#collaborative scribble session | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ingek73 · 1 year

Text

Personal History

May 15, 2023 Issue

Notes from Prince Harry’s Ghostwriter

Collaborating on his memoir, “Spare,” meant spending hours together on Zoom, meeting his inner circle, and gaining a new perspective on the tabloids.

By J. R. Moehringer

May 8, 2023

A portrait of Prince Harry composed of scribbles that evoke writing on a yellow piece of binder paper.

Work with Prince Harry on the book proceeded steadily—until the press found out about it.Illustration by Simone Massoni

I was exasperated with Prince Harry. My head was pounding, my jaw was clenched, and I was starting to raise my voice. And yet some part of me was still able to step outside the situation and think, This is so weird. I’m shouting at Prince Harry. Then, as Harry started going back at me, as his cheeks flushed and his eyes narrowed, a more pressing thought occurred: Whoa, it could all end right here.

This was the summer of 2022. For two years, I’d been the ghostwriter on Harry’s memoir, “Spare,” and now, reviewing his latest edits in a middle-of-the-night Zoom session, we’d come to a difficult passage. Harry, at the close of gruelling military exercises in rural England, gets captured by pretend terrorists. It’s a simulation, but the tortures inflicted upon Harry are very real. He’s hooded, dragged to an underground bunker, beaten, frozen, starved, stripped, forced into excruciating stress positions by captors wearing black balaclavas. The idea is to find out if Harry has the toughness to survive an actual capture on the battlefield. (Two of his fellow-soldiers don’t; they crack.) At last, Harry’s captors throw him against a wall, choke him, and scream insults into his face, culminating in a vile dig at—Princess Diana?

Even the fake terrorists engrossed in their parts, even the hard-core British soldiers observing from a remote location, seem to recognize that an inviolate rule has been broken. Clawing that specific wound, the memory of Harry’s dead mother, is out of bounds. When the simulation is over, one of the participants extends an apology.

Harry always wanted to end this scene with a thing he said to his captors, a comeback that struck me as unnecessary, and somewhat inane. Good for Harry that he had the nerve, but ending with what he said would dilute the scene’s meaning: that even at the most bizarre and peripheral moments of his life, his central tragedy intrudes. For months, I’d been crossing out the comeback, and for months Harry had been pleading for it to go back in. Now he wasn’t pleading, he was insisting, and it was 2 a.m., and I was starting to lose it. I said, “Dude, we’ve been over this.”

Why was this one line so important? Why couldn’t he accept my advice? We were leaving out a thousand other things—that’s half the art of memoir, leaving stuff out—so what made this different? Please, I said, trust me. Trust the book.

Although this wasn’t the first time that Harry and I had argued, it felt different; it felt as if we were hurtling toward some kind of decisive rupture, in part because Harry was no longer saying anything. He was just glaring into the camera. Finally, he exhaled and calmly explained that, all his life, people had belittled his intellectual capabilities, and this flash of cleverness proved that, even after being kicked and punched and deprived of sleep and food, he had his wits about him.

“Oh,” I said. “O.K.” It made sense now. But I still refused.

“Why?”

Because, I told him, everything you just said is about you. You want the world to know that you did a good job, that you were smart. But, strange as it may seem, memoir isn’t about you. It’s not even the story of your life. It’s a story carved from your life, a particular series of events chosen because they have the greatest resonance for the widest range of people, and at this point in the story those people don’t need to know anything more than that your captors said a cruel thing about your mom.

Harry looked down. A long time. Was he thinking? Seething? Should I have been more diplomatic? Should I have just given in? I imagined I’d be thrown off the book soon after sunup. I could almost hear the awkward phone call with Harry’s agent, and I was sad. Never mind the financial hit—I was focussed on the emotional shock. All the time, the effort, the intangibles I’d invested in Harry’s memoir, in Harry, would be gone just like that.

After what seemed like an hour, Harry looked up, and we locked eyes. “O.K.,” he said.

“O.K.?”

“Yes. I get it.”

“Thank you, Harry,” I said, relieved.

He shot me a mischievous grin. “I really enjoy getting you worked up like that.”

I burst into laughter and shook my head, and we moved on to his next set of edits.

Later that morning, after a few hours of sleep, I sat outside worrying. (Mornings are my worry time, along with afternoons and evenings.) I didn’t worry so much about the propriety of arguing with princes, or even the risks. One of a ghostwriter’s main jobs is having a big mouth. You win some, you lose most, but you have to keep pushing, not unlike a demanding parent or a tyrannical coach. Otherwise, you’re nothing but a glorified stenographer, and that’s disloyalty to the author, to the book—to books. Opposition is true Friendship, William Blake wrote, and if I had to choose a ghostwriting credo, that would be it.

No, rather than the rightness of going after Harry, I was questioning the heat with which I’d done so. I scolded myself: It’s not your comeback. It’s not your mother. For the thousandth time in my ghostwriting career, I reminded myself: It’s not your effing book.

Some days, the phone doesn’t stop. Ghostwriters in distress. They ask for ten minutes, half an hour. A coffee date.

“My author can’t remember squat.”

“My author and I have come to despise each other.”

“I can’t get my author to call me back—is it normal for a ghost to get ghosted?”

At the outset, I do what ghostwriters do. I listen. And eventually, after the callers talk themselves out, I ask a few gentle questions. The first (aside from “How did you get this number?”) is always: How bad do you want it? Because things can go sideways in a hurry. An author might know nothing about writing, which is why he hired a ghost. But he may also have the literary self-confidence of Saul Bellow, and good luck telling Saul Bellow that he absolutely may not describe an interesting bowel movement he experienced years ago, as I once had to tell an author. So fight like crazy, I say, but always remember that if push comes to shove no one will have your back. Within the text and without, no one wants to hear from the dumb ghostwriter.

I try not to sound didactic. A lot of what I’ve read about ghostwriting, much of it from accomplished ghostwriters, doesn’t square with my experience. Recording the author? Terrible idea—it makes many authors feel as if they’re being deposed. Dressing like the author? It’s a memoir, not a masquerade party. The ghostwriter for Julian Assange wrote twenty-five thousand words about his methodology, and it sounded to me like Elon Musk on mushrooms—on Mars. That same ghost, however, published a review of “Spare” describing Harry as “off his royal tits” and me as going “all Sartre or Faulkner,” so what do I know? Who am I to offer rules? Maybe the alchemy of each ghost-author pairing is unique.

Therefore, I simply remind the callers that ghostwriting is an art and urge them not to let those who cast it as hacky, shady, or faddish (it’s been around for thousands of years) dim their pride. I also tell them that they’re providing a vital public service, helping to shore up the publishing industry, since most of the titles on this week’s best-seller list were written by someone besides the named author.

Signing off, the callers usually sigh and say thanks and grumble something like “Well, whatever happens, I’m never doing this again.” And I tell them yes, they will, and wish them luck.

How does a person even become a ghostwriter? What’s the path into a profession for which there is no school or certification, and to which no one actually aspires? You never hear a kid say, “One day, I want to write other people’s books.” And yet I think I can detect some hints, some foreshadowing in my origins.

When I was growing up in Manhasset, New York, people would ask: Where’s your dad? My typical answer was an embarrassed shrug. Beats me. My old man wasn’t around, that’s all I knew, all any grownup had the heart to tell me. And yet he was also everywhere. My father was a well-known rock-and-roll d.j., so his Sam Elliott basso profundo was like the Long Island Rail Road, rumbling in the distance at maddeningly regular intervals.

Every time I caught his show, I’d feel confused, empty, sad, but also amazed at how much he had to say. The words, the jokes, the patter—it didn’t stop. Was it my Oedipal counterstrike to fantasize an opposite existence, one in which I just STFU? Less talking, more listening, that was my basic life plan at age ten. In Manhasset, an Irish-Italian enclave, I was surrounded by professional listeners: bartenders and priests. Neither of those careers appealed to me, so I waited, and one afternoon found myself sitting with a cousin at the Squire theatre, in Great Neck, watching a matinée of “All the President’s Men.” Reporters seemed to do nothing but listen. Then they got to turn what they heard into stories, which other people read—no talking required. Sign me up.

My first job out of college was at the New York Times. When I wasn’t fetching coffee and corned beef, I was doing “legwork,” which meant running to a fire, a trial, a murder scene, then filing a memo back to the newsroom. The next morning, I’d open the paper and see my facts, maybe my exact words, under someone else’s name. I didn’t mind; I hated my name. I was born John Joseph Moehringer, Jr., and Senior was M.I.A. Not seeing my name, his name, wasn’t a problem. It was a perk.

Many days at the Times, I’d look around the newsroom, with its orange carpet and pipe-puffing lifers and chattering telex machines, and think, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. And then the editors suggested I go somewhere else.

I went west. I got a job at the Rocky Mountain News, a tabloid founded in 1859. Its first readers were the gold miners panning the rivers and creeks of the Rockies, and though I arrived a hundred and thirty-one years later, the paper still read as if it were written for madmen living alone in them thar hills. The articles were thumb-length, the fact checking iffy, and the newsroom mood, many days, bedlam. Some oldsters were volubly grumpy about being on the back slopes of middling careers, others were blessed with unjustified swagger, and a few were dangerously loose cannons. (I’ll never forget the Sunday morning our religion writer, in his weekly column, referred to St. Joseph as “Christ’s stepdad.” The phones exploded.) The general lack of quality control made the paper a playground for me. I was able to go slow, learn from mistakes without being defined by them, and build up rudimentary skills, like writing fast.

What I did best, I discovered, was write for others. The gossip columnist spent most nights in downtown saloons, hunting for scoops, and some mornings he’d shuffle into the newsroom looking rough. One morning, he fixed his red eyes on me, gestured toward his notes, and rasped, “Would you?” I sat at his desk and dashed off his column in twenty minutes. What a rush. Writing under no name was safe; writing under someone else’s name (and picture) was hedonic—a kind of hiding and seeking. Words had never come easy for me, but, when I wrote as someone else, the words, the jokes, the patter—it didn’t stop.

In the fall of 2006, my phone rang. Unknown number. But I instantly recognized the famously soft voice: for two decades, he’d loomed over the tennis world. Now, on the verge of retiring, he told me that he was decompressing from the emotions of the moment by reading my memoir, “The Tender Bar,” which had recently been published. It had him thinking about writing his own. He wondered if I’d come talk to him about it. A few weeks later, we met at a restaurant in his home town, Las Vegas.

