Finding Fraser Read online

  Egon showed up at eight fifteen with a pink posy in one hand—and his assistant Tiffany in the other. “Tiff’s fridge broke down today,” he said, setting the wilted flowers in the center of the table.

  Tiffany wriggled between Egon and the table. “Oh, Emma, you are SO kind to include me,” she gushed. “I SWORE I wouldn’t disturb your special night with Egon, but he insisted you’d put on an enormous spread and I wouldn’t be in the way.”

  That girl sucked those shrimp back like a Dyson. Egon had smiled indulgently and pushed the plate closer to her.

  In retrospect, perhaps I should have taken the three of us eating our anniversary dinner as a sign. Because within six months, Tiffany was serving all-you-can-eat lobster dinners for two in my old apartment, and I haven’t eaten seafood since.

  Strangely, though, the break-up dinner didn’t affect my feelings for chocolate tortes.

  So yeah, I’d sworn to Sophia my plan wasn’t about a man. Egon had cured me of Internet dating for life, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have a few good memories. Still, by three, the crying jag brought on by the old Chablis and the pictures of Egon on the mantle that I’d drunkenly begun to pack was over.

  The crying was over, and so were the pictures.

  Over the balcony railing, as a matter of fact.

  That shattering noise glass makes on pavement?

  Extremely satisfying.

  I finished sweeping the entire parking lot free of glass by five-thirty. My building’s Super is small, but she has great deductive reasoning—and she carries a big stick. (Literally. It’s her son’s old baseball bat. This neighborhood can be rough at night.)

  She also had my security deposit check in her pocket, which she threatened to tear up if I didn’t get my ass downstairs to clean up the mess I’d made.

  When I dumped the last of my shattered memories into the bin, she nodded stiffly. “Men are dicks,” she said. “They can’t help it.”

  It was the closest thing to sympathy I’d received all week. I burst into tears, but she brandished the bat at me when I leaned in for a hug.

  I figured I could live with that, seeing as she did give me the check.

  Figure Four…

  8:45 pm, February 18

  Chicago, Illinois, USA

  Less than a week before my plane leaves. I’m actually flying out of JFK in New York, so I’m going to have to get myself across four states in that time. I haven’t quite sorted this out, as yet. But it is all coming together.

  I’m really confident——and excited!

  - ES

  Comments: 1

  SexxxyGrrl:

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  It was not all coming together.

  And with every day, the blog seemed to be rapidly morphing from true-life travelogue to creative non-fiction.

  I decided I was okay with that. Reality TV notwithstanding, public humiliation is not all it’s cracked up to be. Let the world see my best self, right?

  And I had managed to find myself a killer deal on the plane ticket, even with the cost of the bus trip to New York tacked on.

  My sister had left six messages on my cell phone, alternately haranguing me about shirking my family duties and reminding me to call our mother, so maybe she could talk some sense into me.

  I did not call our mother.

  Instead, I sold the last of my furniture. The worst was saying goodbye to my Xbox. No more dragon slaying in my future. It’s like—well, it’s kind of like saying goodbye to my youth. I mean, I didn’t even have to give up the Xbox when I got married, for god’s sake. And it’s not like I’ve been playing Dragon Age anywhere near as much as I was two years ago.

  But still. It hurts.

  On the other hand, the Super’s son paid thirty bucks for my old bed. I didn’t tell him it was the same double bed I’d had since I was seventeen. Kinda sorry to see it go, but really? It’s time. Everything has to go for this trip to even happen. And for it to mean anything at all? I need to make a complete break from the old Emma

  By afternoon, I found myself waiting at the passport office. I got there on time for my appointment, but they seemed to be running late and I ended up sitting in the waiting area, roasting in my coat and boots. My number was B48, and with only two officers on duty, the numbers crawled by painfully slowly.

