My attention wants to wander to Paris. It doesn’t want to focus on the heartbreaking depths of my past. I wish we were in Paris now. Paige would miss being apart from Beau and Jane for so long. She squealed when we came back. They were waiting with a large family dinner for all five of us, and then a sleepover with just the three of them. It’s not realistic that we would have stayed in Paris and seen the sights indefinitely. Not realistic that we would have gone back to Disneyland Paris, again and again. Day after day. But it’s my dream.

You can do anything in a dream.

And Paris with Mateo was definitely a dream.

Back in Maine, I have the book deal. And I have the truth.

I even have my favorite work area in the house.

The kitchen island is large and spacious. The rebuilt Coach House has larger windows than before. Light pours into the kitchen and makes everything seem more hopeful. I like to sit here and work. I think of the words like ingredients. I put flour and eggs and milk into a bowl before this. All I need to do is stir the correct words together. Pour them out of the air and stir them well. It should be easy enough, in a place like this. I’ve basically reached the height of convenience by writing in the kitchen while a chocolate cake bakes in the oven.

There’s a short supply of flour and eggs and milk. At least, the word versions.

I hope this gets easier eventually. It has to, right? The more chapters I put down, the stronger I am. If I can get through this, I’ll be unstoppable by the end of the memoir. At the very least, I’ll be able to say I wrote a book. Most people haven’t done that.

I feel another pang of sadness that I have to write this book at all. If I’d had a different father, a different brother, a different husband…

It would be a different book entirely. Well, it wouldn’t even exist.

I wouldn’t even exist, not the way I am now. I’d be someone else entirely.

I tap out a few words. They look wrong on the page, so I highlight them all and delete them with one keystroke. It turns out there is no magic element to writing a book. There is no montage wherein the plucky writer drinks coffee and sips wine while the camera circles around her, and at the end, there’s a printed, bound, glossy book.

Try again. I type out a few words and get to the end of a sentence.

Still not right. The chapters I’ve written so far have taught me that if the beginning’s wrong, the rest won’t follow. I have to get that part right.

And so far it’s very, very wrong.