Andre Agassi and I were very different, but our connection was instant. He had an eighth-grade education but a profound respect for people who read and write books. I had a regrettably short sporting résumé (my Little League fastball was unhittable) but deep reverence for athletes. Especially the solitaries: tennis players, prizefighters, matadors, who possess that luminous charisma which comes from besting opponents single-handedly. But Andre didn’t want to talk about that. He hated tennis, he said. He wanted to talk about memoir. He had a list of questions. He asked why my memoir was so confessional. I told him that’s how you know you can trust an author—if he’s willing to get raw.

He asked why I’d organized my memoir around other people, rather than myself. I told him that was the kind of memoir I admired. There’s so much power to be gained, and honesty to be achieved, from taking an ostensibly navel-gazing genre and turning the gaze outward. Frank McCourt had a lot of feelings about his brutal Irish childhood, but he kept most of them to himself, focussing instead on his Dad, his Mam, his beloved siblings, the neighbors down the lane.

“I am a part of all that I have met.” It might’ve been that first night, or another, but at some point I shared that line from Tennyson, and Andre loved it. The same almost painful gratitude that I felt toward my mother, and toward my bartender uncle and his barfly friends, who helped her raise me, Andre felt for his trainer and his coach, and for his wife, Stefanie Graf.

But how, he asked, do you write about other people without invading their privacy? That’s the ultimate challenge, I said. I sought permission from nearly everyone I wrote about, and shared early drafts, but sometimes people aren’t speaking to you, and sometimes they’re dead. Sometimes, in order to tell the truth, you simply can’t avoid hurting someone’s feelings. It goes down easier, I said, if you’re equally unsparing about yourself.

He asked if I’d help him do it. I gave him a soft no. I liked his enthusiasm, his boldness—him. But I’d never imagined myself writing someone else’s book, and I already had a job. By now, I’d left the Rocky Mountain News and joined the Los Angeles Times. I was a national correspondent, doing long-form journalism, which I loved. Alas, the Times was about to change. A new gang of editors had come in, and not long after my dinner with Andre they let it be known that the paper would no longer prioritize long-form journalism.

Apart from a beef with my bosses, and apart from the money (Andre was offering a sizable bump from my reporter salary), what finally made me change my no to a yes, put my stuff into storage, and move to Vegas was the sense that Andre was suffering an intense and specific ache that I might be able to cure. He wanted to tell his story and didn’t know how; I’d been there. I’d struggled for years to tell my story.

Every attempt failed, and every failure took a heavy psychic toll. Some days, it felt like a physical blockage, and to this day I believe my story would’ve remained stuck inside me forever if not for one editor at the Times, who on a Sunday afternoon imparted some thunderbolt advice about memoir that steered me onto the right path. I wanted to give Andre that same grace.

Shortly before I moved to Vegas, a friend invited me to a fancy restaurant in the Phoenix suburbs for a gathering of sportswriters covering the 2008 Super Bowl. As the menus were being handed around, my friend clinked a knife against his glass and announced, “O.K., listen up! Moehringer here has been asked by Agassi to ghostwrite his—”

Groans.

“Exactly. We’ve all done our share of these fucking things—”

Louder groans.

“Right! Our mission is not to leave this table until we’ve convinced this idiot to tell Agassi not just no but hell no.”

At once, the meal turned into a raucous meeting of Ghostwriters Anonymous. Everyone had a hard-luck story about being disrespected, dismissed, shouted at, shoved aside, abused in a hilarious variety of ways by an astonishing array of celebrities, though I mostly remember the jocks. The legendary basketball player who wouldn’t come to the door for his first appointment with his ghost, then appeared for the second buck naked. The hockey great with the personality of a hockey stick, who had so few thoughts about his time on this planet, so little interest in his own book, that he gave his ghost an epic case of writer’s block. The notorious linebacker who, days before his memoir was due to the publisher, informed his ghost that the co-writing credit would go to his psychotherapist.

Between gasping and laughing, I asked the table, “Why do they do it? Why do they treat ghostwriters so badly?” I was bombarded with theories.

Authors feel ashamed about needing someone to write their story, and that shame makes them behave in shameful ways.

Authors think they could write the book themselves, if only they had time, so they resent having to pay you to do it.

Authors spend their lives safeguarding their secrets, and now you come along with your little notebook and pesky questions and suddenly they have to rip back the curtain? Boo.

But if all authors treat all ghosts badly, I wondered, and if it’s not your book in the first place, why not cash the check and move on? Why does it hurt so much? I don’t recall anyone having a good answer for that.

“Please,” I said to Andre, “don’t give me a story to tell at future Super Bowls.” He grinned and said he’d do his best. He did better than that. In two years of working together, we never exchanged a harsh word, not even when he felt my first draft needed work.

Maybe the Germans have a term for it, the particular facial expression of someone reading something about his life that’s even the tiniest bit wrong. Schaudergesicht? I saw that look on Andre’s face, and it made me want to lie down on the floor. But, unlike me, he didn’t overreact. He knew that putting a first serve into the net is no big deal. He made countless fixes, and I made fixes to his fixes, and together we made ten thousand more, and in time we arrived at a draft that satisfied us both. The collaboration was so close, so synchronous, you’d have to call the eventual voice of the memoir a hybrid—though it’s all Andre. That’s the mystic paradox of ghostwriting: you’re inherent and nowhere; vital and invisible. To borrow an image from William Gass, you’re the air in someone else’s trumpet.

“Open,” by Andre Agassi, was published on November 9, 2009. Andre was pleased, reviewers were complimentary, and I soon had offers to ghost other people’s memoirs. Before deciding what to do next, I needed to get away, clear my head. I went to the Green Mountains. For two days, I drove around, stopped at wayside meadows, sat under trees and watched the clouds—until one late afternoon I began feeling unwell. I bought some cold medicine, pulled into the first bed-and-breakfast I saw, and climbed into bed. Hand-sewn quilt under my chin, I switched on the TV. There was Andre, on a late-night talk show.

The host was praising “Open,” and Agassi was being his typical charming, humble self. Now the host was praising the writing. Agassi continued to be humble. Thank you, thank you. But I dared to hope he might mention . . . me? An indefensible, illogical hope: Andre had asked me to put my name on the cover, and I’d declined. Nevertheless, right before zonking out, I started muttering at the TV, “Say my name.” I got a bit louder. “Say my name!” I got pretty rowdy. “Say my fucking name!”

Seven hours later, I stumbled downstairs to the breakfast room and caught a weird vibe. Guests stared. Several peered over my shoulder to see who was with me. What the? I sat alone, eating some pancakes, until I got it. The bed-and-breakfast had to be three hundred years old, with walls made of pre-Revolutionary cardboard—clearly every guest had heard me. Say my name!

I took it as a lesson. NyQuil was to blame, but also creeping narcissism. The gods were admonishing me: You can’t be Mister Rogers while ghosting the book and John McEnroe when it’s done. I drove away from Vermont with newfound clarity. I’m not cut out for this ghostwriting thing. I needed to get back to my first love, journalism, and to writing my own books.

During the next year or so, I freelanced for magazines while making notes for a novel. Then once more to the wilderness. I rented a tiny cabin in the far corner of nowhere and, for a full winter, rarely left. No TV, no radio, no Wi-Fi. For entertainment, I listened to the silver foxes screaming at night in a nearby forest, and I read dozens of books. But mostly I sat before the woodstove and tried to inhabit the minds of my characters. The novel was historical fiction, based on the decades-long crime spree of America’s most prolific bank robber, but also based on my disgust with the bankers who had recently devastated the global financial system. In real life, my bank-robbing protagonist wrote a memoir, with a ghostwriter, which was full of lies or delusions. I thought it might be fascinating to override that memoir with solid research, overwrite the ghostwriter, and become, in effect, the ghostwriter of the ghostwriter of a ghost.

I gave everything I had to that novel, but when it was published, in 2012, it got mauled by an influential critic. The review was then instantly tweeted by countless humanitarians, often with sidesplitting commentary like “Ouch.” I was on book tour at the time and read the review in a pitch-dark hotel room knowing full well what it meant: the book was stillborn. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stand. Part of me wanted to never leave that room. Part of me never did.

I barely slept or ate for months. My savings ran down. Occasionally, I’d take on a freelance assignment, profile an athlete for a magazine, but mostly I was in hibernation. Then one day the phone rang. A soft voice, vaguely familiar. Andre, asking if I was up for working with someone on a memoir.

Who?

Phil Knight.

Who?

Andre sighed. Founder of Nike?

A business book didn’t seem like my thing. But I needed to do something, and writing my own stuff was out. I went to the initial meeting thinking, It’s only an hour of my life. It wound up being three years.

Luckily, Phil had no interest in doing the typical C.E.O. auto-hagiography. He’d sought writing advice from Tobias Wolff, he was pals with a Pulitzer-winning novelist. He wanted to write a literary memoir, unfolding his mistakes, his anxieties—his quest. He viewed entrepreneurship, and sports, as a spiritual search. (He’d read deeply in Taoism and Zen.) Since I, too, was in search of meaning, I thought his book might be just the thing I needed.

It was. It was also, in every sense of that overused phrase, a labor of love. (I married the book’s editor.) When “Shoe Dog” was published, in April, 2016, I reflected on the dire warnings I’d heard at Super Bowl XLII and thought, What were they talking about? I felt like a guy, warned off by a bunch of wizened gamblers, who hits the jackpot twice with the first two nickels he sticks into a slot machine. Then again, I figured, better quit while I’m ahead.

Back to magazine writing. I also dared to start another novel. More personal, more difficult than the last, it absorbed me totally and I was tunnelling toward a draft while also starting a family. There was no time for anything else, no desire. And yet some days I’d hear that siren call. An actor, an activist, a billionaire, a soldier, a politician, another billionaire, a lunatic would phone, seeking help with a memoir.

Twice I said yes. Not for the money. I’ve never taken a ghosting gig for the money. But twice I felt that I had no choice, that the story was too cool, the author just too compelling, and twice the author freaked out at my first draft. Twice I explained that first drafts are always flawed, that error is the mother of truth, but it wasn’t just the errors. It was the confessions, the revelations, the cold-blooded honesty that memoir requires. Everyone says they want to get raw until they see how raw feels.

Twice the author killed the book. Twice I sat before a stack of pages into which I’d poured my soul and years of my life, knowing they were good, and knowing that they were about to go into a drawer forever. Twice I said to my wife, Never again.

And then, in the summer of 2020, I got a text. The familiar query. Would you be interested in speaking with someone about ghosting a memoir? I shook my head no. I covered my eyes. I picked up the phone and heard myself blurting, Who?

