August 11, Sunday

SAWYER DIDN'T show, so I was left to worry I'd opened a can of worms by opening my big mouth.

I felt restless and, on a whim, decided to take my notebook to the graveyard in the hope that the atmosphere would inspire me to write. I walked down the road, scanning for snakes that might be sunning themselves on the crumbling asphalt. The weather had taken a brutal turn with record-high temperatures and humidity that made the air feel cottony.

But it was cooler in the graveyard, beneath the shade of the low-hanging limbs, insulated from the intense sun. I walked through the headstones to the concrete bench where Sawyer and I had shared cups of iced tea and lowered myself to the mottled surface. I took a few minutes to glance around and soak up the silence and sacredness of the place, imagining all the emotions the people had felt when they were alive—joy, sadness, happiness, disappointment, love, hate, longing.

I zeroed in on the pale gray headstone of Rose Whisper, the newest occupant. Sawyer had insinuated that all the rumors about her parents and her lineage had been too much for her and she'd ended her own life.

This place must've been special to Rose if she'd chosen to die here.

How many times had she made the walk from the house to the cemetery to visit her parents' graves? How many times had she sat on this very bench, contemplating her life and her place in the world?

Something about the place made me feel all the feels. For the past several months I'd fallen numb to deal with fallout of Curtis ending our relationship and leaving me, with cruel words to punctuate his actions.

You write dummy books for dumb people. Even your mom thinks you're an embarrassment.

Frida insisted that the real point of contention was that my star had been rising, and he couldn't deal with the fact that my deadlines took priority over attending events meant to foster his career which, in hindsight, appeared to be taking mastermind classes in entrepreneurship in order to learn how to sell mastermind classes to other entrepreneurs who wanted to learn how to sell their own mastermind classes.

And he was good at it. It was a hyper-social vocation among hyper-social individuals. I'd funded his efforts, wanting him to be happy, but it was never enough. Thank goodness he'd ended things because I probably would've held on forever. He'd done me a favor, although I wished it hadn't become so publicly ugly.

Because I was good at this.

Suddenly I couldn't write fast enough to get down the scenes unfolding in my head. I needed somewhere for the hero and heroine to meet, and to keep meeting in secret as their romance bloomed. I realized a cemetery would be the perfect place for her to visit unchaperoned.

As the hours passed, I filled the pages of the notebook with an enthusiasm I hadn't felt since the beginning of my career, when I'd been writing for my own entertainment, without the pressure of a deadline and readers I was bound to disappoint and my mother's legacy I would never live up to.

It struck me that one of the best ways to feel alive was to spend time with the dead.