“That’s wonderful.” In that moment, Lillian felt guilty looking at Anton while she spoke to her husband, so she turned and faced the wall.
Freddie continued to talk. He confessed that he had spent the entire day walking around and hadn’t written a single word. “But it was time well spent,” he explained. “I need more of this before I can sit down to write. I don’t want to force it or try to finish the story when I’m not ready. It has to feel right. You know?”
Lillian didn’t say anything right away, and he was quiet for a few seconds.
“Lil? You there?”
“Yes, I’m here. Of course, that makes sense,” she replied, because she’d always been supportive of his creativity, and she couldn’t imagine behaving otherwise. “It has to feel right. When it comes to your setting, you need to feel confident in your descriptions.”
“It’s not just the descriptions ,” he said with a note of frustration. “The setting is going to affect what happens with the plot. It could change everything. I might need to take it in a whole new direction.”
With a sudden sinking feeling, Lillian bit down hard on her lower lip. “Really? Is that going to take you more time? I mean . . . you thought you’d get it finished this summer.”
Silence.
“I know, Lil,” he finally said. “And you’ve been so patient. I love you for that, and I’m going to do my best. I’ll write like crazy while I’m here.”
Lillian continued to stand with her back to Anton and spoke softly into the phone. “Do you plan on staying in Paris for a while? Or will you come back here to write?”
You should come back, Freddie. You should come back right away.
Silence again. “I’m not sure. I found a cheap room near that old bookstore, Shakespeare and Company. It has a desk, and I feel like I’ll get more done here. If I go back to Tuscany to work, I’ll want to spend time with you. Besides, it’s just not the right atmosphere there. Can you understand?”
Lillian began to feel a little sick to her stomach. “Of course, I understand.”
There was a clicking sound and some static in the phone. “You’ve been so supportive,” Freddie said, “and I promise there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. As soon as I sell this book, you can do whatever you want—quit your job and eat bonbons all day. And we’ll get pregnant. I promise.”
If only she had a nickel for every time he said, “I promise.”
“You’re the best wife in the world,” he added. “What would I do without you?”
She inhaled deeply and turned around. Anton was watching her with concern.
“You should put that on a plaque,” she suggested.
Freddie chuckled into the phone. “I will. Better yet, I’ll make you the star of the acknowledgments page.”
Anton lowered his gaze, sipped his drink, and set it on the little table beside his chair.
“I should get going,” Freddie said. “This is long distance, and I don’t have any more change for the phone. I don’t know when I can call next. I need to stay focused. Don’t worry if you don’t hear from me, okay? I’ll be fine here.”
But what about me? she wanted to ask. Don’t you want to know if I’ll be fine?
The line went dead, and Lillian hung up the phone. A knot formed in the pit of her belly, and she realized her heart was pounding because of the conversation. Why? It wasn’t the first time Freddie had disappeared, mentally and emotionally, into another world when he was suddenly feeling inspired. But he had never left her for days on end to go and write somewhere else.
It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him. She knew he wasn’t cheating on her, unless she considered his manuscript to be his metaphorical mistress. It was something else that troubled her in that moment—the fact that she was feeling an intimate, emotional connection to a man who was sitting in her kitchen at midnight, drinking her husband’s rum. A man she respected and admired. A man who inspired her passions about her work, which, for the first time in her life, didn’t feel like work at all.
Now her husband had no intention of returning to her anytime soon. She was on her own in beautiful Tuscany, making new friends, finding out who she was, looking at the world with a newfound sense of wonder and awe.
It felt hot in the apartment suddenly, and Lillian lifted her hair off the back of her neck as she returned to the sofa. She picked up her drink, swirled the ice cubes around in the glass, and listened to them clink together.