Prince Harry.

I agreed to a Zoom. I was curious, of course. Who wouldn’t be? I wondered what the real story was. I wondered if we’d have any chemistry. We did, and there was, I think, a surprising reason. Princess Diana had died twenty-three years before our first conversation, and my mother, Dorothy Moehringer, had just died, and our griefs felt equally fresh.

Still, I hesitated. Harry wasn’t sure how much he wanted to say in his memoir, and that concerned me. I’d heard similar reservations, early on, from both authors who’d ultimately killed their memoirs. Also, I knew that whatever Harry said, whenever he said it, would set off a storm. I am not, by nature, a storm chaser. And there were logistical considerations. In the early stages of a global pandemic, it was impossible to predict when I’d be able to sit down with Harry in the same room. How do you write about someone you can’t meet?

Harry had no deadline, however, and that enticed me. Many authors are in a hot hurry, and some ghosts are happy to oblige. They churn and burn, producing three or four books a year. I go painfully slow; I don’t know any other way. Also, I just liked the dude. I called him dude right away; it made him chuckle. I found his story, as he outlined it in broad strokes, relatable and infuriating. The way he’d been treated, by both strangers and intimates, was grotesque. In retrospect, though, I think I selfishly welcomed the idea of being able to speak with someone, an expert, about that never-ending feeling of wishing you could call your mom.

Harry and I made steady progress in the course of 2020, largely because the world didn’t know what we were up to. We could revel in the privacy of our Zoom bubble. As Harry grew to trust me, he brought other people into the bubble, connecting me with his inner circle, a vital phase in every ghosting job. There is always someone who knows your author’s life better than he does, and your task is to find that person fast and interview his socks off.

As the pandemic waned, I was finally able to travel to Montecito. I went once with my wife and children. (Harry won the heart of my daughter, Gracie, with his vast “Moana” scholarship; his favorite scene, he told her, is when Heihei, the silly chicken, finds himself lost at sea.) I also went twice by myself. Harry put me up in his guesthouse, where Meghan and Archie would visit me on their afternoon walks. Meghan, knowing I was missing my family, was forever bringing trays of food and sweets.

Little by little, Harry and I amassed hundreds of thousands of words. When we weren’t Zooming or phoning, we were texting around the clock. In due time, no subject was off the table. I felt honored by his candor, and I could tell that he felt astonished by it. And energized. While I always emphasized storytelling and scenes, Harry couldn’t escape the wish that “Spare” might be a rebuttal to every lie ever published about him. As Borges dreamed of endless libraries, Harry dreams of endless retractions, which meant no end of revelations. He knew, of course, that some people would be aghast at first. “Why on earth would Harry talk about that?” But he had faith that they would soon see: because someone else already talked about it, and got it wrong.

He was joyful at this prospect; everything in our bubble was good. Then someone leaked news of the book.

Whoever it was, their callousness toward Harry extended to me. I had a clause in my contract giving me the right to remain unidentified, a clause I always insist on, but the leaker blew that up by divulging my name to the press. Along with pretty much anyone who has had anything to do with Harry, I woke one morning to find myself squinting into a gigantic searchlight. Every hour, another piece would drop, each one wrong. My fee was wrong, my bio was wrong, even my name.

One royal expert cautioned that, because of my involvement in the book, Harry’s father should be “looking for a pile of coats to hide under.” When I mentioned this to Harry, he stared. “Why?”

“Because I have daddy issues.” We laughed and got back to discussing our mothers.

The genesis of my relationship with Harry was constantly misreported. Harry and I were introduced by George Clooney, the British newspapers proclaimed, even though I’ve never met George Clooney. Yes, he was directing a film based on my memoir, but I’ve never been in the man’s presence, never communicated with him in any way. I wanted to correct the record, write an op-ed or something, tweet some facts. But no. I reminded myself: ghosts don’t speak. One day, though, I did share my frustration with Harry. I bemoaned that these fictions about me were spreading and hardening into orthodoxy. He tilted his head: Welcome to my world, dude. By now, Harry was calling me dude.

A week before its pub date, “Spare” was leaked. A Madrid bookshop reportedly put embargoed copies of the Spanish version on its shelves, “by accident,” and reporters descended. In no time, Fleet Street had assembled crews of translators to reverse-engineer the book from Spanish to English, and with so many translators working on tight deadline the results read like bad Borat. One example among many was the passage about Harry losing his virginity. Per the British press, Harry recounts, “I mounted her quickly . . .” But of course he doesn’t. I can assert with one-hundred-per-cent confidence that no one gets “mounted,” quickly or otherwise, in “Spare.”

I didn’t have time to be horrified. When the book was officially released, the bad translations didn’t stop. They multiplied. The British press now converted the book into their native tongue, that jabberwocky of bonkers hot takes and classist snark. Facts were wrenched out of context, complex emotions were reduced to cartoonish idiocy, innocent passages were hyped into outrages—and there were so many falsehoods. One British newspaper chased down Harry’s flight instructor. Headline: “Prince Harry’s army instructor says story in Spare book is ‘complete fantasy.’ ” Hours later, the instructor posted a lengthy comment beneath the article, swearing that those words, “complete fantasy,” never came out of his mouth. Indeed, they were nowhere in the piece, only in the bogus headline, which had gone viral. The newspaper had made it up, the instructor said, stressing that Harry was one of his finest students.

The only other time I’d witnessed this sort of frenzied mob was with LeBron James, whom I’d interviewed before and after his decision to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers and join the Miami Heat. I couldn’t fathom the toxic cloud of hatred that trailed him. Fans, particularly Cavs loyalists, didn’t just decry James. They wished him dead. They burned his jersey, threw rocks at his image. And the media egged them on. In those first days of “Spare,” I found myself wondering what the ecstatic contempt for Prince Harry and King James had in common. Racism, surely. Also, each man had committed the sin of publicly spurning his homeland. But the biggest factor, I came to believe, was money. In times of great economic distress, many people are triggered by someone who has so much doing anything to try to improve his lot.

Within days, the amorphous campaign against “Spare” seemed to narrow to a single point of attack: that Harry’s memoir, rigorously fact-checked, was rife with errors. I can’t think of anything that rankles quite like being called sloppy by people who routinely trample facts in pursuit of their royal prey, and this now happened every few minutes to Harry and, by extension, to me. In one section of the book, for instance, Harry reveals that he used to live for the yearly sales at TK Maxx, the discount clothing chain. Not so fast, said the monarchists at TK Maxx corporate, who rushed out a statement declaring that TK Maxx never has sales, just great savings all the time! Oh, snap! Gotcha, Prince George Santos! Except that people around the world immediately posted screenshots of TK Maxx touting sales on its official Twitter account. (Surely TK Maxx’s effort to discredit Harry’s memoir was unrelated to the company’s long-standing partnership with Prince Charles and his charitable trust.)

Ghostwriters don’t speak, I reminded myself over and over. But I had to do something. So I ventured one small gesture. I retweeted a few quotes from Mary Karr about inadvertent error in memories and memoir, plus seemingly innocuous quotes from “Spare” about the way Harry’s memory works. (He can’t recall much from the years right after his mother died, and for the most part remembers places better than people—possibly because places didn’t let him down the way people did.) Smooth move, ghostwriter. My tweets were seized upon, deliberately misinterpreted by trolls, and turned into headlines by real news outlets. Harry’s ghostwriter admits the book is all lies.

One of Harry’s friends gave a book party. My wife and I attended.

We were feeling fragile as we arrived, and it had nothing to do with Twitter. Days earlier, we’d been stalked, followed in our car as we drove our son to preschool. When I lifted him out of his seat, a paparazzo leaped from his car and stood in the middle of the road, taking aim with his enormous lens and scaring the hell out of everyone at dropoff. Then, not one hour later, as I sat at my desk, trying to calm myself, I looked up to see a woman’s face at my window. As if in a dream, I walked to the window and asked, “Who are you?” Through the glass, she whispered, “I’m from the Mail on Sunday.”

I lowered the shade, phoned an old friend—the same friend whose columns I used to ghostwrite in Colorado. He listened but didn’t get it. How could he get it? So I called the only friend who might.

It was like telling Taylor Swift about a bad breakup. It was like singing “Hallelujah” to Leonard Cohen. Harry was all heart. He asked if my family was O.K., asked for physical descriptions of the people harassing us, promised to make some calls, see if anything could be done. We both knew nothing could be done, but still. I felt gratitude, and some regret. I’d worked hard to understand the ordeals of Harry Windsor, and now I saw that I understood nothing. Empathy is thin gruel compared with the marrow of experience. One morning of what Harry had endured since birth made me desperate to take another crack at the pages in “Spare” that talk about the media.

Too late. The book was out, the party in full swing. As we walked into the house, I looked around, nervous, unsure of what state we’d find the author in. Was he, too, feeling fragile? Was he as keen as I was to organize a global boycott of TK Maxx?

He appeared, marching toward us, looking flushed. Uh-oh, I thought, before registering that it was a good flush. His smile was wide as he embraced us both. He was overjoyed by many things. The numbers, naturally. Guinness World Records had just certified his memoir as the fastest-selling nonfiction book in the history of the world. But, more than that, readers were reading, at last, the actual book, not Murdoched chunks laced with poison, and their online reviews were overwhelmingly effusive. Many said Harry’s candor about family dysfunction, about losing a parent, had given them solace.

The guests were summoned into the living room. There were several lovely toasts to Harry, then the Prince stepped forward. I’d never seen him so self-possessed and expansive. He thanked his publishing team, his editor, me. He mentioned my advice, to “trust the book,” and said he was glad that he did, because it felt incredible to have the truth out there, to feel—his voice caught—“free.” There were tears in his eyes. Mine, too.

And yet once a ghost, always a ghost. I couldn’t help obsessing about that word “free.” If he’d used that in one of our Zoom sessions, I’d have pushed back. Harry first felt liberated when he fell in love with Meghan, and again when they fled Britain, and what he felt now, for the first time in his life, was heard. That imperious Windsor motto, “Never complain, never explain,” is really just a prettified omertà, which my wife suggests might have prolonged Harry’s grief. His family actively discourages talking, a stoicism for which they’re widely lauded, but if you don’t speak your emotions you serve them, and if you don’t tell your story you lose it—or, what might be worse, you get lost inside it. Telling is how we cement details, preserve continuity, stay sane. We say ourselves into being every day, or else. Heard, Harry, heard—I could hear myself making the case to him late at night, and I could see Harry’s nose wrinkle as he argued for his word, and I reproached myself once more: Not your effing book.

