“You’re right.”
“Take care of yourself.”
“Call me when you’ve settled.”
“You’ll hear from me again,” Leana said, and she was gone.
It wasn’t until January that he was ready to sit at his desk and look seriously at his typewriter, the one his agent sent him months ago as a gift.
He knew he couldn’t go on like this. By withdrawing from the world, by hanging onto the past, he was killing himself and everything he’d worked so hard for. His agent had given him a number of story ideas, but only one mattered to Michael, only one was paramount, and if he wanted to move on, if he really wanted to deal with the past, the only way to do so would be to write about it.
He looked at the typewriter. He never wrote on a computer and his agent knew it. He liked the sound of a typewriter. He liked the feeling of removing a piece of paper when he was finished creating something on it. He liked the rhythm of the words as they were pounded out.
He put a blank sheet of paper into the typewriter and closed his eyes. That title, that opening sentence and the first few paragraphs came to him at once. They had been lingering in his mind since the original manuscript was burned.
But could he do it? Could he really write the story that had changed so many lives? And if he did write about it, if he did tell the truth even if he did change the names, would he be ready for all the controversy that would ensue? Michael wasn’t sure. Novel or not, people would know the story he’d written was based on fact.
Maybe he’d change the names later. Maybe he wouldn’t. What mattered now was getting it on paper.
And then he remembered what the man Cain said to him that day in his apartment. Just moments after he read the first chapter and destroyed the manuscript, Cain asked how Michael could use these events, these places. Michael’s answer was immediate-perhaps he would use a pseudonym.
He rested his hands on the typewriter and was relieved to find that it no longer seemed as threatening. He thought of Leana then, thought of all the Redmans, chose a generic pseudonym and after a moment, he began to type: