Snap out of it, p.1
Snap Out of It, page 1
PRAISE FOR MADDIE DAWSON
THE MAGIC OF FOUND OBJECTS
“Readers may have the impression that they’re enjoying a typical rom-com, but unexpected decisions open the way for a welcome twist we didn’t even know we needed.”
—Booklist
“The Magic of Found Objects is wonderful fun! Maddie Dawson is such an engaging and charming writer.”
—Robyn Carr, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“With humor, tenderness, and some of the strongest female characters to ever grace a page, Maddie Dawson delivers with The Magic of Found Objects.”
—Karen Hawkins, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Book Charmer
“Written with loads of humor and heart, The Magic of Found Objects is a delightful, feel-good tale of friendship and marriage, motherhood and sacrifice, disillusionment and hope. Dawson takes the reader on a quest for the perfect life partner. Is it the kind, comfortable friend right in front of you, or does the universe have something more exciting in store? Maddie Dawson at her finest!”
—Amy Poeppel, author of Musical Chairs
“The Magic of Found Objects by Maddie Dawson is a lovingly crafted and heartwarming story of friendship, family, and being true to oneself. The charming and quirky characters burrow into your heart and make you laugh, cry, and cheer. A thoughtful and joyful read, perfect for book clubs. Dawson wrote another winner!”
—Amy Sue Nathan, author of The Last Bathing Beauty
“Dawson delivers her signature charm in The Magic of Found Objects. As Phronsie makes the decision of a lifetime, her free-spirited mother and practical, loving stepmother shape her ideas of life and love. Readers will long to slip inside the pages with these lovable characters written with flawless depth and a touch of sparkle. Dawson delivers a heartfelt read that stays with you long after the last page.”
—Rochelle Weinstein, USA Today bestselling author
“Thirtysomething public relations professional Phronsie Linnelle is ready for a family—so she just might marry her platonic, lifelong best friend. A witty and wonderful romp through the mind of an entertaining woman who wants it all and has the guts to go out and get it. Bestselling author Maddie Dawson at her absolute best. You will love this hilarious, heartwarming book.”
—Marilyn Simon Rothstein, author of Husbands and Other Sharp Objects
“Maddie Dawson has a unique talent for telling a story that goes deep yet maintains a certain lightness throughout, at once giving readers an authentic human experience while making them still feel good about being human. The Magic of Found Objects is a warm, engaging novel that utterly charmed me. Don’t miss it.”
—Marybeth Mayhew Whalen, author of This Secret Thing
“Maddie Dawson has hit another one out of the park with this charming tale about what happens when your head tells you to settle but your heart keeps whispering something else. Funny, poignant, and beautifully clear-eyed, The Magic of Found Objects is a delightfully grown-up coming of age story, peopled with quirky, real-life characters who remind us that sometimes before we can open the door to the future, we must first open our hearts to the past.”
—Barbara Davis, bestselling author of The Last of the Moon Girls
A HAPPY CATASTROPHE
“Dawson has created a truly quirky story, filled with a little bit of magic (think unicorn glitter and sparkles) and a lot of love . . . An optimistic, feel-good story that celebrates love, community, goodness, and the creation of family, however it might appear.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Alive with action, compelling and evolving characters, and screwball comedy, Dawson’s latest will appeal to readers looking for a story that is both pleasurable and substantial. Personal growth is achieved by overcoming obstacles, and the ending is honest and satisfying.”
—Booklist
“An inherently engaging and entertaining novel from cover to cover, A Happy Catastrophe by Maddie Dawson will prove to be an immediate and enduringly popular addition to community library Contemporary General Fiction collections.”
—Midwest Book Review
MATCHMAKING FOR BEGINNERS
“A charming read . . . For fans of Liane Moriarty’s What Alice Forgot or Aimee Bender’s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake.”
—Library Journal
“A delightful, light-as-air romance that successfully straddles the line between sweet and smart without ever being silly . . . The novel is simply captivating from beginning to end.”
—Associated Press
“Matchmaking for Beginners is lovely from the inside out.”
—HelloGiggles
“Infused with the kind of magic so frequently lost as we become adults, this one-of-a-kind novel pushes the boundaries of coincidence and connection by asking us to believe in fate and, possibly, magic once again. The characters jump off the page with their quirky habits and capture hearts with their meaningful development and interactions, leading to moments that will bring readers to tears one minute and having them laughing out loud the next.”