But, after we hugged Harry goodbye, after we thanked Meghan for toys she’d sent our children, I had a second thought about silence. Ghosts don’t speak—says who? Maybe they can. Maybe sometimes they should.

Several weeks later, I was having breakfast with my family. The children were eating and my wife and I were talking about ghostwriting. Someone had just called, seeking help with their memoir. Intriguing person, but the answer was going to be no. I wanted to resume work on my novel. Our five-year-old daughter looked up from her cinnamon toast and asked, “What is ghostwriting?”

My wife and I gazed at each other as if she’d asked, What is God?

“Well,” I said, drawing a blank. “O.K., you know how you love art?”

She nodded. She loves few things more. An artist is what she hopes to be.

“Imagine if one of your classmates wanted to say something, express something, but they couldn’t draw. Imagine if they asked you to draw a picture for them.”

“I would do it,” she said.

“That’s ghostwriting.”

It occurred to me that this might be the closest I’d ever come to a workable definition. It certainly landed with our daughter. You could see it in her eyes. She got off her chair and leaned against me. “Daddy, I will be your ghostwriter.”

My wife laughed. I laughed. “Thank you, sweetheart,” I said.

But that wasn’t what I wanted to say. What I wanted to say was “No, Gracie. Nope. Keep doing your own pictures.” ♦

#prince harry #spare #meghan markle #j. r. moehringer #ghostwriter #the new yorker

62 notes · View notes

lgg5989 · 2 years

Text

Church Encounters Chapter 20

We are back with a new chapter for you guys! I hope everyone likes it. I have conceded to put the read more link on this post bc its so long, if it doesn’t work please let me know, let’s all hope for no more appearances of rude!Anon on my blog.

This fic is written in collaboration with my bestie @barbiewritesstuff so be sure to give her a like and a follow! I hope you enjoy the moodboard, the previous chapters can be found on my Masterlist and the whole story thus far is posted on my Ao3!

Tag list: @roosterscock @sydneyhlove @mygyn @inky-sun

It had been two weeks since Jake left for deployment and you were beginning to worry more and more. Your doctor had been telling you that it wasn’t good for the baby to be so stressed all the time, but it was so hard not knowing what was happening over there, if his mission was going well, if he was sleeping okay.

To take your mind off things, Bob and Maria had offered to accompany you to mass and then breakfast afterwards. You felt Jake’s absence the most on Sundays. He wasn’t there when you woke in the morning, he didn’t have anything sweet to say about your outfit, and you missed his homemade pancakes more than you were willing to admit.

You had gone to mass early, Maria and Bob coming with you, because every Sunday, they prayed the rosary in the morning before mass began. You wanted to pray for Jake’s safe return home. Standing with Bob and Maria in your usual pew made you feel more normal than you had for the last two weeks. During the Our Father, Maria held your hand and when giving peace both she and Bob hugged you tight.

The new priest that had replaced Father John was a kind man. He was significantly younger, barely over 28 and his youthful energy and wonderful sense of humour had made this the best mass you had been to in a few years. The homily had been good too, Father Daniel clearly knew his audience and related that Sunday’s reading to the hardships of navy life and deployment.

You left church feeling slightly better, your worries a little lessened after seemingly hearing exactly what you needed to feel better. It also helped that Father Daniel came by after mass to speak to you.

“Mrs Seresin?,” he called out; running after you, dodging running children left and right to catch you before you turned around, curtseyed towards the altar and walked out of church, “Sorry to hold you up like that. I just wanted to say that I knew your husband had been deployed. I have met Jake before, he’s a lovely guy. If you need anything while he’s away, don’t hesitate to come to me,” he said, taking your hands in both of his and giving them a comforting squeeze. He gave you a reassuring smile which you tried to return.

“Thank you,” you replied, your voice small and wobbly.

“Here let me --” he started, bringing up his vestments to get something from his trousers. Once he got access to his pockets, he took out a piece of paper and a pen and scribbled his number down, “-- That’s my number. Don’t hesitate to call.”

Giving him a tight lipped smile, you took the slip of paper and walked off to find Bob and Maria. They were deep in conversation with Mrs Wilkinson, local florist and well-known town gossip. When you arrived, their attention immediately turned to you.

“All good to go?” Bob asked, raising one hand to wave at someone. You turned around to find Father Dan returning the gesture, shooting Bob a wink.

“You know the new priest?” you asked.

Bob hummed, “He helped with youth group Bible study sessions back when we partnered with the Sunday school for activities in the afternoons. He was actually one of the first friends I made when I converted. Dan coached me through a lot of things, especially when I got baptised. He’s a good teacher,” he explained

“I heard my name,” Father Dan said, clapping Bob on the shoulder with enough force that the man took a step forward to avoid falling over.

“Yeah I was explaining how we knew each other,” Bob said, giving his friend a warning look, clearly trying to stop him from saying something.

Father Dan gave him a shit-eating grin, “Yes, we’ve been friends for a while,” he said as innocently as he could manage, “Saw you praying the rosary before mass,” he noted, the corners of his mouth twitching, itching to stretch into a smile.

“Daniel, don’t,” Bob warned

“Don’t what?” Maria asked, smelling blackmail material from a mile away.

“Oh, nothing,” Father said, “You’ve put me in a nostalgic mood, I’m afraid. ‘Can’t help but think back on the last time I saw you praying the rosary…”

“Daniel, I swear I--” Bob started but Maria waved him off, she signalled for Father Daniel to continue.

“Did you know I taught Bobby how to pray the rosary?” he asked, both of you shook your heads.

“Okay, right, that’s enough!” Bob interrupted, grabbing yours and Maria’s hands and leading you out of the church to the sound of Daniel’s loud laughter reverberating through the building.

He kept a hold of your hands until you got to his car where he watched you get in, afraid you would book it back to the church to hear the rest of the story. You wouldn’t have dared but with the way Maria’s eyes darted around for escape routes, you were fairly certain she had at least considered it. She got into the passenger seat with a pout.

Bob drove you to a small independent coffee shop in town. It was a quaint little café, sticking out like a sore thumb in the midst of San Diego, with its cute pastel wooden shutters, large flower pots hanging from the windows and adorably decorated windows. It looked more like something you would have expected to find on the fashionable end of Paris, than a side street of San Diego.

“It’s my favourite,” Maria admitted as she pushed the door open for you to enter, “They are the only ones to do decent coffee.”

“By decent, she means they serve way too strong coffee in cups the size of thimbles,” Bob whispered in your ear as he passed by you to scout out a table. Maria hadn’t heard his comment, too engrossed in the various pastries, sandwiches and salads on display to pay attention to her surroundings. So much so that she almost ran face first into a very disgruntled woman.

“I don’t know what I want,” she admitted, whispering it to you like it was a state secret, “We’re thinking of getting them to do the cake for the wedding, but they do so many other nice things that I really can’t pick.”

“Oh yes! How’s wedding planning going?” you asked, eyeing a chocolate donut the size of your hand. You pointed it out to the person behind the til and ordered a decaf caramel macchiato while Maria explained her vision for the day.

“We’re thinking of a green and like champagne colour scheme? So it looks a little rustic but still classy, you know. I think most of our decor will be like fairly woodsey so it goes well with the theme. The only thing that won’t match is the cake. I’m not keen on the naked cake idea, but it’s the only thing Bob requested so it would be so mean to refuse him,” she said, “then, obviously I’ll be in white -- or champagne, I haven’t decided yet -- and I was thinkin like sage green for the bridesmaids?”

“Oh! I was going to ask if you wanted to be a bridesmaid,” she added quickly, “I’d like to have my future sister by my side.”

“Technically I’m already your sister,” you answered with a smile and a warm feeling spreading in your heart

“I don’t need to be reminded of our very complicated family tree,” she laughed, playfully rolling her eyes at you as she placed her tray onto the table Bob had chosen and gave him his matcha with almond milk, and his chocolate coated waffle before placing her own matcha and cannoli onto the table. You sank down on one of the comfortable chairs and took a sip of your drink.

“Anyway, what do you say about being a bridesmaid?” she asked.

“I don’t know… I’m really flattered, but I’ll have the baby and I don’t know how they’ll be. I don’t want to say yes and have to bail out at the last minute,” you said, leaving out the rest of your sentence, not wanting them to know that your biggest worry at the moment was to figure out a way to bounce back from your pregnancy.

“That’s fair,” she replied with a disappointed pout on her face, a second later, she stood up again, “I need the bathroom, be right back,” Maria said, putting her drink down and speeding off towards a small corridor next to the tills.

“I think I’m going to invite my parents,” Bob blurts out as soon as Maria is out of earshot, “Maria doesn’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Oh,” you said, not really sure how to process that information. Bob looked at you expectantly though, so you forced yourself to say something, “Is Maria scared they’ll make a scene?”

“I think so,” he replied.

You thought for a moment before asking, “Do you think they would?”

“My dad would,” he said, “But I feel like I can’t not invite them, especially my mom. Technically, she never did anything to me.”

“She stayed with him while he hurt you Bobby,” you said rather sternly, “She picked him, that’s not doing nothing.”

“I guess,” he hesitated, “God gave me a lot of good things, and he gave me them… Maybe they’re not all bad?” he asked.

You recognised those words as the ones you had thought when you were making up your own wedding guest list. That nagging feeling of guilt, growing more and more overwhelming as the list grew and you resisted putting your mother’s name at the bottom of it.

“He didn’t give them to you, Bobby,” you said, leaning forward and placing a hand on his arm, “He gave you to them. You were the present, they must thank Him for you. Not the other way around,” you added, squeezing his arm.

“What about Ephesians 6:1?, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.” Bob countered, his eyes glued to the table.

Without missing a beat you shook your head before quoting back to him, “Ephesians 6:4, Fathers do not provoke your children to anger by the way you treat them. Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord.”

“Alright,” he said, “Fair point…So you think I shouldn’t invite them?”

“It’s not up to me,” you replied. Bob shot you a look, “Fine. I don’t know what you should do. I obviously didn’t invite my mom, but you don’t have to do the same. Just do what makes you happy.”

“That is the most diplomatic answer I have ever heard. You should be president. The Princess Diaries taught you well,” he chuckled.

“I can’t believe you still remember that,” you said, laughing at him.

“I look like a moose,” he quoted, his hands held up behind his head to look like antlers.

