“Hi, Dad,” Marston greeted him as she placed the large bowl of salad on the table.
“Hey, kiddo. How’s it going?”
“Great.”
He circled Alicia, then kissed her on the mouth. “Guess what I have?”
“What?” She breathed a sigh of relief, glad the tension from this morning’s confrontation had faded, though her annoyance with Kat for dodging her calls lingered stubbornly.
He whipped one hand from behind his back and presented Alicia with a bouquet of stunning blood-red roses.
“Thank you, baby,” she crooned. “They’re beautiful.”
“The flowers will shrivel in a few days, but your beauty is eternal,” he said.
“Don’t make me barf before dinner,” Lily declared. She barged into the kitchen with her smartphone in hand and sporting a white Balmain T-shirt with black leggings. She plopped down at the table. “Dad, aren’t you a little too old to be using cheesy pickup lines on your own wife? Mom, you’re not falling for this drivel, are you?”
“Mind your own business,” Alicia quipped. “I think it’s romantic.”
Eliot kissed her once more, flaunting his wholehearted agreement.
Lily rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to scrolling through her phone. Marston took the flowers from her mother, found a vase for them, and placed the display on the kitchen island next to her father’s briefcase.
“It is romantic,” she said. “Don’t listen to Lily, Mom. She’s just jealous that Dad’s got game, and Jeff, her so-called ‘boyfriend’, has the romantic finesse of a cheese sandwich.”
All four burst out laughing as they took seats at the dinner table. Alicia relished these precious family moments. She had longed for stability and a family of her own after her miserable childhood. Her father, Reginald Thomas, an MBTA bus driver, had left Alicia and her mother poor and destitute when he abandoned them for another woman. Over the years, Alicia had tried to erase the image of him leaving, with mixed results. His belongings packed in a red, vintage suitcase with brass snaps, a young Alicia clutching her favorite Cabbage Patch Doll, begging him not to leave while tears streamed down her face. He had not acknowledged her cries or her mother’s stoic expression. Years later, Alicia lost her mother to a rare form of cancer.
Alicia shook off the depressing memory and focused on her blessings. She turned to her daughter as they began to eat. “How’s the new short story coming along, Marston? Did you get over your writer’s block?”
“No. I’m moving in a different direction instead.”
“What’s that?” Eliot asked.
“I’ve started writing my first novel,” she revealed. She tucked a loose braid behind her ear and flashed an animated grin.
“That’s wonderful, Marston. Congratulations,” her father said.
She beamed at him.
“What made you change your mind?” Alicia asked. “You’re quite the short-story expert.”
“I wanted to challenge myself. Besides, becoming a novelist is my dream.”
“What’s the story about? I bet it’s sassy, chick-lit,” Lily teased.
“No! I’ve not worked it all out yet, but all the books I’ve read on writing fiction say I should condense my story into one sentence—an elevator pitch or premise.”
“Okay. Go for it,” Lily encouraged.
Marston cleared her throat, put down her fork, and straightened up in her chair.
“Dark secrets and the shocking murder of a neighbor’s son lead to the destruction of a happy family.”
Silence fell over the table. Eliot frowned. Alicia bit her lip. Lily cut into her lasagna and popped a piece into her mouth.
Alicia spoke up. “Um, that’s a little bleak, isn’t it, honey?” How did her sweet, sensitive Marston come up with something so twisted? Was that how the mind of a writer worked?
“It’s a psychological thriller,” she explained. “They deal with the dark side of human nature, what ordinary people are capable of when pushed beyond their limits.”
“Oh, that’s not what you normally read, is it?” her father asked.
“No, not usually, but I was browsing the bookstore and found this cover that drew me in. After I read the blurb, I was hooked. I finished reading it in two days. Aunt Summer says psychological thrillers are hot right now. Lots of movies and TV series are being made based on the books.”
Summer Gray, Eliot’s younger sister, worked as an acquisition editor at Webster & Crawford, a major New York publisher. The fact that Marston reached out to her aunt worried Alicia. Of course, Summer had helped Marston with her writing ever since she was little, but Alicia didn’t want her daughter getting her hopes up of literary success simply because she had a relative inside the publishing world. Summer had cautioned Marston about the fickle nature of the industry, but when she got an idea in her head, it was hard to keep her grounded in reality.
What if Summer read the finished manuscript and thought it was no good? Sure, Alicia and Eliot thought Marston had talent, but she had never tackled a full-length novel before. If her aunt gave negative feedback, it could crush her.
“Writing a novel is a huge undertaking. But you can do it. Your dad and I support you, one hundred percent.”
Eliot agreed. “Yes, totally, honey.”
“You can bounce ideas off me,” Lily volunteered. “Just don’t come up with horrible characters that no one likes, or unrealistic plot lines. Those are the worst. I mean there’s this show on Netflix…”
The conversation soon shifted to the upcoming combined junior and senior prom. Lily had already purchased three dresses but said that, although they were ‘nice’ choices, none of them had the dazzle factor.
Marston remained silent.
Alicia looked over at her eldest daughter as Lily prattled on about the difference between varying shades of pink tulle. Lily let it slip that Marston had pinned her hopes on Brandon Carr—a fellow senior she had been spending time with—asking her to prom, but that he’d asked someone else instead. As a result, she had decided to skip the most important social event of her high school life and refused to discuss the matter any further.
“I have an announcement, too,” Eliot said.
Alicia looked at her husband, grateful that he’d changed
