Amelia HELL IN A HANDBASKET

JUST THREE DAYS AT HOME had cured me. Okay. So maybe it hadn’t cured me. But it had given me three days to ignore Thad’s texts and calls and to avoid the fact that my life was in shambles. It had also given me three days to paint and hammer and caulk around Dogwood like old times. It had given me three days to drink way too much with my forever friends Jennifer, Madison, and Sarah and to ascertain that I could crash with my Palm Beach friend Sheree and her husband, Philip, until I got back on my feet—after they promised, of course, that they would not praise Thad for following his truth in front of me.

I had thought about leaving town, staying in North Carolina or maybe even finding a job in New York. But Palm Beach had been my fantasy. I had dreamed a big dream, and I had gotten it. And I only had one rung left to climb on the ladder. Nanette would go to New York like she had always said, and I would be editor in chief. I would be the boss, the one with the big corner office. I would have made it. I could see it that morning on the drive from the airport straight to the office.

I could see it, that is, until I walked into the building. I was prepared for a bit of chaos since I had missed Monday. I rarely took a day off, and I generally never unplugged for even an hour. But yesterday I had needed it. I had needed to reassess who I was and what I was doing. I had needed some clarity and calm to decide if I could really help Parker in his quest to expand his family.

I had decided, thank goodness, that it was a ridiculous notion. I mean, sure, yeah, I had been a little bit curious lately about what it would be like to carry a baby, to bring life into the world. And, yes, it would be a nice thing to do. Maybe. Or maybe the whole idea was totally misguided and I was just contributing to the chaos. Either way, back in Palm Beach I had realized that it was utterly absurd. Parker could choose to ruin his life, but he wasn’t going to take me down with him—not that he was trying to, of course.

While I felt relieved, my decision also shone a light on the fact that this job was all I had.

As I walked into the Clematis building that morning, I could actually feel the way the energy had changed before I even got to my office. Usually when I arrived, people were sitting in their cubicles, writing, on the phone. There was an electric hum. Today, people were walking around, out of their desks, seemingly frantic.

I was confused. Finally, I stopped Philip, grabbing his sport-coat-clad arm. Philip was one of the coolest people I knew. The product of an Irish mother and an Italian father who had met, in true American dream style, on the day they’d become citizens, he had his father’s athleticism, his mother’s eyes, and a sense of what would make a layout come to life that I’d never seen before. That was evident from the day I first interviewed him. He had played pro soccer for two years before realizing that graphic design was his true love. “What is going on?” I whispered.

He engulfed me in a hug. His familiar scent soothed me. “Sheree and I are so sorry.”

Philip and Sheree were one of the most perfect couples I had ever known in real life and two of my very best friends. They were both fun and free and rode the line between responsible and irresponsible absolutely perfectly. They threw the best parties in town—meaning the most fun. In Palm Beach you had to clarify because, to a lot of people, the “best” meant the stuffiest and most overdone. Philip had invited Thad and me over for dinner his first week at Clematis and Sheree and I had spent five hours drinking wine and divulging our entire life histories to each other. It hasn’t happened to me often in my adult life, but sometimes you meet someone, and you just know you’re going to be friends forever. That’s what had happened with us. Philip and Sheree had even come to Cape Carolina for the Summer Splash and Fish—the town’s biggest celebration of the season—a few years ago.

I waved his words away. I couldn’t confide in my friend without falling apart. “There’s nothing we can do about that now. What’s going on here?”

“Where have you been?”

I raised my eyebrow. “In North Carolina.”

“Well, I know where you were physically. But where have you been in the world? Clematis was sold to McCann Media.”

My eyes widened in shock. Clematis had been independently owned forever—that was one of the best things about it. I loved the family feel, how I actually knew the powers that be, how we had the space to make our own decisions because we weren’t owned by the big guys. Everything was changing. Everything had changed. The one stable thing I had left was suddenly unstable.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He looked mystified. “Well… you’re my boss. I assumed you knew.”

I took a deep breath and stood up straighter. And I realized that, across the way, one of my writers was crying. “Heather, what is going on?”

But I didn’t need her to answer. When your friend is putting the contents of her desk in a box that previously held printer paper, the dots are fairly easy to connect.

When Philip said, “Nanette needs to see you in her office,” it honestly didn’t even occur to me to be nervous. I mean, I was the managing editor, for heaven’s sake. She was the ideas; I was the execution. She was the big picture; I was the details. We had been a seamless team for three years, working so well together that it was hard to know where I ended and she began.