“But a very cute moose. Make all the boy moose go 'WHAAAAA’,” you finished, sending you both in a fit of laughter.

“You know,” he said after a while, “I think I’m finally happy. I’ve spent so much of my life trying to move onto the next thing or get out of situations and I don’t think I’ve ever sat down long enough to realise I’m happy. I mean can you believe I’m going to marry Maria?” he laughed, “I mean not only is she smart, funny and drop dead gorgeous, but she’s also willing to put up with me forever? Tell you what, next time someone doubts prayer works, I’m just going to slide a picture of her over to them. That should do the trick.”

He took a sip of his drink, “And I have a family. One I love and that loves me, not because I can amount to something special but just because I exist. I don’t know when I started calling the Admiral dad, but man, he’s the only one that’s ever deserved the name. And Lizzie is … Lizzie,” he summarised, “She’s a powerhouse, she’s kind, caring, welcoming, warm. I never have to doubt that she likes and wants what’s best for me, because she’ll tell me. And I have no doubt that if anyone ever says anything bad about me, she’ll simply skin them,” he laughed

“Obviously there’s Pete, Matt and the girls, who are angels and I love them all,” he kept going, looking you right in the eyes, “And there’s Annie and Audrey, who, despite having met me twice, are already treating me like I’m their annoying little brother. I love it. I love the memes, I love the voice notes they send, and I love that I get a care package in the mail from them on a weekly basis containing nothing but cookies from that bakery they like.”

“And then there’s you. I’m so happy I got to be your friend, that you let me wallflower those shitty parties with you, and that you forced me to watch The Princess Diaries, Pride and Prejudice -- 2005, obviously -- 10 Things I Hate About You or even About Time, because I swear I became a different person after that film. I’m happy that you let me force you to watch Talladega Nights, Rush or even fucking Rodeo Rythm. But tell you what, you’re a better sister than you are a friend, and the bar is already pretty high. I just --” Bob wiped a tear from the corner of his eye.

“I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this. I’ve not always made the right choices, or been the right person. But fuck! I still get to marry the love of my life, I still wake up feeling loved and supported by friends and family. And I couldn’t tell you why the Lord decided to bless me like this, but I’m so happy He did. I’ve done a lot of growing up these past few years, I’ve changed so much and that is such a good thing. Everything I was, He made anew. He took me in like a lost little lamb, hurt and scared and he helped me find the people I was always meant to be with. He freed me from fear, doubt and loneliness and I am so glad that his mercy isn’t based on individual merit, because I think I’d be pretty low on the list,” Bob finished, his face showing the gratitude he felt towards the Lord for his new found lot in life.

“Bob,” Maria said softly, appearing from behind the corner, having heard everything. She placed a gentle hand on his shoulder,“Jesus bared the cross for all of us, not just the saints. His blood washed our sins away regardless of who we are and what we have done so long as our hearts are repentant. Whatever you have done, or think you have done, is not and never will be too big for God to forgive. The Lord doesn’t put you in situations He cannot forgive you for, but he does put you in situations He can help you out of. He is good, He wants what’s best for you. He loves you, so much that he brought you to us so that you could finally feel that love for yourself,” she finished, a few tears running down her own face.

Maria pulled Bob into a hug and you felt a smile come across your face. The two of them were well suited and you knew that their marriage would be a long and happy one. Once the food had been eaten, you suggested having Bob over for the afternoon to keep you and Maria company.

Your mistake, upon taking in the rainy day, and suggesting you play board games, had been pulling out Monopoly. It had been three hours, and you were still playing. Bob had bought Boardwalk and Park Place before proceeding to load them down with hotels. Now, it was a gamble every time you rolled the dice on that side of the board, you could pass ‘Go!’ and receive your two hundred dollars, or you could land on Boardwalk and go bankrupt.

Maria let out a heavy sigh as she counted the money out, “six hundred, seven hundred, eight hundred, and fifty. Mr. Moneybags,” she said before leaning back on the couch with her arms crossed over her chest.

“It’s not my fault you didn’t make a good investment at the beginning of the game,” Bob said to her, a shit eating grin on his face, “Don’t worry honey, I’ll be incharge of our retirement accounts,” he added, patting her on the thigh.

You laughed at the pair of them when Maria’s eyes flared and Bob’s grin shrank slightly.

“With your winnings, we won’t need retirement accounts,” she in a sassy voice, gesturing to the handful of fake money Bob still had clutched in his hand.

“I think we are going to need more than eight hundred and fifty Monopoly dollars for retirement,” he replied, tucking his money under the corner of the board before settling back on the couch, shooting Maria a wink.

Shaking your head, you picked up the dice and rolled, “Oh no!” you exclaimed, causing Bob and Maria to look at you with wide eyes, both of them immediately focusing on your belly.

“Oh my goodness, I’m not due for another two months,” you said, rolling your eyes at them, “What a shame!” you continued your dramatics from before overexaggerating the disappointment in your voice, “It looks like, Bob bankrupted me!” you said, a smile now firmly fixed on your face as you scooped up all your money and handed it to him, along with your properties.

“Hey! You can’t just quit!” Maria exclaimed, “You hadn’t even mortgaged those!”

“The pregnant lady can do what she wants,” Bob said, looking at his fiancee with a grin and victory in his eyes.

“How about the pregnant lady makes some dinner considering it’s now almost six?” you asked, trying to push yourself up from your place on the floor.

Bob rose from the couch, offering you a hand and pulling you up to your feet, “Do you need any help? We can pack this up-”

You laughed, “I think if you don’t let Maria win, you might not be getting married,” you answered him, “I’m fine, I’ll just be in the kitchen anyway, I can still watch you two play.”

“Alright,” he said.

“Let us know if you want any help?” Maria asked, since she had been living with you, she had seen first hand how quickly you could get tired in the middle of a task.

You smiled at her, “I will,” you said before turning and walking into the kitchen.

You turned on one of your and Jake’s favourite playlists before pulling ingredients out of the fridge. Tonight was roasted chicken breasts with baked vegetables, and rice. You preheated the oven and just as you hit the button to start it, your phone started ringing.

Your heart started pounding in your ears when you saw the number, BLOCKED, flashing up at you from the screen. Sliding the green call button to the side, you put the phone up to your ear, “Hello?” you asked.

“Is this a Mrs. Seresin?” a man asked, his voice gruff.

You tried to take a deep breath, expecting it to be Jake, the unfamiliar voice startled you, “This…this is she,” you forced out.

“Ma’am, I am sorry to inform you that your husband, Lieutenant Commander Seresin, is MIA,” he said bluntly.

You didn’t hear the rest, because at that moment, you dropped the phone. It clattered to the floor, or so you thought because you could see it there, but the only sound in your ears was the beating of your own heart.

“Y/n?” Maria called from the living room, “Are you okay?”

You opened your mouth to answer, but the only thing that came out was a strangled sob. Your legs started to give out, and you sank to the floor, your arms wrapped around the little life inside you. Suddenly arms wrapped around you and you could hear again.

“Who is this?” you heard Maria ask.

Then, “I am his sister, Maria Seresin,” there was a longer pause before, “Who is your superior? Yes, your superior! How could you think it was a good idea to give a pregnant woman this kind of news over the phone?” she practically screamed. When you looked up at her, you saw tears streaming down her own face.

“You will be hearing from the Admiral, I guarantee it,” she said before hanging up the phone and sinking down next to you and Bob. She wrapped you up from the other side and whispered into your ear, “It’s going to be fine, I promise he is going to be okay.”

—

Jake knew a few things about the Indian ocean: it spanned over roughly 27 million miles, including the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, it was about 12 thousand feet deep on average but with a deepest point at 24 thousand feet below water, and it made up about 20 percent of the Earth’s entire ocean volume.

What Jake hadn’t realised before crashing his plane into the middle of it, was how unbearably hot it actually was. The water temperature wasn’t too bad, having stayed at a cosy 75F since his plane went down, but the sun was unrelenting. He felt like he was on fire.

Although, considering the crash, he probably was. Or had been. It was day two now, with no news of the search and rescue team and Jake was starting to feel desperate. Not because of any real threat of starvation or dehydration, but because his brain had remembered that the Indian Ocean counted about 19 species of sharks and he swore he could see fins out of the corner of his eyes.

His arms stung where his flesh had been singed by the burning jet fuel that had circled the plane when it hit the surface of the water, knocking him out cold for a few seconds. That had been his saving grace, really, since by the time he had miraculously managed to open the canopy underwater, he was far enough down that the fire wasn’t boiling him alive as he swam right under the puddle of kerosene to safety.

His brain, unable to compute anything but the agonising pain of salt water on cuts, had grown quiet as he swam up, somehow finding a second to take in the scene. Away from humans, the water was clear. Fishes swam, dead leaves floated, and an occasional plastic bottle found its way to the fiery hell that had formed quite the considerable tower of smoke. Search and rescue might have found him already if he had stayed by the smoke, but Jake needed to survive and getting high off of jet fuel fumes didn’t seem like a good idea. It might have helped with the pain, though.

That had been day one, hour one.

It probably wasn’t the right time, but in all honesty, he couldn’t remember much. Thinking was hard, and telling time when nothing changed at all was something he had never had to do before. So hour one eventually blended into hour seven and Jake’s attempt to keep track was already beginning to fail. Ever since he had hit the water he had been praying the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory Be, any prayer he could think of was sent up. He prayed the Our Father when the sun rose and prayed the Hail Mary when the sun set and he just hoped that would be enough to remember what day it was. He knew one thing though, regardless of how much pain he was in, or how much blood he lost, he needed to come home to you.

Day two had just started or was about to end, it didn’t really matter. The only thing that mattered was that Jake was on the raft, and surviving seemed just a little more plausible. He was making baby steps back to you. Soon, he might even be able to reach for his bottle of water. He’d been taking small sips every few hours, trying to ration what little water he had left, cursing the fact that he had given Tiny some of it before the flight.

His head hurt so badly, and he couldn’t quite tell why. Was it the dehydration or the impact induced concussion? The dry mouth, lips and eyes, and mind numbing heat were telling him dehydration. The vomiting, confusion and large bleeding gash underneath his hairline was telling him concussion. Not that it mattered, since it wasn’t his only problem. Jake was fairly certain he had broken his leg, and considering his chest hurt he thought he might have broken a couple ribs too.

The sun went down on day two and Jake fell asleep for a few hours, waking up just in time to catch the sky turning from starry night to early morning. And so day three started.

