Page 29 of Willow in the Wind

As Bruce walked Stella to her car, Stella thought,This has been a very adult conversation. We are so mature.But at the same time, she wanted to kneel, take a handful of sand, and throw it. She wanted to scream and cry. She wanted to kick Bruce’s mailbox.

They hugged a final time before she got into her car. Stella didn’t burrow her face in his chest. But she wanted to.

“When do you leave?” she asked.

“Next week,” Bruce said. It was already decided.

“Have a safe flight,” she said.

“Good luck at the book launch,” Bruce said, squeezing her hand one final time. “I can’t wait to read it.”

Stella thought darkly,I loved him more than I could have ever loved you.

And then she drove away.

Chapter Ten

June 2024

When Stella returned home after her breakup with Bruce, she was surprised to find her front porch laden with ten massive boxes. Her blood pressure skyrocketed. She cut the car’s engine in the driveway and hurried up to find the front door ajar and several more boxes in the foyer. Chloe was on the other side of them, glistening with sweat after hauling them in herself. She spread her arms wide and announced, “Mom! They’re here!”

The boxes were filled with her books. Copies and copies ofThe Athens Affairby Stella Sutton. Stella yelped and threw her arms around Chloe, and the two of them jumped up and down in the foyer as the floorboards screamed beneath them.

“We need a knife!” Stella announced. Her breakup with Bruce still hung over her like a blanket, but she wanted to live in the moment. She wanted to feel everything there was to feel.

Chloe hurried to the kitchen to fetch a knife and handed it to Stella. “Wait,” Chloe ordered, pulling her phone from her pocket. “I want to record it.”

Stella grinned at the camera. “Here goes nothing!” She pressed the tip of the blade into the tape and opened the first box. Inside were stacks of her turquoise book. She yelped and pulled out three at once, holding them up for Chloe’s recording. “I’m forty-three years old, and this is my first novel,” she announced. “Dreams come true at any age.”

Chloe cut the recording, and together, the two of them sat on the floor and inspected the memoirs. Maybe if Stella hadn’t been brokenhearted right now, she’d have thought,I need to keep the content away from Chloe!But right now, she wanted Chloe to understand the pain of being alive and the pain of being in love. Chloe was sixteen and probably a sneeze away from her first real heartbreak. All Stella could do was help her understand that love was always a risk, but it was worth it.

Chloe pressed a book against her chest and looked at her mother with love in her eyes. “I’m just so proud of you,” she said. Her voice jumped.

Stella jumped up to grab them sodas from the fridge to celebrate. Chloe followed her into the kitchen, babbling happily. Sometimes Stella could focus on what she said; other times, she found herself thinking about Bruce, about Bruce leaving next week, about Bruce getting back together with the ex he so clearly still loved.

Stella wondered with a jolt if Matt loved Mandy more than he’d ever loved her.

Maybe Mandy is Matt’s true love. Maybe Karina is Bruce’s true love.

Is my true love really the man I lost when I was twenty-one years old?

It didn’t seem fair. But life wasn’t fair.

Chloe posted the video of Stella unboxing the books on her TikTok. Although Stella worked in marketing, she knew verylittle about how social media worked. She usually saw social media as a vacuous waste of time.

But within two hours, Chloe’s video of Stella had more than two hundred thousand views.

“What?” Stella gasped when Chloe showed her.

“Older women are really resonating with it,” Chloe explained with an authoritative voice. “That whole ‘go after your dreams when you’re older’ thing is really powerful.”

Chloe said it as though forty-three was ancient. But Stella didn’t want to fight it. After the breakup, she felt sort of ancient.

“But it’s still growing,” Chloe explained in the video. “I guess it’ll have more than a million by tomorrow!”

Stella laughed. “I don’t need a million people to see my face.”

“But you need a million people to buy your book,” Chloe reminded her.

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