Liberty Day found herself regretting many of her life decisions as she sat across the table from her soon-to-be-ex-agent. Maureen Smythe had represented her books for the last fifteen years, but it appeared their long and mutually beneficial relationship was coming to an abrupt and unexpected end. Maureen was breaking up with her over a spinach and kale salad (no onions, dressing on the side). 

Libby decided to play the oblivious card, but she had two choices. She could either remain calm and classy as she sipped the glass of chardonnay she’d ordered to accompany her meal, or she could throw the drink in Maureen’s face.

She chose option number one, which made her feel rather proud. Downing the last of her wine, she motioned to the waiter for a refill and patted her blonde hair into place as she tried to make her trademark resting bitch face look not quite as bitchy.

“What exactly are you trying to tell me, Maureen?” 

Maureen sighed. “The market is changing, and what you write, No Rules, No Limits, No Regrets, isn’t selling anymore. We live in the age of consent and #MeToo. Some of your stuff is borderline rape-y.”

Libby winced. “I know. You’re right. I should try something different, like paranormal romance. I know the market for vampires is dead, no pun intended, but what about shifters? I have this awesome were-tiger demon king series idea I’ve been working on, and I think it might have potential.”

Maureen held up a hand. “No shifters. No werewolves. No fairies, elves, or demon lovers. I’ve seen a rise in demigods lately—”

Libby perked up. “I can write a mean demigod.”

“But it’s just not worth it for me, Libs.” 

“What do you mean?”

Maureen tilted her head to one side, her short, red hair gleaming as a rare burst of February sunshine poured through the window, illuminating the normally gray and gloomy Pittsburgh skies. “Don’t you see it? We keep doing the same tired stuff over and over again."

“No, we don’t.”

“Yes, we do. I’ll give you an example. How many times has one of your heroines faced an unplanned pregnancy?”

Libby gazed skyward as she counted in her head. “Nine.”

“Why?”

“Well, we’ve had malfunctioning condoms, lack of condoms, forgetting to put on the condom, forgetting to take the pill, taking the pill while on antibiotics, and then there was the one vasectomy that didn’t work.”

“The Regenerated Romeo,” Maureen said with a fond smile. “I liked that one. But what I meant is, why do you keep writing trope? In this day and age, the old, failed vasectomy story doesn’t fly anymore. I’ve exhausted every possible avenue I could to sell your books, Libs. It’s time to move on.”

Libby took another sip of wine, trying to control the hot swell of anger rising in her chest. “Thirty books,” she said, keeping her tone light. “We hit the New York Times Bestseller list together ten times. I’ve stuck with you, Maureen, even when other agents came knocking at my door. I know I can be a bit difficult, but surely loyalty counts for something.”

Maureen refolded the napkin on her lap. “I love you, but it’s been tough to find anyone willing to take you on after what happened with Passionate Publishing.”

Libby’s hand tightened on the stem of her wine glass. “That’s unfair. You can’t blame me for one editor’s mental health crisis.”

“What about Romance Novelists International? They kicked you off their board.”

“Not true,” Libby spluttered. “I stepped down because of Studgate. I felt there was a conflict of interest. No one asked me to leave.”

She couldn’t believe Maureen now blamed her for Studgate, something that happened when another romance author decided to try to copyright the word “stud.” It had nothing to do with Libby, but she’d ended up right in the middle of it, thanks to her Hard Rocking Studs series. 

Of course, Maureen had conveniently forgotten she’d chosen the title for that series, which caused Libby to be named (along with many other romance writers) in a lawsuit. She ended up resigning from her national board position with RNI, and in a sad turn of events, the board replaced Libby with her archnemesis, Scarlett Wilder. Scarlett was an annoyingly perfect woman who wrote spicy regency romances. Everyone loved her, but Libby knew a dark and egotistical heart lurked beneath Scarlett’s polished exterior. Unfortunately, no one else seemed to see it, so Libby got pushed to the side and discarded like a heap of romance-writing garbage, and the undeserving Scarlett became the darling of RNI. 

“I’ll get back on the board, Maureen. And I’ll write more books. Books you can sell. Books that will hit every list and make tons of money for both of us. I swear it.”

Maureen toyed with her watch, glancing at the time. Usually, she asked for the dessert menu, and they chatted over coffee. Not today. This meeting was all business. She leaned close and stared deeply into Libby’s eyes.

