Lucas stared out across the Manhattan skyline, the sharp edges of the city muted by falling snow. “Vermont is beautiful.”
It was the truth. Assuming it hadn’t altered since his last visit, which had been a year ago.
“TIME magazine has just named you the most exciting crime writer of the decade. Did you see the piece?”
Lucas glanced at the towering pile of unopened mail. “Haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.”
“That’s why you’re at the top of your game. No distractions. With you, it’s all about the book. Your fans are excited about this one, Lucas.”
The book.
Dread stirred inside him. Dark thoughts were eclipsed by sweaty panic. He hadn’t written a word. His mind was empty, but that was something he hadn’t confessed to his agent or his publisher. He was still hoping for a miracle, some spark of inspiration that would allow him to wriggle free from the poisonous tentacles of Christmas and lose himself in a fictional world. It was ironic that the twisted, sick minds of his complex characters provided a preferable alternative to the dark reality of his own.
He eyed the knife that lay on the table close by. The blade glinted, taunting him.
He’d been staring at it for the best part of a week, even though he knew it wasn’t the answer. He was better than that.
“That’s why you’ve been calling? To ask about the book?”
“I know you hate to be disturbed when you’re writing, but production is hounding me. Sales of your last book exceeded even our expectations,” Jason said gleefully. “Your publisher is tripling the print run for the next. Are you going to give me any clues about the story?”
“I can’t.” If he knew what the book was about, he’d be writing it.
Instead, his mind was terrifyingly blank.
He didn’t have a crime. Worse, he didn’t have a murderer.
For him, every book started with the character. He was known for his unpredictable twists, for being able to deliver a shock that even the most perceptive reader failed to anticipate.
Right now the shock would be the blank page.
It was worse this year than it had been the year before. Then, the process had been long and painful, but he’d managed to somehow drag each word from inside him by November, before memories had paralyzed him. It was like trying to get to the top of Everest before the winds hit. Timing was everything. This year he hadn’t managed it and he was beginning to think he’d left it too late. He was going to need an extension on his deadline, something he’d never had to ask for before. That was bad enough, but worse were the questions that would follow. The sympathetic looks and the nods of understanding.
“I’d love to see a few pages. First chapter?”
“I’ll let you know,” Lucas said, before proffering the season’s greetings that were expected of him and ending the call.
Lucas rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. He didn’t have a first chapter. He didn’t have a first line. So far the only thing that had been murdered was his inspiration. It was lying inert, the life squeezed out of it. Could it be resurrected? He wasn’t sure.
He’d sat at his open laptop hour after hour and not a single word had emerged. The only thing in his head was Sallyanne. She filled his head, his thoughts and his heart. His bruised, damaged heart.
It was on this day, three years ago, that he’d had the phone call that had derailed his seemingly charmed life. It had been like a scene from one of his books, except this time it had been fact not fiction. He’d been the one identifying the body in the morgue, not one of his characters. He no longer had to put himself in their shoes and imagine what they were feeling because he was feeling it himself.
Since then he’d struggled through every day, dragging himself from minute to minute, while outwardly doing what was needed to make people believe that he was doing fine. He’d learned early on that people needed to see that. They didn’t want to witness his grief. They wanted to believe he’d handled it and “moved on.” Mostly, he managed to meet their expectations, except for this time of year, when the anniversary of her death came around.
Eventually he was going to have to confess to his agent and his publisher that he hadn’t written a single word of the book his fans so eagerly awaited.
This book wasn’t going to make his publisher a fortune. It didn’t exist.
He had no idea how to conjure the magic that had sent him soaring to the top of the bestseller charts in more than fifty countries.
All he could do was carry on doing what he’d been doing for the past month. He’d sit in front of the blank screen and hope that somewhere in the depths of his tortured brain an idea might emerge.
He kept hoping for a miracle.
It was the season for it, wasn’t it?
* * *