An opening. I lunge for it as if my life depends on it. Which it does. “We wanted to make up for the fact that we forced ourselves on you. Especially on the night before the start of the retreat when you probably have a million things to do.”

“A million things,” Gregory says.

I ignore him. “The woman wrapping it actually had to jump up on the counter with a staple gun because it was so big!” I mime the scene, pretending my arms over my head are the two big flaps of cellophane, and my hands opening and closing quickly are the staple gun.

No one’s laughing. Gary and I exchange looks. We want to die. “Then we drove with it sticking out of the sunroof!” Gary adds, joining the ill-fated pantomime, his entire torso becoming the plant swaying in the wind.

Still nothing. My fake smile fades to panic, as does Gary’s—we are so fucked—but Sari Epstein barely seems to notice. Is she dead? Does she have a pulse? She turns around and pads down the slate floor toward a huge open kitchen. “Gregory will show your husband to the guest suite,” she says, having so clearly already forgotten Gary’s name. “It’s over the car-barn.”

* * *

A few minutes later, Sari hand-hugs a mug of tea while looking out the window over the sink. Vast fields roll as far as the eye can see. I think of our own tiny yard at home, with the previous owner’s compost heap we never got rid of and the lawn we never graded and seeded and cover instead every year with cheap dark mulch. I force myself to compliment her, when really I’m wondering how they can afford such a spread.

“So this is all yours!” I say, my voice lilting a little at the end, but you can’t disguise jealousy. My tone is brittle and forced, and I’m pissed that I feel less than her in the midst of her affluence.

“My coloring books and workshops and private coaching do really well, so Gregory and I—he’s a sculptor—get to do what we want to creatively. Everything changes when art becomes about money.”

“Everything!” I’m trapped in a nightmare of my own making.

“It must be the same for you, right? Your Bird book was a bestseller and the animated series didn’t hurt.”

“It certainly did not hurt!”

“See? I know who you are.” It’s like she’s reading my mind already, and I can’t help but be slightly awed and flattered again. “Just because you disappeared creatively doesn’t mean your fans did. There are lots of us waiting for your next oeuvre.”

I cringe. She just misused oeuvre. How is that possible? Is Gary right about this whole thing being total bullshit? I nod and try to follow her continued gaze out the window.

“And yet, for all my success,” she says with ethereal self-absorption, “it’s still a struggle. I think writing is the hardest job in the world.”