He sipped his water and waited, feeling hot, in pain and slowly growing weaker. Ironically, as he grew weaker, his mind grew louder and soon enough, when he had no strength left to even shoo them all away, it felt like his mind was screaming. Still it grew louder and louder and louder, and then, nothing.

The world went dark for Jake as he hunched over the raft and fell into the water.

When he came to, he was on top of a mountain. Isaac and Abraham had just left, the leftovers of their sacrifice still on the altar, blood glistening in the sun. Jake stook a few hesitant steps forward, his leg dragging behind as he made his way to the edge of Mount Moriah. Before he could waddle his way there, a voice rang through the air.

“Jacob,” it called.

Jake looked around, trying to find who it belonged to, “Jacob,” it called again. He looked towards the sky and over the edge, but still he found no one.

It called him again, shaking the mountain and dropping him to the floor as if it was shaking the very foundations of the Earth.

“The pain you have been feeling cannot compare to the joy that is coming,” God spoke. The wind on Mount Moriah picked up, shaking leaves on trees and bushes so that they lay almost flat to the ground.

“Jacob,” He called again, “The ladder.”

“The what?” Jake called out but no one responded, “THE WHAT?” he repeated, his voice swallowed by a growing noise. It sounded strangely symmetrical and terribly familiar.

“THE WHAT?” he screamed, his voice rough with disuse and lack of lubrication. The wind whipped sand into his face, stinging his skin, and Jake closed his eyes.

“THE LADDER, CAN YOU GRAB IT?” someone replied, the voice of God replaced by a woman he had never heard before. Jake’s eyes flew open to reveal the Search and Rescue Helicopter.

Jake reached for the ladder and grabbed it, trying to pull himself up on it. A flash of pain tore through his body, emanating from his chest and he was forced to let go. He fell back into the water with a gasp, his lungs filling with ocean water. A hand reached down to pull him up but the world faded back to black before he broke the surface.

----

Your group on the floor was interrupted by the phone ringing again. This time you didn’t even move to reach for it, your body numb and your mind racing with the information, Jake was missing.

“Hello?” you heard Bob say, “Yes, we are with her,” it was quiet a moment longer before he spoke again, “I will let them both know, be safe.”

Maria brought her tear stained face up from your shoulder, “Who was that?”

“Your mom,” he answered quickly, “Her and your dad are on their way to the airport, they bought a ticket for the first flight out.”

You felt like you were in a trance, “Good, good,” you said.

“Are you okay?” Maria asked, her face full of concern.

Before you could answer, pain ripped through your abdomen and you hunched forwards letting out a groan, “Owww.”

“Oh my God,” Maria said, her eyes getting wide, “Is that?”

“No,” you said, shaking your head, your teeth clenched together in pain, “It can’t be, it’s too soon.”

When the pain subsided, you looked at her, panic flooding through you, “My water didn’t break, they can’t be coming this early can they?”

You tried to stand up, but couldn’t, your centre of gravity too far off from your normal. Bob pulled you up gently and you felt fine for a few minutes before another contraction ripped through you.

“What do we do?” Bob asked Maria, as they both watched you sink into the couch, both hands clutching your stomach.

“Call Cyclone,” she said, pulling his phone out and pressing it into his hand, “Lizzie might know something, and he will definitely know about Jake.”

After only two rings, the Admiral picked up, “Hello?” you heard, Bob had put him on speaker phone.

“Beau, we need some help,” Bob said, his voice sounding more nervous than you’d ever heard.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, seeming totally calm as another contraction started at the bottom of your belly.

“What’s wrong?” you shouted at the phone, “Do you mean to tell me that you don’t know my husband is missing?”

The line was silent for a minute before he answered, “I made the executive decision not to tell you that…”

“Well that was dumb dad, because some fucking Rear Admiral called anyway and now I’m in labour, and I’m going to have this baby, and it’s too soon. How am I going to tell them about their father’s eyes or his..” you let out a grunt as the pain came to a peak, “His smile and how good of a man he was?” your question ending on a sob.

“What do you mean you’re in labour?” he asked, his voice quiet.

“I mean I’m in labour, how much more of an explanation do you need?” you yelled into the phone, sobs now breaking up your words.

“Oh shit,” he said, “I’m, we’ll, we are coming, be there in five minutes,” he stumbled out before the line went dead.

Bob and Maria were both looking at you, your breathing coming in shallow pants, “What? He may be the Admiral but he is my dad and I reserve the right to bring him down a peg.”

Bob just nodded but Maria scooted closer to you on the couch, “Honey you need to take a deep breath.”

As another wave of pain hit you, you thought that this is what hell looked like. It wasn’t fiery heat and torture, it was an early labour, for a baby who’s father may be dead. All you could think to do in that moment was pray, you fell to your knees from the couch, bending over as far as you could, and the first words that came out of your mouth were, “Hail Mary, full of grace…”

By the time you had finished the prayer once over, Bob and Maria had joined in. Your breathing calmed as you prayed and you felt the little one inside you settle at the sound of your voice, and your hands pressing gently to their feet. A loud knock on the door brought Bob to his feet and before you knew it, Beau and Lizzie were in the room, Lizzie kneeling in front of you on the floor.

“Are you alright? Labour? Did your water break?” she asked, her questions rushed and her eyes searching over you frantically.

You shook your head, “I’m not alright. I don’t know if I’m in labour. No, it didn’t break,” you answered before leaning forward and resting your forehead on her shoulder, your shoulders shaking with silent sobs.

The house was silent save for the sound of your stuttering breaths. Lizzie pulled you to her, rubbing your back gently as she whispered words of comfort in your ear, “It’s going to be okay, they’re going to find him, I promise. You aren’t in labour, it's the stress, take a deep breath honey. There you go, now another one. Good job. Just close your eyes, Jake is going to come back, he is a strong man and he won’t leave you and this precious baby without a fight, you know that.”

The rest of her words were lost on you because at that moment, Beau decided to open his mouth, “I um, can we do anything?”

“You’ve done enough,” you said, your voice filled with venom, “How could you keep this from me? How long has he been missing?”

“I didn’t want to worry you,” he said quietly, not elaborating on your other question.

“Dad, how long has he been missing?” you demanded more than asked.

After a moment of silence he answered, “Almost two days.”

“Two days?” you questioned, “I could have been praying for him for two days? I can’t believe…I’m…Oh my God…” you broke down into another fit of tears, who could survive in the ocean for two days alone?

Your hands were pulled away from your face, strong arms wrapping themselves around you, before your forehead met soft fabric on a firm shoulder, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I should have told you, but I couldn’t…what if something happened? What if we found him and then you didn’t need this stress. You thought you were in labour five minutes ago, I just wanted to spare you the stress honey, your body can’t handle it.”

You couldn’t find the strength to pick up your head, so into his shoulder you mumbled, “He’s my husband, the father of my child, the light of my life, I deserved to know, and I deserved to know much sooner than two days after you lost him.”

Beau couldn’t find an answer to that, his silence speaking louder than any words he could have spoken. You allowed him to pull you closer to him and he brushed your hair away from your face, “I’m so sorry honey, they are looking. I promise you, on my orders they are looking.”

Nodding your head, you tried to fight the tiredness that had overcome you, but against your will, your eyes drooped closed, and the world faded to black.

When you woke up a few hours later, you found yourself in your bed, the blankets draped over you carefully and a dark figure slumped in the corner of your room. For a second, you had forgotten what happened, the phone call, the contractions, Beau’s bullheadedness, but in the five seconds you had been awake, it all came rushing back to you.

You pushed yourself up to sitting in the bed, scooping up one of Jake’s pillows that you had stuffed into his favourite sweatshirt. Burying your nose into the fabric, you let out a quiet sob when his fading scent hit your nose, the notes of leather, whiskey, and pine were prominent and every now and then you caught a hint of vanilla. No matter how many times you had sprayed it with his cologne, it didn’t smell quite the same as he did and only this sweatshirt got close to feeling like Jake.

You felt a hand on your shoulder and you had to choke back the instinct to scream. Pulling your head from the pillow you turned to find Isabella sitting on the edge of your bed, tears in her own eyes.

Without saying a word, she wrapped you in her arms and the two of you cried together. There was something almost Biblical about it, the mother-in-law comforting the daughter-in-law.

When you had run out of tears, and your breaths were coming in hiccups Isabella pulled back from you, her hands coming up to wipe your cheeks.

“He knew this was a risk when he took this job,” she said slowly, “But I am happy that he has such a strong wife to carry on in his absence, however short or long,” she paused, seeming to think, “I hope you know that we will be here for you, whatever happens, no matter what.”

You hugged her to you again, “Thank you,” you whispered into her hair, “You don’t know how much that means to me.”

When you finally let go of her, she brushed away the last of your tears before standing up, “Let’s go see the others, shall we?” she asked, holding her hand out to you.

“Okay,” you said, your voice rough from crying and disuse. You allowed her to help you out of bed and down the stairs, your belly no longer tingling with the pain of contractions.

“There she is,” Lizzie said, her face brightening at seeing your presence in the living room. Everyone was gathered around the kitchen table, Maria had a rosary in her hands and her lips were moving quickly. Bob was seated next to her, talking quietly with Father Dan. Giovanni was seated at one head of the table and at the sight of you and Isabella emerging from the hall, he got up and came over, wrapping you in a tight hug.

“Where’s dad?” you asked Lizzie, looking around for him, “I’m afraid I may have said some things I shouldn’t have…”

“I think you said everything he needed to hear,” Lizzie told you, her voice firm.

At that moment you heard a raised voice from outside, “I don’t care how long it takes or what kind of resources you are using, he is an asset of the US Navy, one that we have spent a lot of money on, and I expect you to find him, today,” Beau said, a note of finality to his voice, “And don’t think I don’t know that you went around my back Rear Admiral MacFarlane.” There was a pause before he continued, “Because the next of kin is my fucking daughter who is seven months pregnant, you think it was right to tell her that when she could have been home by herself?”.

You watched as Beau’s face turned red and for the first time since you had known the man, he lost his temper, “I don’t care if that isn’t in the rulebook! It fucking should be, no one should receive that kind of news alone, especially if they are carrying one of our sailor’s babies. Find Seresin and do it today.” He hung up the phone and in a stunt that made you laugh, threw it across your lawn. With his back at the house, he put his hands on his hips and turned his head up to the sky, letting out what you imagined was a very deep breath.

You excused yourself from the room and made your way into the backyard, walking up behind the Admiral.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so angry,” you said, scaring him.

