Her heart squeezed with disappointment. “A house would be nice—I’d love that—but we can’t afford it on my salary right now, and if we wait for everything to be perfect, we might end up waiting forever, and it’ll be too late. I’m thirty now, and you know how much I’ve always wanted a baby.”
“Of course I know.” Freddie looked down. “And I want to have a family with you. I just want to be responsible about it. I want us to be ready for it financially.”
“Money isn’t everything,” Lillian argued, feeling grim and not caring if she was being irresponsible. She wanted a baby more than anything, and she’d wasted so much time being afraid. “We’ll figure it out somehow. We could get by.”
“I don’t want to just get by,” Freddie replied. “I want to be able to support you and give us a good life, but how am I supposed to write if we have a baby to look after? You’d have to quit your job, and if I have to go to work, I’ll never finish the book.” He shook his head. “We’ve come so far. I’m almost there. If you could just be patient a little while longer, I’ll get published, and then everything will fall into place. You’ll be able to quit your job and be a stay-at-home mom, and we can live off the advance and royalties while I write another book.”
Lillian watched the colors change in the sky over the Gulf. Freddie’s dream was a lovely one, but how could she be sure it would ever come true? What if no one wanted to buy his book? Ever?
“I’m just afraid,” she carefully said, “that it might take a while for you to find a publisher. You know I believe in you, but you’ve been working on your book for almost three years. You’re only halfway done. Maybe we could just start trying and see what happens, and if I get pregnant, you could work super hard and finish before the baby comes. Maybe you just need a deadline. It might even help.”
He was quiet for a moment, and she worried that she had just stomped all over his lifelong dream.
“I wish I could write faster,” he said. “I wish that more than anything, but you know how it is. I spend so much time researching, and I can’t skip that—otherwise, when I sit down at the typewriter, the words just won’t come. The setting has to come alive for me.” He shook his head in defeat. “Maybe I should just give up. I don’t know anything about Italy. I’m starting to feel like a fraud.”
Lillian inched closer to him on the blanket and linked her arm through his. “You’re not a fraud. You’re brilliant.”
“You don’t know that,” he replied. “Maybe I’m just a no-talent hack.”
She worked hard to lift his spirits and bolster his confidence. “Not a chance. And I’d be able to tell you for sure if only you’d let me read it. Just a few pages?”
He often talked to her about the plot, and she helped him brainstorm whenever he got stuck, but he had never let her see the words on the pages.
Freddie shook his head. “No. It’s not ready for anyone to look at. It’s a first draft, and it’s rough, but I need to finish it completely before I can start polishing.”
Lillian hugged her knees to her chest and tried to think of a way to help him finish faster.
“What if we went there?” she suggested, on a whim. “To the actual places where your scenes are set.”
He looked at her with surprise. “To Italy?”
“Why not? I could ask my boss for a leave of absence, and we could spend the summer in Tuscany. I could get a seasonal job there. Imagine how amazing that would be.” She thought about it for a moment and began to feel a sudden rush of excitement because she had never been to Europe before. She began to imagine castles and cobblestones . . . red wine with bread and pasta. And wasn’t this the perfect time to travel? Before they settled down with children? “If my boss says no, it wouldn’t matter. I could quit and find something else when we got back. There are lots of hotels around here.”
“I don’t know, Lil . . .”
She squeezed his shoulder and shook him. “Come on! Let’s be adventurous! Wouldn’t it help you to breathe in the atmosphere and walk the streets where your book is set? Imagine how confident you’d be when you sat down to write. You could finish it so much faster. Then we could start the life we’ve always wanted, with kids and a house and a real writing career for you.”
He looked at her with disbelief. “Are you nuts? How would we pay for the flights?”