fuonlyknew

Amazon * B&N * Kobo * Smashwords * Books2Read * Bookbub * Goodreads

.

.

When the phone rings in the middle of the night, everything changes.

Mother always said: Nothing good happens after midnight. I’d found in my forty-one years on this earth, in that at least, Mom had been right.

I sat up so fast I jiggled the mattress. I froze, my gaze shifting to, then away from the empty side of the bed. I still hadn’t gotten used to Patrick not being there. Would I ever?

The shrill slice of sound continued to cut through the oh so silent night. I only had one ringtone left on my allowed calls after that indelible hour of midnight, and this was it. My heart rate increased from WTF? to OMG!

“Jenna?”

“Sorry, Mrs. Sullivan. It’s Cammy.”

I searched my memory for the identity of Cammy, feeling slow, stupid despite the far too rapid rate of my heart.

Spring, same time two years ago, my OB had diagnosed the reason for my newly sluggish brain and sudden ability to fry eggs atop my head as premature menopause.

Look at it this way, you won’t have to worry about getting pregnant for very much longer.

Not that I had for decades. However, having my body betray me like that—basically saying I was old, when I never really got to be young—had stung. It still did.

Cammy’s tentative voice brought me back to the right now. “I’m Jenna’s roommate.”

My skin prickled with heat and a fine sheen of sweat started up at my hairline. “What’s wrong?”

“Jenna hasn’t been here since Tuesday.”

Here being the University of Wisconsin. I’d been so proud when Jenna had decided to go to UW like me. Or like the me I could have been, would have been if not for her.

“Tuesday,” I repeated. “But it’s . . .”

Come on, brain, don’t fail me now!

Thursday! I thought at the same time Cammy said, “Thursday.”

For an instant, I was near ecstatic to have concluded something at the same speed as a millennial. Then I did the math, never my strong suit even before all the brain-fart BS. “That’s two days, and you’re just calling me now?”

“Sometimes she pulls an all-nighter. Stays at the library or goes to a study group. But she lets me know. I didn’t really worry until I called her phone, and it was . . .”

My skin did that prickle again. Jenna’s phone was in Cammy’s hand, obviously, since she was talking to me on it. That I hadn’t asked why earlier put another notch in my losin’ it belt.

“Her phone was in her backpack,” Cammy continued. “In her room, along with her laptop and her books.”

Cammy paused, waiting for me to fill in the blanks. Jenna probably wouldn’t be studying without her backpack, and the notes and books and computer within. But even if she’d grabbed a few things and left the rest, she never would have left her cell phone. I didn’t think it had been out of her sight—more accurately, out of her hand—since I’d handed it to her when she was ten.

“In Lunar Lake, anywhere can be reached from anywhere in a handful of minutes,” Patrick had argued. “Even if she falls off her bike and breaks her leg, someone’s gonna be at her side quicker than she can make a call. She’s safer than safe, like every other kid in town. What are you worried about?”

When I lifted my eyebrows, he’d blinked, said, “Oh,” and that had been the last Patrick had said about that. He knew why I was the way I was better than anyone. It was one of the reasons I’d married him.

I’d devoted my life to raising Jenna. She was everything. The only thing. When she’d gone to college, I’d been proud but also terrified. This exact scenario—a midnight phone call, a missing child—played through my mind far too often. Sadly, what I should do about it had never played through as well.

“Hello?” Cammy’s worried voice broke into my thoughts. She probably thought I’d fainted. Or stroked out. I was tempted.

But all Jenna had was me now, and all I had was her. If that meant facing my greatest fear again, I’d face it. What choice did I have?

She was my baby.

.

.

Can you, for those who don’t know you already, tell something about yourself and how you became an author?

 

Hi, I’m Lori Handeland and I always wanted to be an author even while I was studying to be a high school English teacher. (Hey, they have summers off for a reason, right? Besides sanity, that is.) Life intervened and while home with two boys under the age of three, I decided to try writing the book I always wanted to.

 

That book, SECOND CHANCE, won the Wisconsin Romance Writers Fabulous Five contest and was requested by an editor at Harlequin.  Several revisions and submissions and years later, it sold to Dorchester Publishing.

 

If you knew you’d die tomorrow, how would you spend your last day?

 

With my grandchildren, doing whatever they wanted to.  

 

What kind of world ruler would you be?

 

No nonsense.  I have no patience for it.  Behave or b-bye.

 

What do you do to unwind and relax?

I go on wonderful writing retreats with my writing friends, where we write all day, drink wine and chat at night.  The perfect recharge.

 

How to find time to write as a parent?

 

When my boys were small I wrote at 5 am, midnight, whenever (if) they napped.  I also exchanged babysitting with other moms so I could have uninterrupted writing time.

 

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

 

When my first fan letter arrived.

 

Do you have a favorite movie?

 

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

 

Which of your novels can you imagine made into a movie?

 

JUST ONCE. And it almost was. The book was optioned by Catalyst Global Media.  I even wrote the screenplay. But as those things go, it did not.  I am still submitting my screenplay.  It’s done, so why not?

 

As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal?

 

A wolf, of course.

.