Until Jake, her dream of a life spent creating fiction remained private, a deep-rooted ambition from childhood she’d kept hidden in a tiny corner of her heart. It was Molly’s father who’d fueled her love of reading and literature at a young age. He’d stocked her bookshelves with classics like The Wind in the Willows, Charlotte’s Web, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. At night, he was a writer himself, closed off in the office downstairs long after Molly’s mother had gone to bed. By day, he worked as a car salesman at the Saab dealership in Denville, the suburban New Jersey town where Molly was born and raised.
After her mother kicked her father out, Molly tore apart the office for bits of writing he might’ve left behind. She had a feeling she’d never see him again, and she desperately wanted whatever scraps of him remained. But she’d found nothing. He’d taken all of it with him, to wherever the wind had blown him next.
What her father did leave behind were books. Boxes and boxes of books, the bulk of his collection. James Baldwin, Joyce Carol Oates, Toni Morrison, Jay McInerney, Cormac McCarthy, Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe. The names of her father’s most cherished literary idols.
There was a note taped to one of the boxes, his familiar scribble: Never stop reading. Read everything you can get your hands on.
That was it. Those were his parting words. No “I love you,” and nothing at all for her brother, Andrew. The truth was, Molly had never blamed her mother for making him go. Her father intrigued and enchanted her, but by the age of eight, Molly had understood that he wasn’t a reliable man. She’d seen what he’d put her mother through, and no woman deserved that.
Nonetheless, his message stuck. Molly never stopped reading. And the reading made her want to write. She suspected that’s the way it had gone for her father, too.
“Are you seriously writing a book?” Liz’s eyes were glued to Molly.
“It’s a new idea, but something Jake has been helping me with. Or encouraging me to do, I should say.”
“It’s really, really good.” Jake slung his arm around Molly, and she couldn’t help the smile that spread across her face. “This girl is a seriously gifted writer.”
A month later, Molly graduated from NYU with her MFA, high honors on her thesis. Her mom and Andrew came to graduation along with Jake, and afterward, the four of them trudged uptown to J. G. Melon, her mother’s favorite restaurant in the city.
Molly loved her family—her mother’s strong spirit and contagious enthusiasm, her brother Andrew’s self-deprecating humor and deep intelligence. Andrew was three years younger than Molly and had just finished his junior year of college. He was a political science major who planned on going to law school, and even though he and Jake had next to nothing in common, they still hit it off.
After lunch, her mom and Andrew caught the train back to Denville, where her mother still lived and worked.
Before they hopped into their taxi bound for Penn Station, her mother shrouded Molly in a cloud of her signature Lanc?me, squeezing her on the street outside Melon’s.
“I’m so proud of you, Moo,” she whispered, using the nickname she’d had for her daughter since she was a baby. Originally, it was Molly Moo, but only the Moo part had stuck.
Molly leaned her head on Jake’s shoulder on the subway back to Brooklyn—exhausted but happy.
“Your mom and brother are great,” he said as the train roared underground, cutting across the river.
“They’re the best.” She nodded against him, quiet for a moment. “You never talk about your parents.”
He made a sound—not a laugh but a scoff. “There’s not much to say.”
“Well, what’re they like?”
“They’re not like anything.”
“Come on.” Molly nudged him. “You’re really not going to tell me?”
A few beats of silence passed. “My parents are nothing like your mom, Moll.” Jake squeezed her hand. “That was a really sweet present she got you.”
Molly sighed. He clearly wanted to change the subject. “I know,” she said. “I’m still shocked. I wasn’t expecting that.”
For graduation, her mother had gifted her a yoga teacher training program at Bhakti, the Williamsburg studio where she practiced. Molly had mentioned her interest in the program to her mother earlier in the spring. She loved the idea of teaching yoga; it seemed like an ideal, flexible way to bring in extra cash—much more appealing than continuing on at Angelina’s and coming home in the evenings to run her espresso-stained uniform under hot water and wash the stale-bread smell from her hair. The most popular instructors at Bhakti made a hundred dollars per class, just for an hour of work. That was what Molly brought in over the course of two whole shifts at Angelina’s, tips included.