Page 32 of Supernova

Bill looks mostly convinced. "I didn't think so," he says, running a hand over his hair. "The front desk gal said my wife stopped by with a picnic lunch, but she said it was our anniversary, which I know is in April, not January."

Jo widens her grin like the whole thing is a silly misunderstanding. "It is most definitely not our anniversary," she agrees. "Must have been a mistake!"

"That's what I thought." He pats the wall again for good measure. 'Night, Jojo."

Once he's gone, Jo sits in the flood of light that comes from the latticed chandelier hanging over the table. It, like much of her kitchen, is a sunny yellow, and the light is warm against the darkness of the night outside. The kitchen window is open, and she sits in silence, listening to the night sounds in the backyard before putting her fingertips back on the typewriter keys.

Her heart--oh her heart!Jo writes, biting her lower lip as she focuses on the images in her mind. There was no way for Maxine to say the things that needed to be said, so instead she lowered her head and looked up at Winston through her thick eyelashes. He put a hand to her cheek, gazing into her eyes with love.

"Winston," Maxine started, but her words fell away.

"It'll be okay," Winston said. "I promise. As long as you do what I ask of you, I promise that you'll always be taken care of."

Maxine frowned up at him. "You have a plan that I have to follow...after you die?" She was confused; a terminal diagnosis for the man she loved wasn't supposed to come with a to-do list.

Winston smiled at her. His eyes were sad, but she could see how hard he was trying to make things easier for her.

Jo stops and rips the page from her typewriter, balling it into a fist and throwing it across the kitchen. She blows out a fast, hard breath that lifts her loose hair off her forehead. The story has hit a wall, and she knows she'll need to re-write at least part of it if she ever wants it to be compelling enough for anyone to read.

Maxine and Winston are supposed to be a couple who are terribly in love, and when Winston receives a terminal diagnosis, Maxine needs to find a way to keep living after he’s gone. But something about it is ringing false to Jo. Not to mention the fact that she wants Mr. D to appreciate what she's written, not to feel as though she's writing the story of a dying man for a dying man to read. This just won't do.

Jo gets up and paces the kitchen, wandering out into the darkened front room. There, on the coffee table, is a copy ofTrue Romance, a magazine she occasionally picks up at the grocery store. She flips through the issue, skimming a short story about a couple who meets in a park, and another about a man who writes a personal ad to find a woman who loves dogs. At the back of the magazine is a small section calling for submissions.If we choose to publish your true romance-worthy story of three thousand words or less, you will receive credit for your work, as well as a check for ten dollars!

Jo sits on the couch, holding the magazine up so she can read it in the light from the kitchen. Ten dollars? The money seems like a reasonable amount, but the excitement of seeing her words in print makes it even more attractive. In a burst of inspiration, Jo stands and walks back to the kitchen table, folding themagazine open to the submissions page and setting it next to her as she rolls a fresh page of paper into the typewriter.

Jo needs to forget about Maxine and Winston for a moment—or rather, maybe Maxine and Winston are still the same characters they already were, but they simply need a new story. That’s it…a new story! Jo starts typing quickly, her fingers clicking against the keys as the words pour out of her like water from a tea kettle.

FIFTEEN

frankie

“You knowI’ll come back in a heartbeat if you need me,” Enzo Lombardi says. He hugs his daughter gruffly, patting her on the back as he clears his throat.

Frankie is standing in the middle of the airport in Ft. Lauderdale with her parents, watching as her mother scans their fellow passengers with mild disapproval. “Why are these women so casual?” she says to no one in particular. “You see her over there in her flat shoes?” Allegra tsk-tsks a woman in Keds and capri pants. “Is she going to work in her garden, or fly to New York City?”

Frankie stifles a smile at her mother’s running commentary, which is something that they’re all accustomed to. “I don’t know, Mama,” she says mildly. “Maybe she wants to be comfortable.”

“Be comfortable at night when you’re in your own bed,” is Allegra’s answer to that. She shakes her head and smooths her hands down the front of her light blue skirt suit. She even has a flower that she’d plucked right from the bush in front of Frankie’s house that’s now pinned to her lapel. Her hair is set and styled, and her makeup is impeccable.

Enzo ignores the whole conversation as he releases his grip on Frankie but holds onto both of her hands. “Do you hearme? I’ll come right back,” he says, though Frankie knows that her father would not relish the idea of buying yet another plane ticket to come back to Florida so soon. Her parents are comfortable in their lifestyle after decades of hard work, but part of the reason they’re so comfortable is that Enzo is extremely fastidious about what they spend money on.

“I’m fine, Papa,” she says softly, still watching her mother from the corner of her eye as Allegra observers a woman giving her two children candy before their flight. Frankie looks back at her father. “I promise. You just caught me at a bad time.”

Enzo is looking at her as if he isn’t believing a word of what she’s saying. “Francesca,” he says plainly. “You’re my daughter. I can’t fix everything that’s wrong in your life now that you’re a grown woman, but I will do anything in my power to protect you. To be there for you.”

Frankie knows this is true. He hadn’t asked too many questions after their talk on the golf course, and he never again mentioned the night he’d caught her outside during the storm, nor the fact that he sat up the rest of the night in her front room, reading quietly and making sure she slept soundly.

“Thank you,” she says to him, reaching her arms out to hug him one more time. Her father is the silent, steady rock of her family—he always has been.

“Okay, okay, Enzo!” Allegra says, waving her husband away so that she can hug Frankie too. “Let me say goodbye to my baby.” Frankie nearly laughs at the way her mother refers to her as “her baby”—she hasn’t been a baby in nearly three decades, but it warms her heart to think that her parents still see her as their little girl. “Your husband comes home tomorrow,mia perla,” Allegra says as she hugs Frankie and then puts her hands on both sides of Frankie’s face as she looks up at her daughter. “Everything will be okay.”

Allegra is about six inches shorter than Frankie, so Frankie presses her cheek to the top of her mother’s head and hugs her back. “I know, Mama,” she says, smiling at Enzo over Allegra’s head. “I know it will.”

Frankie feels reasonably certain that her father never mentioned anything to her mother about the moments they’d shared during this visit, so most likely Allegra is simply referring to the fact that she thinks Frankie will get pregnant soon. But then again, mothers do seem to know so many unspoken things about their children that anything is possible—maybe Allegra really does know that Frankie has something dark that haunts her like a ghost hiding around every corner. Maybe she can feel that Ed is already talking about taking his career in another direction. Maybe she knows things that Frankie can’t even imagine her knowing.

Frankie waits until her parents have checked in at the counter and they begin their descent into the hallway that leads down to the aircraft. She watches as Allegra slides her arm through Enzo’s, her oversized purse hooked over one shoulder as she looks up at her husband, saying something that Frankie can’t hear. Enzo smiles down at her, patting the hand that’s looped through his arm. She loves her parents so much in this moment, and she loves that they’d come to Florida to stay with her for a month. Having them there had let her just be a daughter for a while, and she’d needed that without even knowing it.

But now Ed is coming home, and with him, the realities of her life and her marriage. Frankie wants to get serious about looking at opening her dance studio, and she wants to work on the things that have kept her from truly being able to give her true self to her husband. And if that’s not entirely possible, then she at least wants to confront them in her own mind, becauseshe has to. As painful as it is and as hard as it will be, Frankie knows know that she’ll never move forward without going back.

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