I tipped a fake hat to Philip, walked into Nanette’s corner office with the killer view, and closed the door behind me. My office one day… now was not the time. She was visibly shaken. But this was Nanette. She was shaken; I was steady. “Look,” I said. “Whatever McCann throws at us, we’ve got this, sister. We are an unstoppable team, and we will keep Clematis a preeminent magazine no matter who owns us.”

I sat down in the white slipper chair across from her desk and noticed she and the chair were precisely the same color. Wow. Nanette was easily ruffled, but I had never seen her like this. “Amelia, you are my best friend,” she began. I thought that was a little sad. I mean, I loved Nanette. But she was my work wife. We never socialized outside of the office. I had sacrificed a lot for this job, but not as much as Nanette had.

I smiled wanly at her. “It’s all going to be—”

“Please stop,” she said. That was when I started to feel sick. “I’m the new managing editor,” she whispered.

For a half second, I had the ridiculous thought that I was going to be the new editor in chief. But when I saw the tears in her eyes, I realized I was most certainly not getting promoted. I sucked in my breath. “And me?”

She shook her head. “You’re getting three months’ severance.”

I was gobsmacked. I leaned back in the chair, feeling as if I’d been punched in the stomach. I had devoted thirteen years of my life to this company. Yes, I knew that magazines were merging staffs and recycling content, that media jobs were fewer and farther between, that for everything the Internet had given us, it had also taken away something really big. And you couldn’t help but see the irony: McCann Media.

Nanette handed me a letter. “I wrote you the most glowing, most amazing recommendation I have ever written. I will do anything for you, and any publication would be lucky to have you, Amelia. You know that. You are the girl wonder. You took this company by storm. You’ll do it again.”

I was on the verge of tears. And furious. And I knew exactly who to take my anger out on.

---

As I thundered out of the magazine, I knew I was overreacting. But I’m not a fully rational human—no one is, really. Every now and then I’d get a nasty comment online and feel like quitting my job, throwing everything I’d worked for out the window. Or a friend wouldn’t text me back for a couple days, and I’d decide she hated me for some perceived slight. My mom would say something snide about my heels being too high or my face looking a little round, and I would fume that I wasn’t going home for Christmas.

I never let it show at work, though. I was the consummate professional; I kept everyone in line. I picked up everyone’s slack. I didn’t want to be the one to say it, but Nanette wasn’t half as good as I was at actually putting out a magazine. She was the Google think tank. I was the assembly line.

My layoff, all the layoffs, were probably not Parker’s fault. Probably. I looked at my watch. Eight ten. The high-and-mighty boss of McCann Media wouldn’t be in yet at 8:10. This was what happened when companies got too big and quit caring about the peons that made it all possible. Greer would never have stood for this.

“Parker!” I screamed, as I banged on the back door, realizing that maybe, just maybe, a small part of my freak-out had to do with the fact that I had run out of the hormones I took every day to make my body not think it was in menopause. He emerged at the door, bleary-eyed, in his boxers.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said sleepily.

“So you’d just open the door to any stranger off the street in your underwear?” I crossed my arms, trying to not think about how hot he was practically naked and barely awake.

He yawned and gestured for me to come in, saying nothing.

As I followed him inside, I said, “Well, this is rich. By now, I’ve usually already been at the magazine for an hour preparing for the day, making lists, putting finishing edits on articles. You haven’t even gotten out of bed yet, and I’m the one who’s fired?”

He rubbed his eyes. “Coffee.”

“I get laid off from the company I have dedicated my entire adult life to, the company that you run, and all you can say is ‘Coffee’?” I was doing something uncomfortably close to shouting. Proper Southern ladies do not shout.

He put his hand up, and I didn’t want to notice his abs, but really, you couldn’t help it. On the flip side, this was the same kid who had hidden a lizard in my backpack my first day of fourth grade. I shuddered. What was wrong with me?

His Nespresso spit as I looked around. Everything was the same. Not one single knickknack or design book had moved an inch since I was in this house four years ago, though now the book covers had faded. Four years ago, I had just gotten engaged, and I had just found out Greer was dying. Four years ago, I’d found out that my dumb kid neighbor was capable of loving a woman beyond anything I could imagine. I softened toward him.

I took in my surroundings. Greer’s house. Greer’s husband. I was thrust violently back into the past. Four years ago, I’d felt a little foolish admitting how entirely obsessed I was with Greer Thaysden. But, really, who wasn’t? She’d been the account to follow on Instagram, had hosted one of the most successful podcasts on iTunes when podcasts were in their infancy. I had read her first book, like, five times, was on the waiting list for a goal-setting notebook she had collaborated with Moleskine on. Let’s just say, she was one of my idols. The one thing that I couldn’t wrap my head around was why beautiful, perfect, together Greer had married boy-next-door, little-brother-annoying Parker Thaysden. Thank goodness, though. Without that lapse in judgment, I never would have met my heroine.

