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and keep up the small talk and pretend that everything’s okay? If you start a relationship pretending to be someone you’re not, when can you stop pretending?
    I wondered about all these things as I climbed the apartment’s front steps and found Reverend William Ruttles blocking the doorway with his six-foot-six-inch frame. A canvas bag sat at his feet. “Hello, Alice,” he said in his resounding preacher’s voice. “How are you?”
    “Fine.” I unclenched my aching fingers. I’d stopped at the post office box on the way home so the shopping bag was heavy with bills and junk mail.
    The reverend leaned on his cane, his knees weakened by his bulk. He lowered his voice, for secrecy thrives in hushed tones. “Are you going to visit your mother tomorrow?”
    “Yes. Are you coming with us?”
    “I’m afraid I’ll have to miss this visit. I have a doctor’s appointment.” Reverend Ruttles was a member of my mother’s inner circle so he knew the truth. Well, some of the truth. He lived in the first-floor apartment across from ours. The four-unit building had been one of my mother’s many purchases in the days when she’d churned out books. But after a bunch of bad financial decisions, she’d been forced to sell the lake house. We’d moved into the apartment when I was five. The reverend and Mrs. Bobot had come with the place—built-in tenants who’d turned into trusted friends.
    “Any word?” Reverend Ruttles asked. “Is she feeling better?”
    “She’s the same.” I wanted to change the subject as much as I wanted to get out of the heat. “Where are you going?”
    “I’m off to meet with the social committee. You’re looking at the newly elected chairperson.” Though retired from the pulpit, the reverend still volunteered at his Episcopal church. “We’ve got important matters to discuss, like coffee filters and diabetic cookies. There was a big hullabaloo last week about the price of doilies.”
    I carried his canvas bag down the front steps as he began his slow descent. “She will get better, Alice. You must have faith. Your mother is strong and nothing can keep her from you.”
    With all my heart I wanted to believe that.
    At the bottom step, he took the canvas bag. “Thank you, my dear.” He tapped the sidewalk with his cane and said, “Praise the Lord, what a glorious day.” Then he hobbled off to the bus stop.
    I hesitated before opening my apartment door, knowing the familiar ache that waited for me. Loneliness had moved into my apartment as if it had no better place to go. It rubbed up against me like a hungry cat when I stepped inside. Once the click of the door faded, silence filled the rooms. So much was missing—the smell of my mother’s perfume, the sound of her tapping fingers as she wrote, the simple questions like, “How was your day?” Or “Do I look fat in this?” During my Welmer Girls Academy years I’d become used to the short separations between holidays and long weekends, but I’d never faced an entire summer on my own.
    I kicked off the flip-flops, dropped my purse, then sorted through the mail. Catalogs, junk, a few bills, and a single fan letter. Why read it? It would be just like the others.
    When can I buy your next book?
    When will your next book be out?
    I’m so looking forward to your next book.
    Truth was, the letters used to come by the dozens. Now only a few arrived each week as hungry romance readers drifted to other authors. Romance readers are a unique group. They consume books by the armful and are fiercely loyal to their favorite authors. But even the most loyal reader can’t be loyal if there’s nothing to read. If my mother didn’t write another book soon, a new writer would replace her on the bestseller list and Belinda Amorous would probably go out of print and her stories would drift into oblivion.
    I pulled the manila envelope from the shopping bag and tossed it onto the kitchen table. One letter remained, from Heartstrings Publishers,