  A woman seated in a chair just in front of me was reading her Kindle, and I mentally kicked myself for forgetting to bring a book or a newspaper. With nothing else to do, I began killing time making notes for my next blog post. I was jotting a list of things I’d rather do than wait with fifty strangers for a passport when, out of the blue, the woman made a little involuntary sound.

  I recognized that sound. Half gasp, half sigh. I had made it myself.

  Over her shoulder I saw a single word, and I knew in an instant what she was reading.

  One of the interview windows opened up, and the red digital number on the wall pinged as it changed. B47. No one moved. I gathered my papers together, hoping they’d just go to the next number when the woman in front of me suddenly jumped up. Her handbag and papers cascaded off her lap onto the floor

  “That’s me,” she said loudly, pointing at the number on the wall, and scrambling to pick up her papers.

  I knelt down and handed her two of the pages that had fallen near my feet.

  “Thank you,“ she said, jamming the Kindle into her handbag.

  I grinned at her. “OUTLANDER?” I said.

  The smile on her face turned to puzzlement. “VOYAGER,” she replied.

  I nodded knowingly. “Oh, right. Must be the post-reunion scene?”

  She stared at me suspiciously. “Have you been reading over my shoulder?”

  I winced. “Not—not really. Claire’s name just jumped out at me.”

  She raised a skeptical eyebrow and hurried off to the open window.

  When my turn finally came, I paid the fee and picked up my passport. My photo looked like the face of someone who could drive a splintery wooden stake through a newborn puppy’s heart.

  So, just about like usual. A bit better than my driver’s license, actually.

  As I stepped into the elevator, mentally calculating if the money I got from the bed would justify a stay in a New York hotel instead of a hostel, someone touched my shoulder.

  It was the woman with the Kindle.

  “Are you a writer?” she blurted, looking pointedly at my notebook. She had one hand buried deep in her handbag.

  I started to shake my head, and then re-thought it. “Well—I blog a bit,” I said.

  She narrowed her eyes and shot a look at my abdomen. “Mommy blogger?”

  “I’m NOT pregnant,” I said. “I just ate Indian food for lunch.”

  She shrugged, but didn’t apologize. “So—book blogger, then?”

  “No. It’s more of a personal journal. About a trip I’m taking. A—a travel blog.”

  The doors opened. “Oh. Never mind, then.” She turned on her heel and sped off toward the entranceway.

  I hurried after her. “Wait a sec,” I called, as she descended the front steps. “Why did you think—I mean, how did you know I’m a writer?”

  She stopped on the stair below me. “Only a blogger,” she corrected, and then paused for a minute, staring up at me.

  “You were scribbling in that notebook, is all,” she said, at last. “And since you knew the books, well—I thought you might be interested in this conference.”

  She dug deep into her handbag, and then thrust a flyer into my hands. It was heavily creased, and in the time I took to unfold it, she had her hand on the front door.

  “What is it?” I cried out, unable to read and catch up at the same time.

  I could feel the rush of cold wind as she opened the door below me. I heard her voice, borne on a wave of city traffic noise. “Love Is in the Air!” she yelled, the slam of the door cutting off her last w
ord.

  I was left standing in the entranceway, clutching my passport and a crumpled piece of hot pink paper.

  Feet Forward…

  4:30 pm, February 19

  Somewhere past Cleveland on the I-90, USA

  I’m on the road, at last. The journey begins with a bus ride. First stop: Philadelphia. Heading east, toward adventure. Forward!

  - ES

  Comments: 2

  SexxxyGrrl:

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  Philadelphia. The city of brotherly love.

  Why Philadelphia? Why not straight to New York?

  All because of one little pink flyer containing one significant piece of information. Something that could change the whole nature of this journey.

  Someone.

  I closed the lid to my laptop. The truth was, adventure was less exhilarating than it was actually nauseating. The original plan—admittedly made in the heat of the just-been-fired-on-my-birthday moment—had been to grab the cheapest flight I could find. That it meant a bus trip across four states (five, if you count Illinois) didn’t even faze me. Part of the adventure, right?

