November 22, Friday

" HOW THE hell could you be so careless?" My mother's voice crackled through my phone, sharp as broken glass. "Sharing outlines with a boyfriend? Christ, Josephine, I thought I taught you better than that."

I slumped deeper into Rose's window seat, watching fog roll through the graveyard. "Hello to you too, Mom."

"Don't get snippy with me. This is serious. What we do is sacred—well, what I do is sacred. But that's not the point."

I could picture her pacing her London flat, cigarette in hand.

"Whether you're writing fucking War and Peace or goddamn grocery lists, you protect the work. You don't let some sweet-talking con man get his hands on your process."

"He wasn't always a con man." My voice sounded small, even to me. "He was... supportive. At first."

"Yeah? Was he supportive before or after he figured out you had a successful author for a mother?" She exhaled heavily. "Jesus, kid. You've always been too trusting. Just like your father."

I blinked back tears. "I take that as a compliment."

"Don't get melancholy on me." Ice clinked in what I assumed was her fourth scotch of the day. "And how do you expect anyone else to take your writing seriously if you don't?"

Anger sparked deep in my stomach. "I do take my writing seriously. Some people prefer happy endings to endless stories about good mothers struggling to relate to their disobedient daughters. How many variations on our relationship are you going to write, anyway?"

Silence crackled between us, heavy with decades of unspoken hurt.

"If that's how you feel about my work," Vanessa said finally, her voice cold, "maybe you don't need my money to handle this Curtis situation after all."

My stomach dropped. "Mom—"

"No, no, I get it. You're all grown up now, writing your little fairy tales in Alabamarama, or wherever you are. Clearly you don't need your bad mother's help."

"I never said—"

But she'd ended the call.

I pressed my lips together to stem tears. I couldn't afford to get distracted because I hadn't started my day's writing yet.

But how could I write romance when my own mother thought it was garbage? When Curtis was trying to steal credit for my work? When every relationship in my life seemed to come with strings attached?

Maybe that was the real curse—not the curse Tilda had cast on Curtis, but the one Vanessa had unknowingly placed on me years ago.

The curse of never being quite good enough.