Page 5 of The Write Stuff

Bree was adamant enough that her blond hair started swinging left and right. “No. It’s not happening.”

“You were raised in the conference circuit, though, right?” Brody asked. “I remember reading about your mother taking you on the road with her for book tours when you were a kid.”

“That happened quite frequently,” I confirmed, smiling. “I actually liked being on the road with her.”

“Even after that whole Galactic Empire of Coronado blow up?” Bree challenged.

My shoulders went stiff at mention of the movie trilogy that had forever changed my mother’s life. Heck, it had changed my life as well.

“I won’t say that things weren’t tense there for a little bit,” I hedged, my mind going back to a memory of my mother losing her mind and screaming at Agnes Quincy in front of thousands of fans at the Austin Convention Center in Texas. There had been a slap, too. The slap heard round the world. Well, up until that Will Smith at the Oscars thing. My mother, always cool and collected, had found out about “the betrayal” three minutes before joining Aggie on stage. She’d kept her cool for a grand total of 30 seconds. Then she’d slapped Aggie and thrown herself on her longtime friend.

There was hair-pulling, accusations of being a whore, and an oath that they would never work together again. That had been 12 years ago — five years after they announced the big science fiction project — and they’d never spoken again. My mother was serious to the nth degree when making a promise, and she’d promised to dance on Aggie’s grave one day.

“Tense?” Bree let loose a hollow laugh. “I heard that Agnes Quincy still has bald spots from all the hair your mother pulled out.”

The incident at the Austin Convention Center was legendary now. Authors weren’t known for being rowdy after all. That was the domain of Hollywood stars. People were meant to remember Will Smith storming the stage at the Oscars and slapping Chris Rock. They would talk in reverent whispers about Orlando Bloom and Justin Bieber going at it in Ibiza. They would laugh while also worrying about all the weird stuff Shia LaBeouf had gotten himself into. Authors were supposed to be above it all, though.

It didn’t help matters that my mother and Aggie wouldn’t talk about it after the fact. As far as I knew, they’d never been in the same room together again. Their agents even sat down once a year to dole out all the conventions so they would never run the risk of crossing paths in front of an audience, even if for only a moment.

Therefore, if my mother was going to San Diego one year, that meant Aggie was going to Atlanta. They switched off. No muss, no fuss. My mother wouldn’t even mention Aggie’s name. It was all so weird when they’d been as close as sisters at one time.

“I wouldn’t know anything about that.” I held out my hands and shrugged. “I wasn’t there when it happened.”

“You weren’t traveling with your mother then?” Brody asked.

“No. I was in college.” I grimaced when thinking about that time of my life. It seemed that everything that had gone wrong back then — and it had been more than just the convention incident — all happened in a short window that year. When the dust settled, Mom refused to talk about it, and I let her off the hook because … well, just because. I’d never been good at confronting my mother when the stakes were high, and she used that to her advantage. Eventually, it was too late to bring it up.

“People would pay huge bucks for that story,” Bree offered, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “I would offer good money for that story.”

“You’re just a busybody,” Brody shot back, shaking his head. “He obviously doesn’t want to talk about it. Leave him alone.”

Bree muttered something I couldn’t quite make out under her breath. Then she offered me a winning smile. “I apologize. I’ve told Brody to be open and honest with me when I go too far. Apparently, that’s me today.” She shrugged. “I can’t help being curious, though. Nobody knows what happened between your mother and Agnes Quincy. People are desperate.”

“I know they are.” I managed a rueful smile, although it took effort. “I have some bad news for you, though. I don’t know why they got into the fight.” It was better to get this out of the way now, I figured. That way, she wouldn’t bring it up again.

As expected, Bree’s eyebrows moved toward one another in an expression of confusion. “What do you mean that you don’t know?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, opting for honesty. “I mean, I heard something about what might have caused it, but I never got confirmation, and my mother refuses to talk about it.”

“But … that’s so lame,” Bree complained. “Are you seriously telling me that you don’t know if they were secretly in a throuple that went sideways?”

Now it was my turn to be surprised. “Is that the rumor?”

“One of them,” she replied. “There are a million rumors, though. One of them suggests that your mother was Team Kirk and Aggie was Team Picard, and it was the source of turmoil for years, and it finally bubbled over.”

I didn’t realize my mouth was open until I tried to speak. “Um … I can guarantee that’s not it,” I said finally.

Brody sent Bree a triumphant look. “Told you.”

She scalded him with a glare. “I never said that was the real reason.”

“You said it would be cool.”

“Whatever.” Bree waved a dismissive hand at him, although she did blow him a kiss a second later. When she focused on me, I knew she wasn’t done with the interrogation. “You must have an inkling.”

That was the problem. I did have an inkling. It wasn’t something I wanted to talk about, though. “I honestly don’t know,” I replied. “It’s sad because I really liked Aggie. We used to go on family vacations together twice a year back when they were friends. I didn’t even really get a chance to say goodbye to her.”

Brody clucked his tongue sympathetically. “Was she like an aunt to you?”