The Color of Heaven (23 page)

“Sophie,” Kirk whispered in my ear.

Just the sound of my name on his lips sent a feverish swel of desire down the length of my body.

He slid his hand around my waist and pul ed me close. “You know I love you. I always have, and always wil . So please…” He got down on one knee,

took both my hands in his, and kissed my open palms. “Marry me, Sophie. Be my wife. Stay with me forever, because I don’t ever want to be

without you again.”

Al the joy in the universe descended upon me in that incredible moment, and I laughed joyful y through my tears. “Of course I’l marry you.” I dropped to my knees as wel on the cool, shifting sand. “You’re the great love of my life. I know it now, more surely than anything.”

We were married two weeks later in a smal civil ceremony on the back lawn of our country home, and as soon as school let out, we traveled to the

Greek island of Santorini for our honeymoon.

In September of that year, I woke one morning with a dream in my head. Or rather, the vivid recol ection of a moment in my mother’s kitchen, when

she shared a specific detail with me:

Over the next five days, Matt and I spent every possible moment together. He wouldn’t let me skip any classes, so he dropped me off five

minutes before class began, and was there outside the building waiting for me when I came out.

If I had assignments or papers to write, he took me to the library, sat next to me, and worked on finishing his own book while I studied or

researched.

I remembered my father’s words on the beach.
You just need to recognize inspiration when it strikes.

I had been waiting a long time for such a lightning strike, for the motivation to return to my writing, and suddenly there it was – not so much like a bolt of lightning, but like a star fal ing out of the sky and landing on my lap.

Tossing the covers aside, I leaped out of bed. A few seconds later, I was dialing my father’s number in Augusta.

“Dad, when we moved out of the house in Camden, what happened to al the stuff in the attic? The boxes and trunks ful of papers? It was mostly

Mom’s stuff – her col ege assignments and memorabilia. Did we get rid of it?”

“Of course not,” he replied. “I saved everything. I couldn’t very wel part with it, now could I?”

My heart began to beat wildly. “So it’s there at your place?”

“Yes. I’m looking up at the ceiling right now. It’s al there, over my head.”

I smiled. “Can I come and see you, and go through some of it?”

He paused. “You sound excited. Are you looking for something special?”

“Yes.” I told him what it was, and he whistled into the phone. “I’l be there soon,” I said.

“I’l be waiting for you.”

o0o

There was no proper staircase to Dad’s attic, only a square door in the upper hal ceiling with a ladder that folded down on rusty hinges.

I had not gone into the attic since I was fourteen years old. After we had carried al of Mom’s things up that rickety ladder, we closed the door behind us and that was the end of it. We forced ourselves to forget it was ever there, to pretend it didn’t exist.

But it did exist. It was right there above us al these years.

Careful y I climbed up and peered around the smal space under my father’s peaked roof. A tiny oval window provided some light. It smel ed musty

and old.

“Pass me the flashlight,” I said to him. He didn’t trust the ladder and was holding it steady with one hand while he bent down to pick up the light with the other. He handed it to me and I switched it on.

A long ray of white light dashed across the wooden beams on the slanted roof while I climbed the rest of the way up and rose to my feet.

I looked at al the boxes of books, the suitcases ful of her clothes.

Suddenly, she was al around me. I could feel her presence, her affection and love. Somehow I knew she was pleased that I was here.

Dad popped his head up. “Wow. There’s a lot of stuff up here. I’d forgotten…”

“You aren’t kidding. You
did
save everything.”

He continued to glance over the trunks and boxes. “I just couldn’t bring myself to throw anything away.”

I smiled down at him. “I’m glad.”

For the next hour, we dug through Mom’s belongings. I found much of my own things mixed in – my elementary school projects and report cards,

and four years of costumes from tap and bal et classes.

I came to a bankers’ box ful of old photo albums and journeyed back in time to the family camping trips I had al but forgotten about. The Christmas mornings. The Easter egg hunts in the backyard.

