Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 97073 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97073 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
My entire family loves stuff like that, but it’s not all that surprising. They’re extreme people, all of them. Let’s start with their jobs for instance. They’re all in healthcare, and not the 9-to-5 kind either. Both of my parents are pediatric trauma surgeons, my brother Ben is an emergency medicine doctor, and my sister Emma is an obstetrician.
My dad has completed the New York Marathon five times. My mom has taught herself the perfect art of French cooking and is an award-winning sommelier. Ben founded a healthcare non-profit and spends part of every year bringing low-cost health services to underserved communities around the country. Emma has three blond children!
I’m the blackest of the black sheep, the baby of the family people just sort of forget about.
“Ben and Emma really take after the two of you,” some distant relative said to my parents at a recent wedding. “You really lucked out with them.”
I wanted to wave my hand and say, Hey, remember me? I exist too.
My family wouldn’t know what to do with themselves in this cottage.
“Is there a leak somewhere I could fix?” my dad would wonder. “You know what? These door hinges need lubricant.”
“Let me get these books organized,” my mother would suggest.
They wouldn’t understand the magic of a place like this, the same way they don’t understand me.
I roll over and turn on my side. Cat meows like he’s pissed I woke him up, as if he hasn’t slept soundlessly through the night.
None of my family knows I’m here right now. Last month, I told them about my new job at InkWell via group text, and the silence that followed for the next eight hours made me want to shove my phone down the disposal. I knew Emma wasn’t going to respond. But finally, my brother chimed in to save me from complete embarrassment.
Ben: Great, Summer. Very exciting.
Then my dad broke rank.
Dad: I didn’t realize you were looking for a position like this. Developmental editor? What is your benefits package? Did you negotiate your salary? What’s the next step? Call me.
I didn’t call him because I’m a bad daughter and I already know that, so why bother hearing it repeated to me over the phone?
My mom, at least, admonished me via side text, a courtesy I appreciated.
Mom: This job is fine for now, Summer, but where do you see yourself in five years?
Five years? I don’t even know where I’ll be in five minutes.
I’ve just finished graduate school and I landed a coveted position at InkWell. I’m doing everything right, only because I’m not a type-A whiz kid, I feel like a failure.
For once, I would love my family to take me seriously, to appreciate my differences and celebrate my quirks. I don’t have to be married to medicine to be a productive member of society. Literature matters! I was never moved in a meaningful way after completing one of those dreaded hikes with my family, but as a middle schooler I was brought to tears by Bridge to Terabithia. I walked around for a year, recommending All The Light We Cannot See to anyone with a pulse because it seared itself onto my soul. Try to tell me To Kill a Mockingbird isn’t one of the most important pieces of writing anyone’s ever accomplished.
My family knows who Nathaniel Foster is. Though none of them has very much time for reading—and if they do, they certainly don’t pick up “fluff”—every one of them has read the first two books in Nathaniel’s Cosmos trilogy. I gave book one, The Last Exodus, to my dad for Christmas years ago, and he finished it in one day.
If I’m somehow able to do what I’ve set out to accomplish here—help Nathaniel, give him meaningful editorial feedback, and bring Cosmos book three to market—I know my family will understand the significance. I know they will see me through a new lens.
Nathaniel wants me gone. Wine and cheese aside, he’s made that abundantly clear, but I have everything riding on this, so in the morning, I will try yet again to convince him to let me stay on here in England.
It won’t be easy, but it’s worth a shot.
CHAPTER 4
NATE
This morning I feel as hopeless as I’ve felt for as many mornings as I can remember. I didn’t sleep well last night, and as I push up off my bed and stretch my back, I’m reminded of the houseguest just down the hall. I want to shower, but I don’t want to wake her. It’s ungodly early and she probably had a restless night, in a new place with an angry man just two doors down.
There are bookshelves spanning one of my bedroom walls, filled with various foreign editions of my books The Last Exodus and Echo of Hope. French and German copies, Korean, Hungarian, Polish—I’ve lost count of how many translations were made, but the books have spanned the farthest reaches of the earth. My last book tour took me all the way to Thailand. I stood at a table, smiling in front of a crowd of rabid readers. The question on everybody’s lips was the same as it is in every country: “When can we expect book three?!”