“The first time my father hit my mother, he used a bouquet of daisies.”
That was my line, my memory, my most guarded secret. And I was reading it in the debut novel my best friend of twenty years had just published.
For two decades, I had been the quiet anchor to her glittering kite. I was the one who listened to every drama, every triumph, every minor problem she could blow up into a crisis.
She listened to my stories, my pain, my entire life poured out over late-night phone calls and cheap wine. I thought I was confiding in a soulmate. It turns out I was dictating my memoir to its thief.
Her novel, *Ashes and Wildflowers*, was my history, polished and packaged for public consumption. She stole my father’s tragic charm, my mother’s hidden sorrow, and even my uncle’s ridiculous conspiracy theories.
She even had the nerve to thank me in the acknowledgments. She called me her muse.
A fraud never gets the details right, and my best friend was about to learn that I had a lifetime of receipts to cash in.
The Shadow in the Ink: A Celebration’s Strange Echo
The text message lit up my phone with a string of champagne bottle emojis. *Big news, Chlo! Bigger than big! We HAVE to celebrate. Tomorrow? The usual spot?*
It was from Bethany. Of course, it was. Bethany’s life was a constant string of capital letters and exclamation points. For twenty years, I’d been the quiet anchor to her glittering kite, the one she’d call for every drama, every triumph, every minor inconvenience that she could inflate into a Shakespearean tragedy.
“Bethany has big news,” I said to my husband, Mark, who was trying to fix the perpetually leaky kitchen faucet. He grunted, a sound that could mean anything from “That’s nice” to “Is dinner ready?”
“She wants to celebrate,” I added, scrolling through her text history. It was a highlight reel of her life: promotions I’d helped her prep for, boyfriends I’d counseled her through breaking up with, apartments I’d helped her paint. My own life was a quieter stream, one I navigated mostly in my own head and on the thousands of pages I’d typed for my memoir.
A strange prickle of unease traced its way up my spine. For the past six months, Bethany had been uncharacteristically vague about her new “creative project.” Whenever I’d mentioned my own writing, how I’d finally untangled the knot of my parents’ disastrous divorce or found the right words for Uncle Mike’s ridiculous but lovable conspiracy theories, she’d gone quiet, steering the conversation back to herself with practiced ease. It was a subtle shift in our dynamic, a new wall in a friendship I’d thought was made of glass.
I typed back, *Of course! Can’t wait to hear!* The lie felt slick on my fingertips. I wasn’t sure I could wait to hear it. I was afraid to.
The Unveiling
The coffee shop buzzed with the low hum of afternoon chatter. Bethany was already there, practically vibrating in her seat, a triumphant smirk playing on her lips. She wore a bright red dress, a color that screamed *look at me*, which was, after all, her entire brand.
“Okay, you’re not going to believe this,” she said, her voice a conspiratorial whisper that carried across three tables. “I can’t believe it. It’s been my dream forever, you know? Since we were kids.”
I smiled, a genuine one this time. Whatever my reservations, I did want her to be happy. “Just tell me, Beth.”
She took a deep, dramatic breath and clasped her hands together. “I got a book deal.”
The words hung in the air. For a second, my world tilted. A book deal. That was *my* dream, the one I’d been working toward in stolen hours before dawn and late into the night for the better part of a decade. I’d told her everything about it—my hopes, my fears, the crushing weight of trying to get an agent to even glance at my manuscript.
“Bethany, that’s… that’s incredible,” I managed, the words tasting like ash. “A novel?”
“Yes! A novel,” she squealed. “It just poured out of me, you know? It’s a fictionalized family drama. Sort of a dark, quirky story about a young woman navigating a really complicated, messy upbringing with a charismatic but troubled father and an aloof mother.”
My smile froze. A cold dread, heavy and metallic, began to pool in my stomach. I thought of the chapter I’d just finished, the one I’d read to her over the phone two months ago, my voice thick with emotion as I described my own charismatic, alcoholic father and my mother, who’d retreated into a world of books to escape him.
“It sounds… familiar,” I said, my voice carefully neutral.
Bethany just beamed, completely missing the undertone. “Well, all great art comes from a place of truth, right? I just took all that universal pain and made it my own.”
About the Author