We’d had a good life together – Mom, Dad, Jen and me. It was a shame we had never talked about it, never celebrated it.

The last album I came to, at the bottom of the box, looked different from the others.

It was not from my childhood.

It was from my mother’s.

Slowly I opened to the first page and glided my fingers over a black-and-white photograph of Mom as a baby on a bright summer day, taking a bath

outside in a round steel tub. Behind her, there were sheets hanging on a clothesline, blowing in the wind. Beyond was the sea.

On the pages that fol owed, there were photos of Mom as a child with her family. At last I came upon a picture of her with my two fathers – Peter and Matt. They were, al three of them, sitting on their bikes, smiling into the camera.

I felt a rush of contentment in the knowledge that I knew the truth about my mother’s life. That I understood where I came from.

Then I found something that made the tiny hairs on my neck stand on end.

It was a photograph of Mom and Matt together in a playground, side by side on two swings. They couldn’t have been more than five or six years old.

My grandmother stood behind Mom, pushing her.

Behind Matt, an attractive, dark-haired young woman was laughing and holding onto her hat. It was a wide-brimmed straw hat that I had seen

before.

“Dad, who is this?” I handed him the album. “The woman in the hat.”

He squinted through his bifocals. “That’s Matt’s mother.” He glanced across at me. “She died when he was young. Just seven or eight. She fel

down a flight of stairs.”

I took hold of the album again and stared in awe at the picture. “That would make her my grandmother.”

He removed his glasses. “Yes, it would.”

Catherine
.

“She was a gardener, wasn’t she?” A warm glow lighted within me.

“That’s right. When she was alive, they had the best yard on the street. How do you know this?”

I slowly turned the page. “It’s part of what happened to me. I didn’t mention it before. There were too many other things to tel you about. But she was there when I visited Mom. She was her neighbor and she was planting a garden. She wore that same hat.”

Dad simply nodded, and we went back to our searching.

o0o

At last I found what I was looking for. My father’s manuscript, buried in a mountain of term papers and projects that my mother had completed at

Wel esley.

It was held together by a string – hundreds of sheets of lined loose leaf, fil ed with words handwritten in pencil by my father.

“I found it.”

Plunking myself down on top of a trunk, I pul ed off the string and flipped to the first page.

“Wait a second… Please stop.” Dad rose to his feet. I looked up at him with curious eyes, wondering if he meant to warn me about something.

“You shouldn’t start reading that here,” he said. “You’l ruin your eyes. Bring it downstairs. You can use my desk, and I’l make you a pot of coffee.”

For a few startled seconds I blinked up at him, then I smiled. “You’re right, Dad. Let’s get out of here.”

I gathered my treasure in my arms, and fol owed him to the steps.

I stayed up al night reading my father’s manuscript, which he had managed to complete a mere week before his death.

As I composed myself and wiped the last few tears from my cheeks, I sat back in the chair and wondered what I was going to do with it. There could

be no denying that it was a literary masterpiece, but it was about two hundred pages too long and written by an author who wasn’t alive to edit it or submit it to agents or publishers.

It seemed an overwhelming task, and what if I was wrong? What if it wasn’t as good as I thought it was? Or what if I ruined it by making changes?

Those were just my own insecurities talking, however. Deep down, I knew exactly what I had to do to make it better, and in that moment – as I felt

the rush of my father’s blood coursing through my veins – I was absolutely certain that I could accomplish it.

Suddenly he was there in the room with me, tel ing me to go to bed and rest my eyes. Sleep on it.

I hear his voice:
Think about the story, Sophie. It needs a lot of work. I wish I’d had time to fix it, but it just wasn’t possible. Take it home with you
and talk it over with your husband, then get to work. You’ll know what to do, Sophie. I’m certain you’ll know exactly what to do.

