Chapter 1

“When are you leaving?” I ask, with uncertainty in my voice. He always leaves with little notice. Sometimes I wonder if he loves work more than me.

“Tomorrow �" Early morning.” He says as though this is just an everyday occurrence his job asks him to move to London.

I wonder if he even really cares about me. He hasn’t consoled me. He never does when he has to leave. He acts as though this doesn’t hurt me. I play it off like I’m fine, but sometimes I wish he showed it just a little bit.

“Do you need my help packing?” When will you get the rest of your things? Why can’t I move out there with you?” I can just hear the desperation in my voice. I sound pathetic.

“Elizabeth” he says sternly “We will figure everything out, okay? I will be back before Christmas and we will figure everything out then. Right now, I need to focus on closing this deal and you breathing down my neck doesn’t help anything.”

I walk out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, my heart filled with anger. This house may be big and beautiful, but I feel so empty and alone. All the money in the world doesn’t buy happiness. Trust me, I’ve learned the hard way.

He hasn’t come out of the bedroom in hours. I’ve been sitting here in the kitchen, knitting away the stress. I wonder what he’s thinking or what he’s even doing right now. Is he packing? Is he crying? Who the hell knows with him.

The phone in the kitchen starts to ring. I walk up and hesitantly answer it. I just want to cry.

“Elizabeth? It’s your mother.”

Oh, dear lord. Like she needed to tell me it’s her. I can just tell by the way she says my name. I should just hang up now.

“Yes?” I ask, annoyed.

“I need a favor”

“What, Mother?” I say, rolling my eyes.

“I need you to come out to the cabin. Your father is on another business trip and I am here all alone trying to get things together. My incompetent event planner has quit and now I have no one here to help me.”

Of course, her party planner quit. No one wants to deal with her high-and-mighty attitude. “Help you with what?”

“Put on a party for your father and his partners at the cabin. He’s coming back in a week and I need help getting everything organized.”

“Mother, I don’t think you can call a mansion in the woods a ‘cabin’.”

“Oh, stop it Elizabeth. Pack a bag and come at once. I need you.”

I wait for a moment and think. Honestly, no matter how much my mother annoys me, it’s better than sitting here alone in this huge house feeling sorry for myself. It’s not like I have a job to report to in the morning. I need to get out. Even if it is to spend time with my obnoxious mother.

“Fine. I will find a flight once I get to the airport”

“Wonderful. Call me when you find a flight to Denver and I will send a car to pick you up.” She says, so business-like.

“Wonderful.” I say sarcastically.

I get off the phone and part of me fills with joy. Not because I’ll see my mother (oh, hell no) but because for once, I get to leave HIM and not the other way around. I march up to the bedroom and open the door ready to spill my heart out. But once I get there and see his gorgeous face, nothing comes out. I stand there like an idiot.

“Yes, Elizabeth?” He says, puzzled.

I don’t say anything. In fact, I think it’s better not to say anything at all. I grab a suitcase from my long beautiful closet and start throwing things in. Anything within sight. Oh, how I will miss this closet.

“What are you doing?” he says, sounding like he’s concerned. That’s a first. But I still stay silent and keep packing. “You’re starting to freak me out, Elizabeth.”

Now I’m fuming. I put as much yarn and knitting needles as I can find and put them in my suitcase. I can always find a yarn store if I need more. It’s not like I don’t have his platinum card. Hell, I’ll go and buy the whole store if I want to.

“Give me some room” I say, shoving him away. I finally find the strength I’ve been seeking. Man, this feels good. “Don’t touch me. Hell, don’t even look at me. I’m tired of this. Of all of this. Move to London. Leave and find yourself a side b***h, just like you always do. But trust me when I say, this time, I’m not waiting for you, Adam. I have plans. Don’t follow me. I’m leaving.”

I didn’t even take the time to look at his expression. And just like that, I storm off to the garage to find his brand-new Audi and I speed out of the driveway and off to the airport. A*****e won’t get me down this time.

Reviews

[JayG]

You write well. And I see that you’re trying to stay in the protagonist’s moment of “now,” so as to pull the reader in. That’s great, but the method you chose, that of reporting an action, and then explaining it to the reader, as the narrator, may be distancing them too much.

Look at a few lines as an acquiring editor, who knows only what the words suggest, based on their personal background, not your intent, would.

• “When are you leaving?” I ask, with uncertainty in my voice.

Not a bad first line, but you’re placing effect—the question—before the motivation to ask that question, robbing it of context. For a reader, someone unknown, of unknown gender, in an unknown place, in an unknown era, is asking someone unknown when they would be going to an unknown place. It works for someone who knows the backstory, but…

Wouldn’t it make sense to orient the reader in time, space, and situation so as to provide a motivation for the comment? Suppose you said:

“As I sat brushing my hair out, I watched Jack place his suitcase on the bed, unzip it, and begin to pack.”

With one short sentence the reader knows we’re in a bedroom where there are mirrors and suitcases have zippers—mid 20th century onward. We learn the man’s name, something you don’t now provide. We learn what’s happening. And, we learn the gender of the protagonist in the opening line.

Moreover, we have her motivation for asking, so the question in the original first line comes naturally, as a result of her observation. Without that the reader lacks context to make the question meaningful as-it’s-read. It also provides justification for her uncertainty, and the exposition that follows. Without that the reader has no reason to WANT to know.

• “Tomorrow �" Early morning.” He says as though this is just an everyday occurrence his job asks him to move to London.

Several points here. First, structural: If you’re copy/pasting from some version of MS Word, you can indent paragraphs via the top ruler, drop the white-space, and it will translate properly, here.

One thing that doesn’t translate is the em-dash, which, I’m guessing, is the cause of that null character. Instead, use two dashes. But here, I’d suggest an ellipsis, instead, with no spacing and no upper case on the second clause. The em-dash is more for a break-off or a parenthetical insertion than hesitation or trailing off.

Next: Edit, edit, edit. You have unbalanced quote marks, and the end section of the sentence needs rephrasing, badly. To keep the authorial intrusion to a minimum, why not change the quote to read something like:
- - - -
“Tomorrow,” he said, as casually as if I’d asked him what time it was. “There’s a meeting at the Southwark Park office on Tuesday, so my plane leaves for London at noon” He shrugged. “Which means I’d better be at JFK by nine.” The man was leaving me for an unknown time, but he obviously wasn’t troubled by that in the slightest. *Damn the man!*
- - - -
Look at the difference: Instead of explaining how he spoke as an authorial interjection, the narrator works in support of the scene, providing ambiance without having to stop the action. And instead of a terse response from him, I provided a more natural, but still dispassionate, response that also tells the reader that they’re in or near New York City, and both how he’s traveling and his destination. This gives ambiance and mood. I included his comment on the meeting to show his focus on business.

Notice that, again, the narrator isn’t jumping on stage, silencing the actors and explaining things as an outside observer. Instead, it’s what she hears, sees, and, reacts to. I had him shrug in order to show his casual attitude toward travel, provide an emotional visual, and to break up the sentence into shorter chunks. And by giving her personal reaction to the narrator’s interjection of his attitude I change it from something coming from the author to an active personal contemplation, and reaction, that takes place in her moment of now.

See how that can swing what might be authorial exposition into the viewpoint of the protagonist in real-time?

For a bit on why that matters so much in hooking the reader, try this article:
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/the-grumpy-writing-coach-8/

Minor point: If your characters don’t use contractions in normal speech, can they seem realistic?

• He acts as though this doesn’t hurt me. I play it off like I’m fine, but sometimes I wish he showed it just a little bit.

Here’s a story killer: You just told the reader she’s upset that he doesn’t console her, then give the reason: That she obviously doesn’t need consoling.

It’s not what you intended the reader to get, but it is what you said, which is why editing should be done from the seat of a reader who knows only what the words suggest to them, and who is easy to confuse…someone a little stupid, like me.

As I mentioned, you write well—better then the vast majority of those posting on this site. And the problems I see are not ones of talent, potential as a writer, or even story. It’s that you’re missing some critical technical and presentation methodology points. And that’s fixable.

Try the article on Motivation/Response Units that I link to, below. It’s a condensation of a technique found in Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer, a book that should be on every fiction-writer’s bookshelf. Used well, if someone throws a rock at your protagonist the reader will duck.
http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/scene.php

In the end, my advice boils down to this:

1. You might want to dig around in the other writing articles in my blog to identify the issues you need to focus on.
2. Pick up a personal copy of Swain’s book. It’s the best on technique I’ve found to date. It won’t make a pro of you. That’s your job. But it will give you the tools and the knowledge with which to become one if it’s in you.

So…I’m pretty certain that this wasn’t what you were hoping to hear, given how beautifully the story works when you read it. But you cheat. When you leave out details that seem obvious to you, your mind automatically fills them in as you read. And when you read, the voice you “hear” is your own, performing, and so, filled with emotion. So of course it works. But to hear what a reader gets, and why the emotion must be inherent to the presentation, have your computer read this aloud—which is a great editing technique, in any case.

So have at it. In the end, writing is a journey, not a destination. Write with just a bit more skill every day, and if you live long enough…

Hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/