Page 25 of Willow in the Wind

James hardly glanced at it. “What’s that?”

“My colleague has been editing this book this year,” she explained. “She’s been gushing about it, in fact. Couldn’t get enough of it. It just went to print and will be released later this summer. I cracked it about a week ago.”

“Cool,” James said. He wasn’t sure why she was telling him this. But maybe she just wanted to have an easy, everyday discussion as though they’d never broken up. “You know I only ever read music biographies.”

Kinsey’s eyes shifted. Were those tears? She leaned across the table. “You’ll never believe the premise.”

James remained quiet. Something was going on that he couldn’t figure out.

“Athens 2001. American woman. British man from London. They meet, and it’s fireworks.” Her hands opened on either side of her face. “They travel all over together, island-hopping. They fall head over heels. The man, this British man in the book, is something of a wild card. He’s music-obsessed, always taking his guitar to Greek tavernas to play his favorite songs. He just lost his mother in a terrible accident, and he’s trying to escape hissorrow. The British guy and this woman, the narrator, pledge to spend their lives together. And then…”

James erupted from the table. He felt like he was going to faint. His eyes fell onto the book, where he readThe Athens Affairby Stella Sutton.

Stella.

Tears streamed down Kinsey’s face. He couldn’t figure it out. Hands shaking, he sat back down and took the book. “I don’t know what to say.” He tried to laugh, but it came out false and wrong.

James flipped through the pages, searching for his name. But it looked like Stella had written only “J” whenever he appeared. Maybe she wanted to protect his privacy.

But Kinsey knew so much about his past. She knew about his mother. She knew about his ragtag adventures across the world. She’d seen all the way through the “J.”

She looked at him now as though she’d never seen him before.

“I just didn’t know you could be like that,” she breathed.

James’s eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Kinsey raised her glass of water. “So tender. So loving. I always told my friends you were hard as stone. That you weren’t really capable of romantic love. But I told them that was okay because you were dependable. You were always there when you said you would be.”

“How boring,” James said.

Kinsey flared her nostrils. “But now I see it for what it really is. You don’t know how to love anyone else because you’re still in love with her.” She tapped her fingers on the front cover of the book that remained in his hands.

“I haven’t seen Stella in more than twenty years,” he said.

“She spent years writing this book,” Kinsey said. “And she’s about to have a whole press junket about it. She’ll give interviews. She’ll talk and talk about you.”

“You know as well as I do that memoir is basically fancy fiction,” he said. “She probably made a lot of this up.”

Kinsey sighed. He could see it written across her face. She didn’t believe him.

And he didn’t know what to think.

But a few minutes later, when Kinsey got up to use the bathroom, he saw for sure that she wasn’t pregnant. Maybe he was a fool.

Chapter Nine

June 2024

Stella couldn’t sleep that night. Bruce’s text message felt like a stone in her stomach:We need to talk.She’d called him as soon as she could, but he’d told her firmly over the phone that they needed to talk in person. Stella was no fool. She knew what that meant.

Twisted up in her bedsheets, Stella listened as the summer wind rushed through the trees outside the window. The slosh of waves made it so home was never quiet. It had been hours since she’d attempted sleep, and she was tired of it, tired of her brain eating itself with worry. She got out of bed and padded downstairs for a glass of water and a snack. But the blueberry muffin she selected remained uneaten on a small yellow plate as she stared dully through the dark night outside the window.

If Bruce was preparing to break up with her, what could the reason possibly be?

Maybe she’d done something wrong yesterday on the boat. Maybe her swimsuit hadn’t looked quite right. Maybe she’dbragged too much about publishing her first book. Maybe she was too old, too unsuccessful, too hung up after her divorce.

Or maybe there was another secret reason.

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