“You’re a brilliant writer and a good person, but you need to learn to chill out. Take a break. Spend some quality time with Jack and the girls. I know they’re in college now, but they’re still close to home. Enjoy your life. You’re amazingly talented. You’ll figure this out.”

Libby didn’t want to figure it out. She was comfortable with the way things were right now. She preferred to keep on writing what she’d always been writing, and she wanted Maureen to be the one who sold it. 

But Libby held it together and signed the termination agreement without stabbing her (ex) agent with her pen. She then hugged Maureen goodbye and wished her well. The publishing world was small, and she’d already earned a reputation for being difficult among her editors. The last thing Libby needed was to be blackballed by her former agent. 

In a final act of professionalism and good will, Libby got on her phone after Maureen left and arranged a parting gift—chocolate-covered cherries from the Better Than Sex Candy Company. She had them sent to Maureen’s office in New York. Libby knew they were her favorite, and no one could hold a grudge after receiving something that yummy. 

Not even Maureen.

“Calm and centered, calm and centered,” Libby whispered to herself as she climbed on the Monongahela Incline and rode it down to the parking garage at Station Square. The three rivers of Pittsburgh sparkled below her as the city spread out like a postcard at her feet, but all she could think about were Maureen’s parting words.

“You’ll figure this out.”

Bullshit. Maureen Smythe had basically told Libby she was an over-the-hill, out-of-touch, on the verge of turning forty, romance-writing dinosaur. Maybe they’d make a display for her at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History alongside the other fossils. 

Libby let out an involuntary snort as she pictured herself as a museum exhibit. “Liberty Day (aka Libby Day), Writer at Work.” They could display her right next to the other extinct animals. Behind a pane of glass would sit a wax statue of Libby at her desk, blonde hair up in a messy bun, and yoga pants covering her squishy, widening ass.

“Writer’s butt.” The museum tour guide, a tiny brunette who looked a lot like Scarlett Wilder, would explain the condition with a sad shake of her head. “All the great ones end up with it. Libby Day fought hard, but it got her in the end. It’s depressing.”

A cup of black coffee (probably cold) rested on her desk, right next to her laptop. A red pen, her editing tool of choice, would be permanently clutched in her hand. 

In Libby’s fantasy, the imaginary tour guide continued speaking as a crowd gathered to stare at her waxen form. “Notice how she’s frowning. We aren’t sure if it’s her natural expression, or something caused by trying to think of so many new sexual positions for her characters. She ran out of ideas in the end, and that’s what killed her career, poor dear. Well, that and the rumor she caused her editor at Passionate Publishing to have a nervous breakdown. The woman quit her job and moved to the remote Alaskan wilderness—all to get as far away as possible from Libby Day.”

It made Libby want to scream and cry and rage at the injustice of it all. None of the rumors about the editor were true, but they had spread through the romance-writing community like wildfire. She suspected Scarlett Wilder played a part in it. It seemed like a Scarlett Wilder thing to do. Without warning, Libby had gone from being the queen of RNI to being an outcast. 

And now she was also agentless, which meant the situation had grown worse. This was what hitting rock bottom felt like.

At least she hoped this was rock bottom. What could be worse?

The incline stopped, and Libby trailed behind the other passengers getting off. Part of her wanted to stay on and ride up and down the mountain all day. She loved the old wooden cars, the views, and the thrill she got from knowing only a cable kept them from plunging down the cliff. Morbid, but true. 

The system of cables used for the incline was called a funicular. She’d researched it once for a story and had been obsessed with the incline ever since.

What had they ended up calling that book? The editor had come up with something ridiculous, and when she remembered, she snorted. 

Love on the Wire. 

A stupid title for a book that hadn’t been half bad. Handsome billionaire meets a poor waitress with a shady past but a heart of gold. She rides the incline every day to work at a crummy diner and back to her crummy apartment. He soon joins her and sweeps her off her poor aching waitress feet. Frolicking ensues. An accidental pregnancy arises because, as Maureen kindly pointed out, Libby Day couldn’t write anything else.

But she’d loved the story, which had been at least a little different from the others, mainly because her characters performed sexual acts several times while riding the incline. They should have titled it Coitus in a Cable Car—a more accurate title.

Libby took out her cell phone as she walked to the car park and called her husband, Jack. He didn’t answer, so she left a message.