He jumped, turning to you with one hand pressed over his chest, “You scared me, twice,” he said, walking towards you quickly and pulling you into a hug.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t-” you started but he cut you off.

“No, I’m sorry. I should have told you about Jake, I just wanted to protect you,” he said, “But you are a grown woman and you did have the right to know, and I’m sorry you didn’t hear it from me.”

You wrapped your arms around his waist as best you could, your belly getting in the way, “It’s okay dad, just help me get him home?”

“Of course, we are going to find him,” Beau said, rubbing your back.

You stood there for a few minutes before asking the question that had been plaguing your mind since you got the news that Jake was MIA, “What happened?”

You felt him sigh before answering, “Their mission was going well until Prince hung Jake out to dry, saving his own ass. Jake’s plane went into the Indian Ocean almost fifty hours ago,” he paused and you knew the next bit of information was going to be what worried you the most, “They had no report of a chute, but his life raft deployed because there was green dye in the water at his last reported location.”

“Why haven’t they found him yet?” you asked.

“His transponder isn’t working and the boat took almost an hour to get to the plane’s location. Those two things combined mean he’s drifting somewhere out at sea,” Beau finished.

You nodded, burying your head into his chest again, “Thank you, for working so hard to find him.”

“I would do it for any of them, but especially him,” he said, letting out a breath.

You stepped back from him and he took your hand in his, wrapping it around his arm as he escorted you into the yard to pick up his phone. The two of you walked in silence, him crouching to get the phone and then steering you both back towards the house. It was getting into late October, and the weather was cooling down quite a bit. You weren’t sure of the time, but the chill in the air made you think it was early morning.

When you reentered the house, you found everyone watching you expectantly.

“Yes?” you asked the room, looking around to see who would break first.

“We have an idea,” Bob started, “We want to recruit the church, well some of the church to start a prayer vigil for Jake, until he is brought home.”

Father Dan nodded, “We would send an email to the parish and then people can sign up to pray between certain hours so that there is someone always in God’s ear for his safe return.”

“I think that sounds great, in fact, I’ll take the first two hours,” you said as you made your way to the bookcase you had decorated to be your little ‘shrine’ to catholicism. On top of the table was your rosary, Jake’s was probably in his bag on the carrier and the thought made your heart clench. Pouring it out of the bag and into your hand, you made your way back into the living room and took a seat on the couch, beginning the first of many times around the rosary.

While Isabella and Lizzie were fixing breakfast, everyone in the house found some way to occupy themselves. Maria was cleaning, Bob was pacing the floor speaking quietly with Father Dan as emails from parationers rolled in saying they would help, and Giovanni was talking with Beau at the table, the two of them bent over a map of the Indian Ocean.

When your two hours of prayer were up, you almost didn’t want to stop. The repetition of the words was calming and focusing on finding Jake was keeping the rest of your worries about the circumstances of his accident at bay.

The day passed slowly, most of your time spent clutching a cold cup of chamomile tea to your chest while you sat in Jake’s recliner in the living room. Every now and then you would feel your little one move, like they were reminding you that you weren’t alone even in a room full of people.

As you started to nod off in the evening, a blanket spread over you, the chair reclined back, and Jeopardy playing lowly on the TV, Beau’s phone rang. He looked up at the room before picking it up, walking into your garage.

Immediately you were awake, getting up from the chair and standing in the living room. When he came back in, the look on his face made your heart race, he was happy.

“They found him,” he said, “He’s on a chopper now headed back to the boat.”

The relief that flooded through your system made your legs weak and you sat heavily back into the chair. You crossed yourself and thanked God, for bringing him back to you.

Beau’s face turned slightly less happy and you seemed to be the only one who noticed it, “What’s wrong?” you asked, your voice wary.

“They said he’s pretty severely injured,” he said quietly, “They expect several ribs to be broken, and he has a broken leg. In addition to that he is suffering from a concussion, severe dehydration, and sun poisoning. Once they get him to the carrier they are going to update me again on his condition before they load him on a plane back to North Island.”

The relief that you had been feeling was swept away from you in an instant, it was replaced with an intense worry and fear. Was Jake going to be the same when he came back? How bad are his injuries? At that moment, your baby kicked hard. You rubbed over its little foot, “It’ll be okay, daddy’s going to be alright,” you whispered to your bump.

Isabella voiced another question that you hadn’t the mind to think of yet, “When will we be able to see him?”

Beau paused for a moment before answering, “By my maths, I believe he will arrive back tomorrow. Depending on his injuries they may not allow visitors or they may want to perform surgery if something is bad enough so I can’t promise a time, but tomorrow he will be here.”

Everyone nodded along with his words, Father Dan asked, “Should I keep the prayer vigil up then? Just until he is home and through any surgeries?”

“I would appreciate that,” you said, a sad smile coming over your face.

Now that Jake was coming home, the relief felt through the house was refreshing, but you had your own worries about his injuries. That night, before you went to bed, you kneeled down next to it and thanked God for returning Jake to you. You prayed that he would recover quickly and you tried to keep the thoughts of what Beau had said about his injuries from your mind.

As you climbed into bed and turned out the lights, you mentally prepared yourself for seeing him the next day. By the time you fell asleep, you were hoping for the best, but prepared for the worst.

----

“ -- broken ribs, broken leg --” someone said, their voice sounding so far away, as if Jake was listening to someone speak through a thick brick wall, “ -- concussion and severe dehydration. His chances of survival are good, but recovery will be slow,” they said, becoming slightly clearer, “Physical therapy, and likely a skin graft surgery for the burn on his back.”

Jake coughed and silence fell over the room. He opened his eyes, eager to see you again, but the only people in the room were a greying doctor and a group of medical students, standing alert in their scrubs with a stethoscope hanging around their neck. They made him feel like a zoo exhibit.

“Mr Seresin, you’re awake,” the doctor said, moving towards him to check him over, “How do you feel?”

“Like someone tap danced on my chest,” he joked, his voice sounding strange as it passed through his bone dry throat. Speaking sent him into a coughing fit, the pain in his chest making him see stars with every movement. He gritted his teeth together and stayed perfectly still for a few seconds, hoping the pain would pass but it didn't diminish much.

The doctor looked at him, then pressed a button and a nurse appeared. They exchanged words and she left again, only to come back a minute later with a syringe. Jake felt his heart drop in his chest and he tried to fight back, two of the medical students held him back against the bed and she sank the needle into his arm. A minute later, his eyes fluttered closed again, not before seeing your scared face in the doorway.

“ -- Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgement on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practise the very same things --” a familiar voice read.

Jake’s eyes fluttered open, revealing Daniel lounging in one of the uncomfortable chairs by his bedside. He was wearing his regular clothes, a pair of black jeans and a white tee hidden underneath a half zipped up hoodie. The steady beeping of a machine to Jake’s right sped up as he looked around, desperately trying to find you.

The pillows piled high underneath his neck were making it hard to look around and moving his body was impossible but still he tried, straining as much as possible to look over any obstruction. He groaned and Father Daniel stopped mid-sentence. He closed his bible.

“Jake, it’s alright,” he reassured him, moving to sit on the edge of his bed, “She went home to shower, she’s okay. She’ll be back. We’re watching over you in the meantime, you can go back to sleep,” Daniel said and Jake didn’t struggle, falling back into sleep’s open arms as soon as the words had come out of Father’s mouth.

When he woke up again, Father was still there, speaking into the empty room as if it were a packed church, pacing around the room and rehearsing that week's homily, “Judgement is very prominent in today’s society. We like to judge people for who they are --” he started and stopped, fishing a piece of paper out of his back pocket and checking his script, “We like to judge people for what they wear, what they own, what they do. We judge people for how much money they have, what they do with it, what their jobs are. I will admit that I have been guilty of that sin. I have looked at celebrities and criticised their appearance, I have scoffed at teens when they tell me they want to be influencers, I have caught myself thinking that some of the citizens of this fine country must have gotten their driver’s licence in cereal box tops,” Dan paused, checking his piece of paper, “All of these, regardless of how mean or menial they are, are bad. All judgement is bad. But the worst one in my opinion is one I encounter daily, be it through seeing memes on facebook, or hearing it from the mouths of my parishioners, it is the judgement we cast over others for their belief or disbelief of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”

“When we look upon others and judge them for the way they do or do not worship. When we look at their faith and tell them they are doing things wrong, when we look at their relationship with the Lord and think that they could do things better, we must remember that the standards we apply to them, the Lord will apply to us --” he continued.

“Most people do get their licences from cereal box tops,” Jake said, his voice raspy and hard to understand. Father Dan turned to him.

“Seresin, I have experienced your driving. That line was specifically directed at you I’ll have you know,” he joked.

“How dare you, I will have you know my instructor said I was a delight,” Jake replied, pulling himself into a somewhat upright position.

“Sure he did, you’re built like a mountain and you have the worst road rage I have ever seen,” Dan laughed.

“Bob,” Jake replied, Daniel paused, giving his retort some thought.

“Second worst road rage I have ever seen,” he acquiesced, “How are you feeling?”

“You know, I have never been so aware that I had ribs in my life,” Jake joked, wincing only a second later.

“No kiddin’... You want me to call a nurse or something? See if they can get you a pain killer?” Dan offered.

“No, but I want my wife,” Jake replied.

“I called her twenty minutes ago when you came to. She’s on her way. Bob’s driving though, so you can expect her to get here in a year or two,” he laughed, “We were taking shifts at your bedside so you wouldn’t have to wake up alone.”

“I can’t thank you all enough,” Jake said, accidentally shifting his weight on the pillows, “Shit, that hurts,” he winced.

“You’re going to need to watch your mouth when your kid gets here,” the priest chastised him.

“I got two months to kick the habit,” he replied, “How is she? Everything okay with her and the baby?”

“Everything is fine,” Dan said, “You sure you’re okay, bud?”

“I thought I was going to die,” he said, “I think God spoke to me.”

Father Dan smiled, “What was it like?”

Jake closed his eyes and tried to remember. As if projecting a film on the back of his brain the memory came back scene by scene. He felt the gravel of Mount Moriah underneath his boots, the stones sliding and rolling away as limped his way up the path. The sun was beating down on him as he walked but it didn’t hurt, it felt gentle and warming, almost like the setting Texas sun of his boyhood.

Jake remembered the vague understanding that he had crossed Abraham and Isaac on the path at some point, but the altar confirmed it. The stones were red with blood, seeping through the cracks and dripping onto the ground. Jake, before he could stop and think, reached for it, using it to pull himself forward. He leaned against the altar, turning his hand around expecting to see it slick with the ram’s blood but it was clean. His name was called, shaking him out of his reverie. The voice resonated through the air, cutting through everything as though the volume had been turned down on the environmental noise. Jake turned around, trying to catch a glimpse of who the voice belonged to.