—RT Book Reviews (Top Rated)
ALSO BY MADDIE DAWSON
The Magic of Found Objects
A Happy Catastrophe
Matchmaking for Beginners
The Survivor’s Guide to Family Happiness
The Opposite of Maybe
The Stuff That Never Happened
Kissing Games of the World
A Piece of Normal
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Otherwise, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2023 by Maddie Dawson
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542039352 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 9781542039369 (digital)
Cover design and illustration by David Drummond
To Jim, who makes everything possible
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
Not that I’m bitter or anything—because I’m most certainly not—but thirty-five years later, the thing that still irks me is that my first husband left me for a woman who had him convinced she was a witch.
“I’ve been bewitched!” he said, as though this was a medical diagnosis that could not be disputed. “I have to be honest with you. I’m helpless. Helpless!” He was grinning, and even his black hair looked like it was standing up in little peaks of happiness. I was afraid he was going to break out in a soft-shoe.
It was a freezing-cold December morning, which is supposed to be a really wonderful time of the year—holiday cheer and all that—and ohhh, he was so smug in his guilty, proud way, giddy over the fact that his life was about to become fascinating, while I knew mine was going to get so much worse.
I knew who had bewitched him. His poetry instructor at the city college. Her name was Juliette Pierrot. The kind of woman who fluttered her closed eyelids when she spoke and who wore almost cartoonishly low-cut blouses and a bunch of silver necklaces that she called talismans. She thought Shakespeare and Robert Frost would show up if you simply chanted a few words to channel them.
Big deal, I remember telling him, all false bravado. I had a grandmother in backwater Florida who knew how to get rid of people’s warts just by wishing them away, and who once actually transferred warts from one person to another simply by concentrating. Not exactly a world-class witch perhaps, but still, someone you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of.
“I can’t let you go off with a woman who imagines she’s a witch just because she’s got you all hot for her,” I said, though it killed me having to even say those words. “You bring her around here, and I’ll show her what’s what.”
Victor threw back his head and laughed, showing white, even teeth. “She’d never come here,” he said. “I can’t even think of how weird that would be.”
“Too much reality for her, huh?” I said. “Well, some can take it, and some can’t.”
“Too much something,” he said. And when he looked around the messy kitchen, at the spilled everything, and at our reflections in the gray windowpane that showed my curly, disheveled hair, it was clear that he saw none of it for the glorious mess that it was. We were no longer us.
I was twenty-five years old, and I had been up since four fifteen with the baby and had nursed her and sung her songs that made her laugh and had baked the cinnamon muffins that Victor had just wolfed down. And the heartbreaking thing was, I’d been so happy there in the middle of the night, so pleased and contented in our messy, unconventional life, thinking of what to get at the grocery store later and did Victor’s mother need me to get her some seltzer water again, and oh yes, I needed to take the garbage cans down to the curb because it was garbage day, and also I had to remember that my mother had wanted me to come upstairs and bring her my recipe for lemon bars, and where was that recipe card—was it in the junk drawer? My mother lived on the third floor of our house, and his mother lived beneath us on the first floor, and I had my hands full, balancing these two mothers, one up and one down, both full of opinions and unhappiness and needs. I was the mistress of it all: juggling the moms, the baby, and—why not be honest here?—all the sex my husband insisted he needed just so he could live through each day. I did like that part.
I was a freaking domestic sorceress, presiding over a magical chaotic mess.
And then just like that, he casually crushed me like a paper cup.
I stood there looking at him, aware that certain circuits were already flicking off in my brain’s central control panel. The trust was the first to leave, followed by all the pockets of love I held hidden inside, and then the hope trudged out, turning off the lights. It hurt a lot when the hope left.
Minutes ticked by and he was still talking and talking, not even noticing that I had gone dark. I looked toward the refrigerator, and I saw the little amber mound on the linoleum, dried now and hardened. It was a symbol of us, that hard little place. A whole year before, he’d dropped the bottle of maple syrup, and I’d asked him to clean it up, and he said I should clean it up, and I said I wouldn’t, I was done with cleaning up after him and why was I the one who always had to clean up everything, and he said, well that was certainly tough toenails, because he wasn’t going to, and then nobody ever did it, and it dried into something three-dimensional and smooth. Something your foot knocked against when you stood in front of the fridge.
It had become a funny story, a symbol of our relaxed, bohemian household. We pointed it out to friends, with a little jiggle of pride. This is who we are. Aren’t we amusing and fun and clever with the way we don’t let stupid stuff bother us?
But right then I knew that it didn’t say that at all. That little hard mound of maple syrup really said we were hopeless idiots who couldn’t even clean up a spill on the floor. Idiots who wouldn’t ever agree.
What if you just let her have him? I heard myself think.
Give up? said my witchy grandmother in my head. Are you talking about . . . giving him up . . . to a woman who can’t even talk with her eyes open? Get your head on straight, child.
