being published!”

“Huh? I don’t get it.” Vinny’s lip curled. “I thought you were published. Ain’t you some kind of New York Times … fucking … award-winning … whatever-whatever?”

“I lied.” Angelica wiped furiously at her eyes with her left hand, but the tears kept coming. “No one ever asked to read my work anyway. I started telling people I was a writer a long time ago, and then I just … I just stretched it and stretched it.”

“You’re not a writer at all?” My mouth was hanging open and so was Vinny’s.

“I am a writer,” Angelica cried. “But I just … I’m not a published author. Or I haven’t ever been. I was speaking to some people once and I told them I wrote novels, and they just assumed I’d been published. And then once I’d let that lie go unchallenged, it seemed easier to maintain it than to explain. And then perhaps I … I let the fantasy go a little more. I added some awards. What’s the point in being a pretend author if you’re not going to be a successful pretend one?”

I didn’t have an answer for that.

“Writing is all I think about. It’s all I talk about!”

“We noticed,” Vinny said.

“It has been my dream since I was a little girl, and … ” Angelica broke into fresh sobs. “No one cared, so I could say what I wanted. I was just pretending.”

Angelica kept crying, and Vinny and I stared at each other, trying to take this in.

“I’ve submitted manuscripts, of course,” Angelica said. “Siobhan used to read my work. But they … they always failed. I’ve kept all my rejection letters. There are four hundred or so.”

“Four hun—” Vinny roared. I cut him off with a look. Nick came to the window to see what the wailing was about, and Susan appeared at the door to the hall, clutching her satin robe, looking alarmed.

“Richmond-Sotherbury.” Angelica moaned, covering her face with one hand. “Richmond-Sotherbury!”

“Is that good?” I asked. Vinny shrugged.

“They’re the best.” Angelica nodded. She gave a long, loud wail that could have been pure misery or unbridled joy. “They’re the best!”