  And then Kindle Lady had come along and handed me a flyer that essentially said “Yes, Emma—this is the right decision. Follow your heart and you’ll find your Fraser.”

  Amazing how reality can slide down your neck like a trickle of winter sleet.

  My stomach was in knots. An hour earlier when I’d stepped off the slushy street and onto the bus, I’d remembered Sophia’s jab. She was right, too. This trip would be the first time I had traveled completely solo in my whole life. Pathetic for someone teetering on the scary precipice of thirty years old, but true. Then the bus had pulled out and it was too late to turn back. I was on the road.

  To commemorate the event, I posted to my blog using Wi-Fi on a moving vehicle for the first time ever.

  That was kind of nauseating too, come to think of it.

  The only good part was that I hadn’t stopped to call anyone. Not my mother, not my sister, not even my friend Jazmin. I texted them all, instead. To say I was on my way. To say I loved them.

  To say I was terrified.

  I hadn’t actually typed out the last bit. Sophia would have had the police searching for me if I had. As it was, I got a cheery “Have a great time, check in when you can!” back from my mother. Sophia’s text held lower hopes for me. “Don’t expect me to rescue you if you get into trouble.” And Jazmin didn’t reply at all.

  That was okay, though because, before I left, I’d told her about the blog. She was a huge Jamie fan, too, and she’d sworn she would have come with me if she’d had the courage. She’d even promised to follow the blog. Now, I love my Jazzy-girl, but she doesn’t know an RSS feed from her grass seed. (She’s a landscape architect. Really good, too.) But since she is too much of a Luddite to even return a text, I have a plan. Once I get off this rocking bus and into Philadelphia, I’ll find me some free Wi-Fi at a coffee shop, and link the blog to my Facebook page. Jazmin will be able to manage that, at least. She loves Facebook.

  So yeah. As I sat on the bus rocketing past the brown slush-guttered suburbs of Chicago, my laptop and the sum total of everything else I brought was stowed in my backpack. I don’t think I’ve owned so little property in—well, in my whole life. Growing up, I had all the comforts a middle-class home could offer. Even as a freshman, I lived in a college dorm packed with stuff: books, clothes and everything else. My hair products alone filled an entire closet. In those long-ago days, my life would have ended if anyone even suspected I had curly hair. What would the younger version of me have thought if she knew I’d actually sold my flat iron to help finance a trip to Scotland?

  This was different. It felt real. It felt really … scary.

  I leaned forward on the seat, clutched my stomach and closed my eyes. I tried talking myself through it.

  Okay, Sheridan, focus. Selling everything means a fresh start. It means you can spend two full months looking for your Fraser. And anyway, it’s only Philadelphia—you’re not leaving the good old US of A just yet.

  Deep breath. Deep breath.

  Where was that damn tuna sandwich bag when I needed it?

  The bus began slowing down, so I made a snap decision to just step out a minute and get a breath of air. Real, clean, not-very-far-from-Chicago air.

  It had taken a few minutes, but in the immortal words my sister Sophia stole from a far better cause, things got better.

  Really.

  It had been a bit of a close one, though. I’d never had a full-blown panic attack on a public vehicle before. Once the screaming stopped, of course, things definitely improved.

  That moment when the bus was slowing down? Well, it turned out the bus had only been gearing down to take a curve, and the driver had no intention of pausing to let one worried passenger out to breathe a bit of fresh air.

  And to clarify? It wasn’t me screaming.

  My jaws were locked together in terror, just as tightly as my hands were clamped around the exit door, which apparently affected the driver’s ability to control the vehicle, somehow. And maybe the radio to his dispatcher transmitted his screaming? At any rate, in the end the police were able to slow the bus down by maneuvering their cars in front of it.