“Victor,” I said, taking a deep breath that started my heart beating again. “You are not leaving me for some wannabe witch, and that is that. I refuse to hear any more about the idea.” I wiped up a pool of milk on the floor so that it wouldn’t come to the same fate as the syrup, but I really did that only so I didn’t have to look at his rosy, lovesick face.
“Well, Billie,” he said in a voice strained from the need to explain the obvious, “we can’t very well stay together if I’m in love with someone else. What kind of life would that be?”
I said, “I tell you what. You can leave in ten years, when Louise, whom I named for your sainted mother under great duress, is in middle school. Until then, you have to do your part.”
He blanched and looked over at Louise, who was busy mashing up butter and cinnamon bits and rubbing them into her hair. I knew he was thinking that she would never be in middle school, and that even if she did ever get there, this sexy witch-who-wasn’t-really-a-witch wouldn’t still be waiting for him with her beguiling cleavage and silk scarves and her silver necklaces and the poetry.
“Also, you bastard, in case it has slipped your mind,” I said, pulling myself up to my full height and letting my eyes go wild enough to match my spiky-ass hair, “I myself have probably inherited my grandmother’s freaky witch genes, and I don’t think you want to get tangled up with two witches, especially when I would bet that only one of us has legit genetic credentials, and that one happens to be the one you’re married to.”
Boom.
Six months later, he was gone.
I’d like to report that I vaporized him with my steely blue eyes or planted warts all over his body, but the simple truth is that one day he finished restoring the antique car he’d been working on since time immemorial, and he got in it and drove off—a Romeo heading to his bewitching Juliette. The two of them eventually moved to the coast of France to write poetry and make love by the sea and observe life as he thought it was meant to be lived: a wild, magical, childless adventure, so he said in his poems. life at the bone. Yep, that was the name of his book, written in all lower-case letters like he was some avant-garde darling. Critics hailed him as a “modern Walt Whitman, but with a female muse.”
In case you were wondering if karma is a thing, I think this proves once and for all that it’s not.
I turn over in bed. The sun is shining in my eyes, and the clock says it’s nine o’clock. Tomorrow is my sixtieth birthday, and I am not happy to discover that I’m closing out my fifties by waking up to think about Victor Steidley, the man whom I got over thirty-five years ago. What the hell is he doing showing up in my head now?
Then I remember. He sent me a text that came in at midnight. First text ever from him. The last time I’d heard from him was seventeen years ago when he’d sent the last child support payment and had written me to congratulate himself on doing his fatherly duty. So what that he’d only bothered to see his daughter three times since the divorce? He was the hero. Father-of-the-Year material in his own mind.
I roll over and get my phone off the bedside table and click it back to life, find my reading glasses, and read it again, just in case I misremembered something about it.
But no. I remembered it perfectly.
juliette is dead
That’s all. No explanation. No emotion. No punctuation or capital letters even. Just this one sentence. You’d think a poet could do a little better than that. But maybe, as usual, he was saving his best stuff for other people. Why even tell me, though? Why now?
I lie back on the pillows, rub my eyes. We used to sleep together in this very room. In fact, I stood right in that doorway over there watching him pack up all his shirts and pants and notebooks, dumping everything into the taupe, glossy, wheeled suitcases we received for a wedding present. Watched him walk down those stairs and out the front door, after he slammed it so hard that the glass rattled.
And after he left—when I heard his car roar off down the street—I gave myself exactly fifteen minutes of wallowing. It was all I had time for, because Louisa, his rickety mother who had already lost a husband and two children, was sobbing, and the baby was cutting some teeth so she was running a fever and wanted to be held all the time, and my mother was wringing her hands and wondering what was to become of me—and so after indulging in a fifteen-minute personal meltdown out on the back stairs, I got busy and threw out all the stuff he left behind, his golf clubs and his cuff links and his stupid tuxedo.
So there, I said. Good riddance to you, Victor Worst Husband Ever Steidley.
Anything he’d touched, anything that had meant anything to him at all—went right into the dumpster behind our house. I stomped back up the walk, squared my shoulders, and I told the moms we’d all be fine. That first night, my grandmother told me in a dream that I should put some salt in the corners, so I did. A week later, I tore down the stained beige curtains and put up new ones with magnolias on them, and then I repainted the living room a bright daffodil yellow, a color Victor never would have allowed.
I set up a new life, learning how to change the oil in the car and how to reason with repairmen. Then I went to work at a variety of crazy-ass, part-time, work-from-home jobs so I didn’t have to be away from Louise. No full-time job for me. I took care of everyone, until Victor’s mom passed away a few years later, and my own mom, who was younger and still had possibilities, moved away to one of the Virgin Islands, where she married a ship’s captain and worked on her lifelong tan.