Two months later, I sent the ful revised manuscript – now typed and double-spaced in Courier font – to five top New York agents, who al requested

it based on my query letter and synopsis.

I felt confident. I had worked in the publishing industry in the past, so I knew the lay of the land. I had selected agents who represented similar

projects and had sold them for respectable advances.

My father’s book was bril iant. How could it not succeed?

My only concern was the fact that he was not alive to represent himself, and these days, publishers were looking for a promotable author, someone

who could appear before the reading public through websites, social media, and talk-show interviews.

What I was attempting to do was a bit unusual. I was hoping to generate excitement over a debut author who had been dead for forty years.

Of course I would have been happy to represent him myself, and with my recent notoriety due to the accident and my infamous other-worldly

experience, I thought I might be able to offer some unique opportunities for publicity. At this point, al I could do was cross my fingers.

And wait for a nibble from an agent.

o0o

Three weeks after I sent out the proposals for my father’s book, I received my first reply. The envelope arrived in our mailbox by snail mail, which

was unexpected, since most correspondence with publishers occurred through email these days. I took it as a good omen.

Kirk handed the envelope to me when I exited the shower after a late-afternoon run.

The return address indicated that it had come from the agent at the top of my list – a real heavy-hitter when it came to book and movie deals.

I stood in the kitchen in my white terrycloth robe, my wet hair twisted over my head and wrapped in a blue towel.

“What if they hated it?” I asked, glancing across the table at Kirk, who was dipping an herbal teabag into a mug of steaming water he had just

poured from the kettle.

“Then you’l try again, and next time, pick someone with better taste.

Kirk had read the manuscript and helped me decide how to edit a few things. He, too, recognized its bril iance.

Nevertheless, I had a knot in my stomach the size of Idaho.

“You open it.” I circled around the table and held out the letter.

He raised his hands as if I were pointing a gun. “Oh no, not me. I’m here to congratulate you, or be a shoulder to cry on. I don’t want to be the

messenger.”

“Please?” I tried to make him take it – I practical y shoved it into his hands – and bless his heart, he couldn’t say no to me.

“Are you sure you don’t want to be the first one to read it?”

I considered it for a moment, then slowly plucked it out of his hands. “I think maybe I do.”

Turning away, I walked to the window and slid my finger under the flap, then careful y tore the paper.

My heart pounded as I unfolded the reply, which was printed on expensive agency letterhead.

Dear Ms. Duncan,

Thank you for your recent submission. Though there was much to admire in the story and writing, I’m afraid we cannot offer representation at

this time. Good luck placing your work elsewhere.

Sincerely,

Jo Sanderson

Sanderson Literary Agency

I turned and faced my husband, and slowly shook my head. “He said no.”

Before I knew it, Kirk was taking me into his arms and rubbing his hands up and down my back. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just disappointed, that’s al .”

“This is only the first one. This guy’s not the only agent in New York. The book is good, Sophie. Someone wil want it.”

“I hope so.”

“Wel , I know so.”

I pul ed the towel off my head and used it to squeeze out the dampness in my hair.

“Can I do anything for you?” Kirk asked. “Make you a cup of tea?”

I looked into the deep green of his eyes and felt my disappointment taking a back seat to the love I felt for him.

“A glass of wine would be nice, if you’l have one with me.”

He looked me up and down. “Are you naked under that robe?”

I nodded. “Naked, and stil a little bit wet.”

Kirk chuckled. “Then I think I’l definitely pop the cork on something.”

A short while later, he joined me in our king-size bed and al thoughts of rejection vanished from my mind as he untied my robe and slid his hands

across my stomach.

Three days later, I walked into the market and stopped dead in my tracks when I smel ed something strange and disgusting. Something I didn’t

recognize.

I couldn’t quite describe it, but it was a nauseating combination of aromas: a teenager’s stinky socks, and warm, rotting meat.

Fighting the urge to gag, I covered my nose and mouth with a hand, turned around and hurried out.