There really hadn’t been a doubt in his mind about who the voice had belonged to. He felt the words in his bones, flowing through his blood, his body reacted to it like he had never been made to do anything else. He still limped his way to the edge of the mountain and looked down, seeing nothing but grass, birds and people. He raised his head to the sky, but the clouds gave nothing away.

The Lord called to him once more, sending a jolt through the earth that threw him against the ground. Jake braced himself for a wave of pain, but nothing came.

“The pain you have been feeling cannot compare to the joy that is coming,” God said, and Jake knew it was true. As true as the fact that you loved him, that he was alive, that your baby would be born, that his name was Jacob Thomas Seresin and that God was Good and speaking to Him.

The wind picked up. The breeze that had been making the air up on Mount Moriah pleasant and fresh grew stronger and stronger until it lifted earth and sand and spun it upwards into the sky. It blew until trees bent and leaves flattened. There were no more birds, no more insects, and soon the dust made it so that there was no more Mount Moriah.

“Jacob,” He called again, his voice swallowed by the wind, “The ladder.”

Jake opened his eyes again and blinked rapidly at the cool white light emanating from the large overhead lamps.

“It was…Everything,”he said, his voice a whisper in the room.

“What did he sound like?” Father Dan probed further, looking at him like his nephews did whenever they asked him to describe what flying was like, full of wonder and amazement.

Jake thought for a moment, “Hard to describe, really. Loud, I guess. Unmistakable? But gentle and reassuring at the same time. And just… I don’t know, inevitable. Like whatever he was telling me was certain, it would happen and I have no choice in the matter.”

Dan took a breath before speaking again, “Can I ask, you don’t have to answer obviously, but what did He say?”

“He said I’d be okay,” Jake replied, feeling strange about revealing His words. They had been spoken to him, and selfishly, he wanted to keep them for himself.

Father Dan smiled brightly, sitting up on his chair. He looked at Jake and let out a breathy laugh.

“Has it happened to you before?” Jake asked but Dan never had time to answer as just as he was about to, the door opened to reveal you. It felt like the world stood still, like the clouds parted to reveal the sunshine after weeks of torrential rain. It felt like taking a breath after diving underwater for too long.

“Hey,” he breathed.

“Hey,” you replied in the same tone of voice.

“We’ll leave you two alone,” Dan said, pushing Bob back out of the room before Jake could see more than the back of his hand pushing the door open further.

“I thought you had died,” you said, tears welling up in your eyes as you made your way towards him.

“Never,” he smiled brightly, “You’re stuck with me forever!”

Jake stuck out his arms to ask for a hug, you sat on the edge of the bed so as not to hurt him but he pulled you into him, ignoring the agonising pain he felt when you leaned into his chest to squeeze you close, “I love you,” he said.

“I love you too,” you replied.

----

Almost ten days after Jake’s skin graft surgery, the doctors cleared him to go home. To help while he recovered, Isabella and Giovanni had decided to stay, stealing the guest room from Maria and banishing her to the sofa. She grumbled and groaned for a few days but whatever Jake had asked her to do in the nursery was taking up half of her day, the other half being almost solely dedicated to placing the finishing touches on the house, to get it ready for the wedding.

You hadn’t been in weeks now, but she had been all too happy to show you pictures. They had done some wonderful work. All bathrooms had been retiled, with new showers, baths and sinks installed. The bedrooms had been painted and carpet ripped out, and the kitchen had been gutted and changed from outdated to modern. In the livingroom and dining room, Bob had installed beautiful hardwood flooring. The garage, which could have housed two cars had been divided, one half turned into Bob’s very own workshop. All that was left was to finish the attic, which they would turn into Maria’s art studio, and buy the furniture, which she was more than thrilled about.

“I’m thinking maybe like, lots of white and light colours, so it feels very lit up. We have those beautifully large windows that show the yard, so I feel like we need to take advantage of that. But obviously I don’t want it to be too monotone? So I feel like we need a few pops of colour, you know?” She asked, leaning her head against the back of the sofa, “Did you guys have this much trouble decorating this place?”

“I’ll be honest, we had most of the furniture already and Jake painted everything in about a week. We got lucky, the house was in really good condition and the colours were pretty much what we wanted already,” you explained, rubbing your belly. Beanie had been making their presence known since Jake got home, sending their little foot into your tummy every few minutes. Recently though, their aim had gotten worse, and every other kick landed straight into your ribs. The only thing that seemed to improve it, was an extra large tub of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream and some belly rubs from Jake. Conscious not to let you eat too many calories, Maria had graciously offered to help you finish off your tub, and was now digging a spoonful out of her own bowl.

“So lucky,” she said, licking the back of her spoon, “I am so sore,” she stated, “I need a bath.” Maria stood up from her seat and left in the direction of the bathroom, passing her mother in the kitchen and her father reading the newspaper by the dining room table. It had been a quiet day, with everyone at home as rain poured down from the sky in thick droplets that left everything muddy.

Jake entered the room. The doctors had asked him to keep moving to a minimum and to sleep on his front, two instructions he ignored almost immediately but it didn’t seem to hinder his recovery all that much.His crutches ticked against the floor as he approached you. You lifted your spoonful of ice cream up to your lips but your tongue never tasted the sweet treat, as just as you were about to, Jake swiped the spoon out of your hands and ate it himself.

“Hey!” you protested but Jake crutched away as quickly as he could, the spoon still in his mouth. He made his way through the living room and then the kitchen, scaring his mother in the process.You followed right behind.

“Non correre con un cucchiaio!” she shouted after him. Don’t run with a spoon!

Jake laughed, “Non sto correndo!” he mumbled, I’m not running! Isabella rolled her eyes.

You followed him to the nursery where you finally got your spoon back, but before you could turn around and walk away, Jake pushed the door open to reveal what was inside. You gasped. It was beautiful, Maria had truly outdone herself.

The whole room was painted a crisp white. Even though the day outside was rainy, the brightness of the walls made the one window in the room shine with light. On the wall with the crib, there was a delicately painted mural. The wall itself had been painted a sky blue and a few puffy white clouds had been added to the atmosphere. A squadron of F18s was pictured flying across the top corner of the room, a two seater front and centre featured Dove and Hangman name inscriptions below the pilot and WSO seats. There was a smaller plane centred over the crib, its name place missing an inscription. The painting was realistic but also slightly animated, making it feel fit for a child’s room.

Turning your head, you spotted a changing table, painted a light grey to match the F18s, its knobs little bronze stars. Over it hung a canvas, on it in calligraphy was James 1:17, every good and perfect gift is from above.

There was a grey rug in the middle of the room and in one corner was tucked a white padded rocking chair. Over the back Maria had thrown the blankets that Nonna had made them. Once you had finished your quick scan of the beautiful room, you walked over to the mural wall, stopping next to the crib, you brushed your hand over the little F18 on the wall, “What…Did…is this what Maria…” you couldn’t find the words.

Jake came up behind you, he leaned his crutches on the crib before wrapping his arms around you, “Do you like it?”

“I love it,” you said with a smile as Jake pressed a kiss to the top of your head. The two of you stood in a comfortable silence, Jake’s arms wrapped around your midsection, you making sure not to lean too far into him as he was standing on one leg.

Your bubble of peace was interrupted when Maria walked by in the hall, “Oh, so you showed her without me?”

Jake let out a quiet laugh, “I wanted it to be a private moment, I didn’t know how she was going to react!”

Maria just rolled her eyes, “I figure we can fill in the name spot when the little one gets here,” she said with a smile aimed at you.

“It’s lovely, thank you so much,” you said, “I don’t even know what to say to be honest.”

“I will take your speechlessness as payment enough,” Maria said with an excited smile before walking down the hall towards the stairs.

As Maria left, you felt a little kick from your stomach. You guided Jake’s hand over it and smiled as he rubbed a finger over their little foot. Standing in the nursery, with your newly returned husband, you found yourself disappointed that the baby wasn’t there yet.

Turning back into Jake, he hugged you as a few tears slipped from your eyes.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, brushing your hair away from your face.

You let out a sigh before answering, “I just wish he or she was here already, I want to hold them and show them this beautiful room.”

“They will make their appearance when they are ready Princess, we just need to be patient,” Jake said, kissing your forehead.

You let out a laugh, “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything more.”

#hangman #jake hangman seresin #hangman top gun #hangman x reader #hangman seresin #hangman fanfiction #hangman fic #hangman imagine #jake seresin imagine #jake seresin x reader #jake seresin #jake hangman x reader #jake hangman seresin x reader #jake seresin fanfiction #top gun maverick #top gun fanfiction #top gun #top gun bob

61 notes · View notes

barbiewritesstuff · 2 years

Text

Church Encounters: Chapter 20

-- Enjoy this monster of a fic!!

Tw. This is angsty!! Mention of injuries, plane crashes etc.!!

this fic is written is collaboration with @lgg5989 who is posting this on her tumblr and her AO3! She also made the lovely moodboard below!!

Comments and reblogs are appreciated! We also accept in-universe requests!!

Previous Part

Taglist: @acarboni21 @unsurebuttrying @dempy @peaches-1998 @bbooks-and-teas @roosterscock @positivelyholland --

“Thank you,” you replied, your voice small and wobbly.

“All good to go?” Bob asked, raising one hand to wave at someone. You turned around to find Father Dan returning the gesture, shooting Bob a wink.

“You know the new priest?” you asked.

“I heard my name,” Father Dan said, clapping Bob on the shoulder with enough force that the man took a step forward to avoid falling over.

“Yeah I was explaining how we knew each other,” Bob said, giving his friend a warning look, clearly trying to stop him from saying something.

“Daniel, don’t,” Bob warned

“Don’t what?” Maria asked, smelling blackmail material from a mile away.

“Oh, nothing,” Father said, “You’ve put me in a nostalgic mood, I’m afraid. ‘Can’t help but think back on the last time I saw you praying the rosary…”

“Daniel, I swear I--” Bob started but Maria waved him off, she signalled for Father Daniel to continue.

“Did you know I taught Bobby how to pray the rosary?” he asked, both of you shook your heads.

“Okay, right, that’s enough!” Bob interrupted, grabbing yours and Maria’s hands and leading you out of the church to the sound of Daniel’s loud laughter reverberating through the building.

:readmore: