Read Online Morning by Nancy Thayer - Free Book Online

perfectly fluted crusts, then, on the spur of the moment, picked up the phoneand once again dialed Fanny Anderson’s number. It was just after three-thirty in the afternoon, a decent time to call.
    Again, the Irishwoman’s cold hello. But this time, “Just a moment, please, I’ll get Mrs. Anderson for you.”
    And then, softly, “Hello? This is Fanny Anderson.”
    “Oh, Mrs. Anderson,” Sara said. “This is Sara Kendall, calling from Nantucket. I’m a freelance editor for Heartways House. I’ve been editing your Desperate Dangerous Desire . But I worked for several years as Donald James’s assistant at Walpole and James, so I’ve had quite a bit of experience in editing—all kinds of books. And I’m calling because I found some pages in your romance novel that didn’t fit. The pages were about a girl named Jenny …” Sara let her voice trail off. Before she plunged boldly into suggesting that Fanny Anderson work on a Jenny novel, she needed to hear more from that woman than just hello.
    “Oh, yes,” Fanny Anderson said. Her voice was soft and lilting, with a slight drawl that Sara assumed had lasted from her Kansas days. “I was wondering where those pages were. I didn’t realize—” She didn’t finish her sentence.
    “Well,” Sara said, “I called you because I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed the Jenny pages. I thought they were wonderfully well written, and Jenny is fascinating. I’m so curious about what happens to her. And so I thought I’d call and see if perhaps you are working on this as a novel, and if so, how far you’ve gotten, and if you need an editor, and also, perhaps, well, it’s possible that Donald James might be interested in seeing the story. Although I haven’t of course talked with him about it yet.”
    For a long moment there was silence. Then Fanny Anderson spoke, her voice softer than before. “I didn’t intend for anyone to read my Jenny pages yet,” she said. “Not just yet. This is all most confusing. I’m not sure just what to say. I really hadn’t meant for anyone to read that particular piece yet.”
    “Oh,” Sara said, disappointed. The woman seemed so hesitant, so unsure. “Well, there were about fifteen pages mixed up with the romance novel,” she said. “And I couldn’t keep from reading them—as I said, they were wonderful.”
    “You really liked them?” Fanny asked.
    “Very much. Very much .”
    “Well, my goodness,” Fanny said. “This is just so very—perplexing. I don’t know what to say. I think I need to have some time to think about all this. You see, I was reallywriting the Jenny pages just for myself, although of course I can’t say I didn’t have the thought of a novel about Jenny in my mind. But I really wasn’t ready for anyone to read it. Yet here it turns out you already have read some of it—and liked it—it seems just a little bit like fate, doesn’t it?” Fanny laughed, huskily, softly. “We writers are so superstitious, you know. We rely on fate so much it’s really foolish. But it does seem—I was trying to decide what to work on next. Whether to start another romance novel, or whether to really settle down with Jenny … and now here’s your phone call. And you say you worked with Donald James?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well. My. That’s quite impressive. Oh, dear, I don’t know what to do.”
    After a moment Sara asked, “Well, do you have any more written about Jenny? That I perhaps could see?”
    Silence. A long silence. Then, softly, “Yes. Yes, in fact I do have quite a lot more written.”
    “I’d love to see it,” Sara pressed.
    “I just don’t know,” Fanny replied. “I just don’t know. I hadn’t even thought about showing it to anyone yet. You see, I care about this novel, quite a lot.”
    It was then that Sara felt certain that the Jenny pages were a memoir as much as a novel. But she said, “I can understand that. Writing this kind of a novel must be much more difficult than writing