  The driver got the rest of the night off, so no need to feel too bad for him. And afterwards, when everyone had calmed down a bit, I had a nice chat with a very personable police officer, who told me he’d had panic attacks in his twenties, too.

  “Twenty-nine was the worst,” he said. “I freaked out one night and beat the shit out of this teenage kid. Thought I was going to lose my job. But, the kid turned out to be Muslim, so you know, in the end all I got was sensitivity-training and a transfer, and here I am today, helping talk you down.”

  Strangely disconcerting and comforting at the same time. Nothing like a cuddly racist to make a person feel better about herself.

  The racist cop sent the first bus on its way once they’d dragged me off in Pittsburgh, and left me with his partner to wait for the next bus. The bus station where we were sitting smelled of urine and old socks, but it was pretty late and I was sitting with a cop, so I tried not to think about it.

  “So, why Philadelphia?” she said, over our second cup of coffee.

  I fished around in my pack and pulled out the flyer.

  “Love Is in the Air, huh?” she said, glancing at the headline. “So, you’re a writer, then. Well, that explains a lot.”

  “Blogger, actually,” I said. “I’m on a bit of a travel adventure. This is kind of a side-trip. There’s—well, there’s someone at this event I really need to meet.”

  The officer returned to reading the flyer, and when she got to the bottom, her eyes snapped up to meet mine. “Jeesely H Roosevelt Christ,” she said, and her voice filled with a sudden reverence. “Do you SEE who’s the Guest of Honor?”

  I nodded slowly. “So—you’ve read the books?”

  “Are you freaking kidding me? My husband gave them to me the year we got married. I lost a whole summer to, well … to mmphm.”

  “Your husband? Whoah.” I was impressed. “My ex wouldn’t read a book to save his life. Only had eyes for the Blackhawks, that man. And his girlfriend, of course.”

  She nodded at me sympathetically. “Divorced, huh? Aw, you’re probably better off without the bum.”

  “It only lasted a year,” I mumbled.

  She leaned across the table and pointed her spoon at me. “Well, in our case, that book is the recipe for a happy marriage, I tell ya. A man who aspires to be like Jamie Fraser is one in a million. My guy? Well, let’s just say that the year AN ECHO IN THE BONE came out, he didn’t watch a single playoff game. And the Penguins were going for the cup that season.”

  The things you learn from cops i
n bus stations.

  She was one hundred percent right. I should have known Egon was wrong for me the minute he said he didn’t read romances.

  A. Historical fiction is NOT romance.

  B. What the hell is wrong with reading romance, anyway?

  And C.? He didn’t read anything at all, really.

  I should have known.

  When my bus pulled up a few minutes later, the cop hugged me warmly and tucked an Ativan out of her own stash into my pocket to ward off any relapses.

  “You’ll love Philadelphia,” she said. “But watch out for the ladies who are putting on your shin-dig. There’s a romance writing group near here in Erie, and let me just say—we’ve been called out to a few of their parties. Some of those chicks are decently hard-core.”

  I waved through the window until she was just a teeny blue dot in the distance. Nice to know that even a cop could see the value of following a dream.

  Fortuitous Fate…

  3:30 pm, February 20

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

  The most important news for today is that I have mastered the comment anti-spam function. Because, there may not be many actual readers out there, but holy crow——is my blog being followed by a lot of bots.

  Okay, I’m lying.

  Because the most important news is that I have actually made it into a special mini-conference, sponsored by an organization for writers of romantic fiction. Yes, the very conference advertised on a certain hot-pink flyer handed to me in Chicago.

  Fate smiled on me that day.

  Apparently, the conference has been planned to celebrate Something Special. (Also? I note that the flyer tended to Randomly Capitalize Important Items. Jane Austen, your influence has now extended into its third century…)

  This particular Something Special is an industry award. And that it is an award given to someone who has never claimed to be a romance writer (nor an Over-User of Excessive Capitalization) is what makes it all the more interesting.