Word was starting to get out that Greer, Palm Beach royalty and all-around maven, had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer—just like her mother had been. Every publication wanted to do a story on her. She declined absolutely everyone, as she always had. Everyone, that is, until me.

I hadn’t been able to attend Parker and Greer’s wedding—a fact that Parker’s mother and my mother might not ever let me live down—because I had been at a bachelorette party in Mykonos. The very pricey plane ticket was nonrefundable. I wasn’t canceling it, no matter who was getting married.

But my path had certainly crossed with Greer’s more than a few times in Palm Beach and at home in Cape Carolina. We hadn’t been friends, per se, but I blamed myself for that. Sure, we ran in slightly different circles, but I felt now that we could have been close if it weren’t for my being so intimidated by her. In my defense, Greer was a woman on the rise, on every Thirty Under Thirty list and, most notably, one of Town & Country’s Modern Swans that year, which was quite a coveted position to say the least. She was a woman with taste and fame, brains and power, and a good heart at the center of it all. The Goodness Greer column she had started, which not only talked about what she was wearing, reading, and watching, and where she was traveling, but also maintained this incredible thread of positivity and empowerment, had been so successful that she’d used its tidy proceeds to start one of the city’s most influential new nonprofits.

She was single-handedly responsible for solving the problem of many of West Palm Beach’s homeless mothers and children. She wasn’t just a total badass. She was my heroine. Since I was a little girl, all I had wanted to do was write and help people. I hoped the articles I published would do both. And getting this interview would be a huge step toward that goal.

I cried when I found out Greer was sick. I barely knew this woman, and here I was weeping to Thad. But I did know her, which was hard to explain. I had read her columns about her mother’s death, bought shoes that she’d recommended, made family recipes she’d shared. She didn’t know me from Adam’s house cat, but, as foolish as I knew it made me sound, I positively worshipped the woman.

I consoled myself with the thought that Greer Thaysden didn’t let anything stop her. She would beat cancer and be back to saving the world before I got this story to press.

In some ways, it seemed voyeuristic, but I knew with all my heart that I would protect Greer, that I would tell the story that needed to be told, the one that would portray her in all her glory. In Palm Beach and New York, Clematis’s biggest readerships, a sick Swan was big news. Somebody was going to break it. As Parker’s mom, Olivia—who had been the one to talk Greer into giving me the story—had said, “Might as well be someone with a little tact and Southern charm.”

Even still, I was nervous as I rang the doorbell that morning. One wrong word said, and I could irreparably offend a woman I idolized—and put myself out of a job.

Greer greeted me at the door in a hot pink sheath dress. She was so petite, even in sky-high nude pumps, that my five feet seven inches felt practically Amazonian. Her hair was freshly blown out, her nails smooth and rounded, her skin dewy, soft, and unlined. And she smelled like a pleasant breeze on a perfect spring day, like honeysuckle and gardenia but mixed with salt air. She didn’t look sick. The sight of her cracked me open with happiness. She was going to be okay. I knew it.

She hugged me, smiled warmly, and said, “How are your parents? Any Cape Carolina news?”

I thought it would be a little impolite to say that Greer was the Cape Carolina news, so I just said, “Oh, you know, same old, same old. Nothing ever changes in that town.”

We both laughed and she said, “I think that’s what makes it so special, right?” She paused. “Thank you for doing this, Amelia. I’m glad it’s you. Oh, and I’d really prefer no tape recorders,” she said, signaling that the small talk was over.

I nodded. “They’re so invasive.” I never used them. Nothing made a subject clam up quite like putting a black box in front of their face. Plus, listening to a bunch of tape wasn’t authentic to me. The feedback-riddled, staticky sound didn’t quite capture the heart of the story. The story was a living, breathing thing that would begin formulating in my mind the second I met the subject.

Greer Thaysden moves through her Palm Beach home with all the elegance of the swan she is.

“Could I get you a cup of tea or coffee or anything?”

I shook my head.

She is kind and warm, with a graciousness that exudes from every pore.

“The story you’re getting today may not be the one you imagined,” she said as she sat down on the white leather couch in the open, airy room and gestured for me to do the same at the other end. I would have preferred to be across from her in a chair; sitting beside her felt so intimate. I knew already that what was coming next wasn’t something I was going to want to hear. I glanced out the window at the totally unobstructed view of the Intracoastal beyond.

“I am dying, Amelia,” she said. “I know you think you’re here to publish a story about my valiant battle with ovarian cancer, but this is going to be a different story.”

