Where It Began (37 page)

Yet.

Anyway, having also accepted blackmail-ish double dares from Ponytail Doc before the woman would sign off on her Get Out of Probation Free card (actually, it wasn’t a card, it was a seriously thick legal document), and just to prove that she can totally do it, and because loving Billy Nash was seriously pathetic, the girl has three months, one week, and two days left before she can
have Chianti with dinner, streak her increasingly sub-regular hair, or have a boyfriend.

The likeliest candidate for this position is an architecture student named Giovanni who admires her ability to simulate priceless ancient artifact glaze and is almost supernaturally hot for a person who wears turtlenecks and is obsessed with Gothic churches. Although it’s hard to say, and probably it would be a good idea to learn enough Italian to be able to have a quasi-intelligent conversation with him and figure out whether he’s just another specimen of hot pond scum before removing any significant articles of clothing.

It’s not that she’s a nun. It’s just that she is trying to figure out how to be
me
.

Brenda Bowen, because I always wanted an agent who was a goddess, and that would be Brenda. Her intelligence, literary sensibility, tireless attention to text, incisive suggestions for polishing the manuscript (“Incisive” and “polishing” are both understatements), and dead-on savvy made this happen.

Jen Klonsky is the editor everybody prays they’ll get—smart, enthusiastic, intuitive, open, completely supportive, and able to see the forest and the trees and the leaves and all the tiny little acorns with perfect clarity. And the whole team at Simon Pulse.

My husband, Rick, Best Husband Ever, who actually read every single version of every single chapter, listened to every draft, and managed to remain kind and constructive and helpful and funny even through the really bad ones.

My kids, Laura and Michael, a writer and a filmmaker, who were raised in the B’s but turned out pretty damned great, and whose generosity and talents (and notes) I relied on all the time as I was writing this.

Early readers Suzi Dubin, who gave me hope that I had, in fact, written a novel; Jen Weiss Handler, whose expertise helped me fit seventy-five unruly chapters together; and June Sobel, whose discerning feedback was invaluable.

Electronic communication consultants: Sharla Steiman, Laura and Michael, Sarah Markoff, and Brian and Erik Becker. Thank you!

I am hugely grateful to an emergency room doctor, a pediatrician, a psychiatrist, two lawyers, a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s traffic investigator, and two LAPD officers, whom I thank from the bottom of my heart, but who shall remain nameless.

And thanks, Mom, for thinking I was a writer even when I wasn’t.

Finally, this is a work of fiction. It is not a roman à clef. My kids are not in it, nor are their friends, or their acquaintances, or my friends or acquaintances, and the most striking thing I have in common with any of the characters (apart from my geography and the tiny fact that I spent a couple of years channeling Gabby Gardiner) is my affinity for Ponytail’s Italian shoes. Winston School does not exist, and anyone who has ever set foot at my kid’s high school can tell you that that isn’t it. I do wish Madeleine Hewlett existed, though, because I like her and I kind of want the one-eyed rescue cat.

Leading me to my dog, Evan, who ate part of one of the drafts, but who sat with me during the entire writing process.