Page 5 of Rest In Pink

Here’s the thing I’ve learned about Anemone: she needs to be married. It gives her focus and purpose. And also lots of money, but she’s good with money and five divorce settlements have made her comfortably rich. She’s not a billionaire, but it’s only a matter of time until she marries one. She’s overdue for a sparkly ring and a big white cake. Five chapters of her book are not based on her marriages because of the men, they’re based on her marriages because she picked up those men’s lives and ran with them.

Anemone looked annoyed. “I’m perfectly fine not being married.”

Widowed once, divorced four times, she is not perfectly fine without being married. She can support herself no worries, she can find plenty of bed partners at sixty-five which gives me hope for later in my life, she doesn’t need a husband to take care of her, but she does need a husband to take care of. Having just spent months writing her autobiography, I can tell you that for Anemone, a husband is a focal point. She loves him, and then she takes care of him, and that points her in a direction of accomplishment, something she can manage, and she becomes amazing at whatever that is. Not all her husbands appreciated that she was better at their careers than they were, but that was their problem. Anemone glows when she has a purpose.

She’s been a little short on purpose for the past ten years.

“I really don’t see—”

“Anemone,” I said. “Who’s writing your autobiography, you or me?”

“Well, you are, of course, but it’s my life.”

I took a deep breath. “Anemone, have you ever looked at your life as a whole? Tried to see it as one story instead of a series of—”marriages “—short stories?”

She blinked at me.

“You know your life in sections because that’s how you lived it,” I said gently. “But this book is the story of your life. We need to tie it together at the end of the book, and we need to write a chapter at the end that talks about the future, bringing everything full circle.”

“My life isn’tover,” she snapped.

“Of course not.” I sighed, knowing she wasn’t going to like this last part. “Okay, let’s look at Chapter One, which actually does not need much rewriting. It’s about how you grew up in a small town, about how everybody thought you were too pretty to be smart, about how nobody ever listened to you, how they ignored you or just patted you on the head.”

“Okay, I didn’t have a happy childhood,” Anemone said. “But it wasn’ttragic.”

“But it shaped you. You came barreling out of that town at sixteen determined to show everybody. So, the chapters that come after that first one are, in many ways, shaped by the events of that first chapter.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “I left Snidersville fifty years ago. It’s behind me.”

“It’s part of you,” I said. “And now here you are, fifty years later, in a small town that’s dazzled by your fame and your beauty, where nobody pats you on the head. We could have spent a night here and gone to Chicago but instead we’ve been here a month, you’re flirting up a storm with a police chief I am truly afraid will be your sixth husband, you are meddling in town politics, and you’re trying to talk George into running for mayor in November, which is only three months away.”

Anemone waved that away. “Oh, Liz, really—”

“O’Toole has his campaign posters up already—”

Anemone sat up. “Son of a bitch.”

“When do George’s posters arrive?”

“Really, Liz—”

“When, Anemone?”

“I may have ordered some,” she said, settling back into the blue velvet. “But—”

“This is Snidersville for you,” I told her. “And go you, George would make a great mayor once you talk him into it, assuming he survives you, but what I care about is doing my job, which is to make all the parts of your life into one story. You started in Snidersville, but I don’t think it’s any coincidence you ended up someplace like Burney. You came here to save me, thank you very much for that, but when you got here, you looked around and found your new focus. Well, you found George, but it’s the same thing. So, while I can rewrite the first chapter of your childhood just fine, I’m going to need to double check each of the chapters with you to see if my rewrites are still something you want in your book. I know you’re done with The Book, but I am not.”

Anemone had been silent for a while, which was not like her, so I stopped.

The silence lengthened, and then she said, “You really think this is my do-over for Snidersville?”

I sighed. “No. I think you’re a product of Snidersville, just like every one of us is a product of our childhood.” Which made me a child of Burney, not a good thing. “Think of your childhood as your high school diploma. It gave you a basic education into How To Be Anemone. Then you went on to other phases of your life, think of them as colleges, BAs and MAs and MFAs and MBAs, different advanced degrees that led you to now, the PhD you’re working on in Burney. All that combined knowledge, good and bad, that fuels your life today. That’s what I’m looking at. How everything that came before funnels into your now and your future.”

Her chin went up. “And how do you see my future, since you’re so smart?”

“My best guess?”

She nodded.

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