The tears in my eyes embarrassed me.

“I invited you here today because I am planning to move to a right-to-die state so that I can take my own life. My cancer is not responding to treatments, and I will not have my family or my husband remember me as a rotting vegetable.”

I felt my entire body go numb. “You can’t do that!” I exclaimed, shocking myself.

She crossed her arms. “Are you one of those journalists who thinks every piece is an opinion piece? Because, if so, this isn’t really going to work.”

She actually smiled when she said it, as though we were discussing the possibility of her running for governor, not some Dr. Kevorkian wannabe sticking a needle in her arm as her family watched the breath leave her body. I closed my notebook and put my pen down beside me. I wasn’t going to take notes on this. This was a story I was going to rewrite.

“No, I just mean, with all the medical advances being made, you don’t know what could happen. Maybe alternative treatments would work for you. Look at Kris Carr.”

She looked shocked. Clearly, this wasn’t the interview she’d been expecting, either. I wondered if anyone in her life ever argued with Greer McCann Thaysden. Judging from the expression on her face, I’d say not. Her shock was turning to amusement. “I find it strange that you seem to be taking this harder than some of my best friends.”

I turned away from her, so she wouldn’t see the blush creeping up my cheeks. If I wasn’t uncomfortable enough already, with her in her perfectly fitted dress and me in the skirt and top that I had thought were so fashionable when I had put them on that morning but now realized were far too trendy, this was adding insult to injury. I think this was why Greer and I had never become close. When I was around her, I always felt less than, through no fault of hers. And then… maybe it was in my head, but I also couldn’t help but feel like any time Parker and I were simply chatting at a party, she suddenly appeared. Or when we shared a laugh or an inside joke, it grated on her nerves. Then again, I would always remind myself, Greer Thaysden couldn’t possibly feel threatened by anyone.

I wasn’t sure why I felt so passionately about this stranger’s very personal choice. But she had ignited something inside me. “We need you, Greer. Women like me need women like you to look up to. We need you to show us how we can follow our dreams and still do good in the world. We need you to show us how to fight the good fight. So fight it, won’t you?”

She bit her lip, and I knew I was making her uncomfortable, but I couldn’t stop myself. My heart suddenly ripped in two for Parker, and I felt so protective of him, so cognizant of his pain, that I added, “What about poor Parker, Greer? Surely this is killing him. If you can’t fight for yourself, if you can’t fight for the women who need you, please, please, Greer, fight for Parker.”

She didn’t say anything for a second and then nodded her head toward my pad. “So, your story?”

I stood up. “If I run a story about your right to die, then you might feel like you can’t change your mind. So I’m going to give you a week to think about this.”

Greer followed me to the door. She looked me squarely in the eye and said, “Fine. But you should know: I never change my mind.”

I hoped and prayed that she would, almost as hard as I hoped and prayed Nanette wouldn’t fire me when I told her that I hadn’t gotten the story after all. This was a fireable offense. If Greer did change her mind, and I did the interview in a week, it would give me only one day to file it and meet my deadline, assuming I stayed up all night. I almost called her back to apologize. But then I realized that this was her life we were talking about here. If I were choosing her life over my story, I would do that any day, even if it meant losing my dream job and flying back to North Carolina a failure, my tail between my legs.

I usually kept these things confidential until they went to press, but I had to tell someone. Mom had scolded me, had made me imagine what it had been like for Greer to watch her own mother suffer with this same disease. I guessed I had overstepped, and I felt like a fool. I felt like a fool, that is, right up until four days later, when I got a call from Greer. She didn’t say hello or exchange pleasantries. She said, “Come back tomorrow. Let’s write a different story.”

“Greer,” I said, a smile in my voice, “writing a different story is what life is all about.”

Easy for me to say. Up until that point, my life had gone perfectly according to plan.

Parker handed me a cup of espresso and motioned toward the couch, bringing me back to the here and now, where I had just gotten fired from my job. He came back three minutes later wearing a T-shirt—so threadbare it was full of pinholes—and a pair of gym shorts.

“I didn’t fire you, Amelia. I would never do that.”

I was calmer now. Maybe it was the lilac scent from the flowers on the coffee table or the pair of white couches flanking the fireplace with the mirrored coffee table and the abstract art. “I know,” I said quietly.

“Greer would not have wanted someone with your talent and drive fired.”

I took a sip of my espresso. “Smart woman.”

“Hang on a second, and let me make a call,” Parker said.

“No!” I protested from a place of pride inside myself that I didn’t know I still had. “I can’t get my job back because Parker Thaysden made a call.”

