Robert, Her Billionaire Widower

The obvious solution to this problem would be to hire a ghostwriter. However, this was not an easy fix at all. Ghost writers were very good but they brought an impersonal air to the books that they were writing. This was inevitable. After all, how can you possibly write from the heart when the only reason that you are writing something for anyone is that you are getting paid for it? True art comes from the soul, not from a desire to earn money.

Robert was slightly depressed when he realized that it wouldn’t be as simple as just hiring a ghostwriter. He would have to find one that would be able to connect with him, that would be able to talk about Marie in a way that would make her seem human and genuine. This meant that it would be a long, long time before he found a ghostwriter that was adequate because he would have to interview quite a few of them before he finally found one that he liked.

He was upset by this because he did not think that he would be able to wait a year for the perfect ghostwriter. He needed the writing to start immediately, he needed to start talking about Marie and explaining to someone, anyone, just how much she meant to him. He needed the biography to start immediately, because it was essential to his catharsis, it was essential to him getting over his wife.

Robert decided to go out. He had been cooped up in his home for far too long. He was thinking of selling the opulent mansion that he had been living in for so long and getting an apartment. It would help him stop thinking about Marie so much. It had been a year and a half, and although Robert was, indeed, getting a lot better than he had been at this time last year, he was starting to realize that the memory of his wife still haunted him just as much.

He decided to go and get coffee. He thought of where to go and decided to eschew the expensive coffee places that he normally went to. He wanted to go to a normal place, a place that would be full of life even at this time of the night. The kind of place where Marie would have written her first novel, the only novel she had written before she had met Robert.

He went out and drove to a random part of town and was surprised to find a line. It was nine pm, he hadn’t been expecting so many people to be out and about at this time. Rather, he had been expecting there to be a very low number of people at the coffee shop.

He stood in line behind a woman and waited his turn. It was rather odd for him. He was used to getting special treatment, to sitting in a leather armchair and having someone come and take his order and make him feel like he was the most important customer in the entire café. He was going to get no such special treatment here. He was going to be treated just like everyone else, and he quite liked that. He liked being just another face in the crowd. He liked being someone that no one noticed.

However, he assumed that no one here knew him too soon. The woman in front of him turned around and said, “Aren’t you… Robert Wexler?”

“Yes,” he said, weary of having to answer any questions while he was so depressed.

“Oh my God!” said the woman. She shook his hand and said, “I’m Vanessa, I interviewed your wife a few years ago.”

“Vanessa…” he said. The name was very familiar to him. He had a feeling that he remembered this interview that she was talking about, she probably had been one of the people that had interviewed his wife during the peak of her literary career.

“I remember you,” he said. “You were the one that interviewed before “Sacrament and Sacrilege” came out. You were the one that asked her if she knew that I had earned a lot of money from sweatshops.”

Vanessa seemed perturbed. “I… uh… yes, you’re right, that’s the one interview that I did.”

“I liked that you were so up front about it,” said Robert. “I liked that you asked her bluntly but politely, that you weren’t trying to accuse her of anything. So many people act like they’ve caught her doing something she’s not supposed to do. It’s quite annoying, to be honest, but you weren’t like that. In fact… I’d go so far as to say that the interview you conducted was probably my favorite view of Marie ever.”

“Really?” said Vanessa. She seemed genuinely delighted that he liked her interviewing skills. Robert was entranced by her beauty. She looked almost regal with her high cheekbones, but her braids seemed to give her a more earthy and street appearance. He loved that juxtaposition. Professionalism and class but a great deal of personality as well. She was beautiful, and her eyes were like bottomless pools that Robert felt like he was going to drown in.

He smiled because he had just had an idea. Vanessa was not just a TV journalist, she did print journalism too and was very well respected. She was an excellent writer. Robert had read her columns and had found her to be engaging and poetic without being prosaic which was something he felt that a lot of journalists seemed to lack. She was very good at writing, and he needed a very good writer. To top it all off, she knew Marie, she was a fan of hers and had interviewed her before.

In short, Robert had just found himself the perfect ghostwriter for the biography he wanted to have written for Marie. He realized that in going out and doing something normal he had ended up discovering somebody that would allow him to get over the death of his wife, and this person probably didn’t even know this enormous gift that she had just given Robert. She probably thought that she had not done anything all that special.