“Jack, it’s me. Maureen dumped me. I have to start looking for a new agent. Where are you? I thought you planned to work from home today.”

She hung up the phone, giving it a dirty look, and tried to psychically command Jack to call back. When it rang a second later, she jumped, but it wasn’t Jack. It was her friend, Nicky.

Nicky Knightly (her real name, not a pen name, lucky girl) had been Libby’s friend since they’d crossed paths four years ago at the monthly meeting of the Sirens of Steel, the Pittsburgh chapter of Romance Novelists International. Libby had been a founding member of the group. Nicky was new to the game. That day, fate brought them together, and they’d sat with two other writers, Jess and Eliza. 

The four of them had bonded while listening to a workshop on sex toys, and they’d caught the giggles when an elderly member of the group shared her vast knowledge about dildos. They went to lunch together afterward and had been the best of friends ever since, although they were very different people and wrote in completely different subgenres.

Libby wrote contemporary romance with a snarky, urban twist—predominantly involving women falling for billionaires, rock stars, movie idols, and athletes. Rock stars were her personal favorite. She’d always had a thing for them.

Nicky specialized in erotica. Her work was dark and sexy. With her collection of corsets, leather clothing, midnight black hair, and tattoos, she certainly looked the part. No one would ever think she wrote something sweet.

Jess Harper had three little boys, a doting husband, and drove a minivan. She was the epitome of a soccer mom, but her books hinted at her hidden depths. She wrote steamy romantic suspense. 

Eliza Penbroke, a delicate beauty, dressed like someone from another century. She wrote sweet historicals and it made sense. She looked like she could have been a character in one of her novels.

The three of them were her soul sisters. Their connection remained powerful over the years, and at this moment, she knew Nicky was calling to check on her.

“She broke up with me, Nicky,” she said, speaking through the Bluetooth in her new Benz. “She took me to lunch and dumped me in the middle of my kale salad.”

Nicky’s gasp of shock echoed through Libby’s car. “No way. I cannot believe it.”

“It’s true.”

Libby merged onto the Ohio River Boulevard to head home. She’d thought about stopping for a surprise visit with her twin daughters, Beatrice and Sophie, both students at the University of Pittsburgh, but she didn’t want to bring the girls down with her depressing news. Why ruin their day? She planned to return home, curl up on the sofa, drink a bottle of wine, and begin plotting her revenge.

But it worried her because she hadn’t written a word in weeks. Every time she tried to write, the words falling onto the page were flat and ugly and boring. The great irony was now she’d reached a phase in her life when she actually had time to write. Before, she’d done it whenever she could fit it in. When her girls were little, she’d written as they napped. She wrote during school hours as they got older and snuck in more writing time after they went to bed. Her income supported them for many years, but the more Jack’s business grew, the less critical her contribution became. Now they treated it like a hobby, but it wasn’t a hobby. It was her passion, and even if Jack didn’t want to admit it, they could not keep their financial boat afloat without it. Now it felt like everything had been taken away from her in one fell swoop.

“Damn it,” said Nicky. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I mean, I’m not fine right now, at this exact moment, but I will be soon.”

“Group chat tonight with Eliza and Jess?” 

Libby could hear the worry in her voice. “Sounds good. I’ll call you guys after I decompress.” She sighed. “How much longer until our retreat?”

Every year, the four of them spent a fall weekend at Libby’s cabin in the mountains. It had become a tradition, a time for them to write and hang out together, and she needed it this year more than ever.

Nicky laughed. “Oh, only eight months or so. It’s just around the corner.” There was a pregnant pause. “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.”

“I know,” she said softly. “Thank you.”

She hung up, turned onto Main Street, and sped through the village of Riverton. She barely noticed the elegant shops and beautiful homes. She drove past Riverton Academy, the exclusive and very expensive place where her girls had gone to school, and past the Pennington Club, which was also exclusive and expensive. She and Jack had been members for years. He loved it there. She hated it.

Libby frowned. They were supposed to meet friends there for dinner later tonight, but she’d forgotten about it completely. The last thing she needed right now was to spend an evening engaged in pointless conversation with people she didn’t like, but Jack would never let her get out of it. As the financial planner for half of Riverton, mingling and socializing were necessary evils, and part of the job.

“We have to look the part if we want to play the part,” he’d said on more than one occasion, and Jack certainly looked the part. Tall, dark, and handsome in the most cliché way possible, he was the stuff romance heroes were made of, and Libby should know. She’d written more than her fair share, but Jack also enjoyed pointing out the obvious, even if it hurt. “We can’t rely on your writing anymore. You aren’t making what you used to, Libs.”

His words wounded her, but she did as he suggested and tried to look the part as well. It required daily trips to the gym to maintain her figure, weekly trips to the nail salon to maintain her mani-pedis, and monthly trips to the beauty shop to maintain the highlights in her hair. For Libby, it was all about maintenance, and she knew these things were necessary at this point in her life, but they took more time away from her writing. She’d begun to resent it, especially because all Jack had to do was go for a run to keep in shape. He didn’t need any waxing or primping or plumping. He looked distinguished, with a bit of gray in his hair and laugh lines around his eyes. It was a lot more time-consuming, and difficult, to show the image Libby wanted to present to the world. An image of an attractive, successful author in the prime of her life. A person who no longer existed. 

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that she and Jack had different visions. They were very dissimilar people. They had barely known each other when they’d gotten married, fresh out of college, and she’d been pregnant on their wedding day. She wrote about unplanned pregnancies so well because she’d experienced one firsthand. Neither of them had been ready to care for two squalling little humans, but they’d managed it. Somehow. Writing was what kept Libby going. 

It helped that their girls had grown into amazing people. Sophie wanted to be a doctor, and Beatrice was studying civil engineering. They’d earned academic scholarships to Pitt, and Libby couldn’t be prouder. It was also a relief. It gave her one less financial burden to worry about until she could get her career back on track.

She pulled into their driveway, admiring, as she always did, the tree-lined swathe of brick leading up to their home. Situated on the outskirts of the village, theirs stood out as one of the bigger houses in the neighborhood, which said a lot.

They’d financed the down payment with the proceeds from Libby’s first bestseller, Rock Me Baby, the story of Vance Ferris, rock and roll icon, and his high school sweetheart, the girl who inspired most of his music, Penny Reed. After Vance is involved in a scandal that nearly ends his career, he decides to cool his heels back in his hometown and ends up staying in a bed and breakfast run by his old flame. It doesn’t take long for him to figure out Penny’s ten-year-old daughter has his singing voice—and his eyes.

At the time, her girls had been toddlers, little blonde-haired, brown-eyed copies of Libby herself. The sounds of their footsteps and laughter once filled these now-quiet rooms. The house felt gigantic all of a sudden and a little overwhelming. And lonely. And surprisingly empty.

Why was it empty?

“Hello?” she called out, putting her purse on the antique table in the spacious foyer. “Jack?”

Libby meandered into the kitchen, pulled out a cold bottle of pinot grigio from the wine fridge, and poured it into a fishbowl-sized glass. It enabled her to have only one and yet finish half the bottle—not a bad system.

A light blinked on their answering machine, a relic Jack mainly used for his business calls, and Libby played the messages. There were ten in all, one from Andrew, Jack’s brother, reminding them to come for dinner on Sunday. The other nine were from Declan, Jack’s best friend from college, and their lawyer.

Libby frowned. This was not normal, and the messages were hours old.

“Jack?” She stepped into her office, with its wide picture window facing the back garden. The tennis courts were empty now, and the pool was covered. Although today had been surprisingly warm for February, it was getting chilly outside, and the air smelled like snow.

Libby swore under her breath when she noticed the door to the pool house was ajar. She didn’t know what Jack would be doing in the pool house in the dead of winter, but he knew better. The lock was wonky, and the last time he’d left it open, an opossum had snuck inside and had babies on top of one of their seat cushions. Opossum birthing was a messy business, and she’d made Jack clean it up himself. He must have been in a hurry because he was usually more careful. 

She took a long sip of wine, staring at the pool house. She’d have to remind him to fix the lock again, but something felt off here. She put down her glass, planning to go and shut the door herself, and that’s when she noticed it. Someone had left a folded piece of paper on her laptop.

She opened it slowly, with trembling hands. A sick knot formed in the pit of her stomach, and her unease intensified when she read the words on the page.

Dear Libby, I’m so sorry. Call the police and don’t go into the pool house. It would be best if you didn’t remember me like this. Instead, always remember your first book and how everything started. You’ll figure it out. Please forgive me. I’ll love you and the girls forever, Jack.