He studied me. “But isn’t that why you came here? So I could fix this for you?”

I wrapped my hands around the coffee mug, feeling the warmth seep into my hands and fingers. Why had I come here? Had I wanted to see Parker? I took a sip of coffee, allowing myself a pause before I answered. Maybe, I realized, I had relied for far too long on other people to fix things for me. “I think this is something I have to fix for myself, unfortunately,” I said. “I just don’t really know what that looks like yet.”

Parker smiled at me. “You’ve always been so brave, Lia. Maybe this as an opportunity, a time to write a new story.”

Greer hadn’t been around to see the new story I wrote for her play out. She hadn’t gotten to spend a lifetime with the man who loved her more than the moon and the stars. She hadn’t gotten to have her babies and watch them grow. I had been one of the ones who had let her believe in a miracle. A miracle that hadn’t come. And now I was sitting here complaining about a job? She had lost her life. Her bright, beautiful life. Compared to that, a job was meaningless.

“I’m sorry, Parker,” I said. “I feel really dumb. I’m going to go now.”

“Please don’t,” he whispered.

“What?” I asked, surprised.

“Please don’t go. I couldn’t sleep last night, and I need some company this morning.”

I understood that. “Are you still thinking about… well, you know.”

He nodded. “I can’t move on,” he said. “Greer was just it for me.”

I nodded knowingly, looking down into my mug. “Yup. Thad was pretty much it for me, too.”

We both laughed. Same sentence, totally different meanings.

He smiled at me. “I just can’t imagine that Thad was actually it for you, Lia. That as much as you have to offer, as kind and beautiful and brilliant as you are, you won’t eventually give in to one of the men flinging themselves at you.”

I laughed again. “Flinging themselves at me, huh?” It sliced through me how untrue that was. My friends always complained about the dating scene, but it never affected me because I had Thad. A study I’d read said that women find men most attractive that are their own ages, but the women most attractive to men were always twenty-two. I would never be twenty-two again. And thank God, really. But, at thirty-five, in Palm Beach, I had a solid chance of becoming a fourth trophy wife. That was about the extent of my options.

“Don’t worry about your job,” Parker said. “I’ll give you any job you want at McCann. I’m sure it wasn’t personal, just corporate restructuring.”

I smiled sadly.

He followed me to the door, where my eye stopped on the bookcase beside it. It was filled with Greer’s second book, Other People’s Problems.

“Is it hard? Having her everywhere? Being able to open a book and hear her voice?”

He thought for a second. “I think it makes it easier. But longer. Does that make sense?”

I nodded.

“It still amazes me how she did her best work when she was so close to death,” he said.

“Her best?”

“I think so. I thought her second book was better than her first.”

I had read them so many times it was hard for me to tell. I was too close to see them objectively. “Okay. Well, bye, Park.”

“Wait,” he said. He went to the kitchen and returned with a folder. “Can you help me pick?”

“Pick what?”

“A surrogate. I haven’t told anyone else yet, and it’s a big responsibility.”

I took the folder from him. “For the record, I think this is a really bad idea.”

He grinned at me. “I know. But you don’t want kids. You don’t get it.” He paused and took the folder back, removing two sheets of paper. Then he put them back inside. “Actually,” he said, “you should read these, too. They’re from Greer’s journal.”

It felt nosy, to say the least. A sneak peek into her heart and mind when she wasn’t even here. But I took it, shaking my head. “This is weird, Parker. We didn’t even know each other that well.” Even as I said it, I knew I was kind of lying. In fact, I would venture to say that, in the end, I’d known Greer better than most people. But Parker didn’t know why.

He shrugged. “Sometimes that makes it easier.”

Easier… I had a flash of brilliance. “I will help you pick a surrogate if you’ll help me get the rest of my things from Thad’s place.”

He nodded. “Sure thing. Do you need some furniture moved or something?”

I shook my head, realizing, depressingly, that I was thirty-five years old and I didn’t own so much as a piece of furniture.

“Just my clothes and shoes.” I looked down at my feet, feeling tears come to my eyes. “I can’t face it alone.”

Parker nodded but didn’t say a word. He understood.

I texted Thad: Coming to get my stuff.

Three bubbles appeared immediately, and he said: Can we please talk? Please?

You can talk while I’m packing, but I can’t promise I’ll listen.

I knew already that there was nothing Thad could say to fix this.

I opened the door, turned, and said, “Well, aren’t you coming?”

“Oh! You mean like right now?”

“Well, yeah.”

Parker flashed me that megawatt smile of his and said, “Well, Liabelle, I guess we both have a lot of big hurdles to jump. If we’re going to get started, there’s no time like the present.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.