Miranda Shane lives a quiet life among books and letters as a professor in a small upstate town. When the playing-by-the-rules poet throws out convention and begins to use a Scrabble board instead of paper to write, she sets off a chain of events that rattles her carefully planned world.
Her awakening propels her to take risks and seize chances she previously let slip by, including a game-changing offer from the man she let slip away. But when the revelation of an affair with a graduate student threatens the new life Miranda created, she is forced to decide between love or poetry.
Excerpt
“You sure you don’t want to take a cab?” Scott asked her.
“I’m sure. Then we wouldn’t see the diamonds,” Lynn said.
“Tiffany’s?” Miranda asked. “You’re a little young for that aren’t you? Though you are Bunny’s granddaughter.”
“Not like Grandma Bunny’s diamonds! The diamonds on the sidewalk. Look!”
Sure enough, the concrete in front of them sparkled. Four or five runs of sidewalk shimmered with mica flecks, then it went to plain for a block or two, then more that sparkled.
“I want to know what makes them different,” Miranda said to Scott, pointing at the abrupt change from sparkle to non-sparkle on the sidewalk in front of them.
“But knowing the difference would ruin it,” Scott said.
“You’d rather think it was magic?”
“I like the idea of magic. Don’t you?” he asked.
“I don’t take much stock in that,” Miranda said.
“Daddy, look!” Lynn said.
And there in front of them was a huge elephant balloon with a circus ball balancing on his trunk. The ball wasn’t all the way inflated yet; it wobbled a little and the sides of the elephant shuddered some as the helium pumped in. But an elephant as tall as a house at Central Park was a sight to behold no matter the size or amount of helium left to go. The crowd around them seemed to holding their breath in anticipation as the ball slowly rose.
“See,” Miranda said, “to people watching on television that's magic. But it’s not magic. It’s a year of planning and then people working all night on the day before a family holiday to pull it off.”
“But it’s magic to her,” Scott said.
Lynn strained at the barricade, craning her neck to see down the street and the rest of the balloons staged there.
“Sure, it’s magic to her. She’s a kid. Kids have to believe in magic. When you really grow up, it’s different.”
“I guess I’m not really grown up then,” Scott said. “And maybe I don’t want to be.”
Brandi Megan Granett is an author, online English professor, and private writing mentor. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Aberystwyth University, Wales, an MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College, a Masters in Adult Education with an emphasis on Distance Education from Penn State University, and a BA from the University of Florida.
Granett is the author of My Intended (William Morrow, 2000). Her short fiction has appeared in Pebble Lake Review, Folio, Pleiades and other literary magazines, and is collected in the volume Cars and Other Things That Get Around.
In addition, she writes an author interview series for the Huffington Post, and is a member of the Tall Poppy Writers, a community of writing professionals committed to growing relationships, promoting the work of its members, and connecting authors with each other and with readers.
When Granett is not writing or teaching or mothering, she is honing her archery skills. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, daughter and two dogs.
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