Something Wicked
Susan Johnson-Kropp
Copyright © 2020 Susan Johnson-Kropp.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ISBN: 978-1-6847-1678-4 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6847-1758-3 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6847-1677-7 (e)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020900603
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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 04/02/2020
Chapter 1
Jillian Van Doren—that’s me. I was born in 1978 to an adoring mother who doted on her only child and an indifferent father who found parenting tedious. As to our famous last name, my father liked to claim that he was some kind of cousin to Charles Van Doren. He was the famous, nay, infamous, writer and professor who was at the heart of a TV quiz show cheating scandal in the late 1950s. I’m pretty sure the name was borrowed by my grandfather, since as far as I know, no one else in our family held that name prior to him. My mother all but admitted it to me once, saying that my grandfather obviously couldn’t have foreseen at the time how dubious the association would turn out to be. Evidently, my father’s father, Cornelius Van Doren, had been quite the swindler. Not penny-ante stuff, either, but big-time art thievery, high-stakes rigged poker games, and even gun smuggling to both sides of the Korean War. Very unbiased, albeit treacherous of him, I often thought, and I took a certain pride in his having been so adventurous.
My father, John Van Doren, was the opposite: uptight, austere, and rigid. Relentlessly pedantic, he was always going on about how important it was to be erudite and prudent. I think he liked his last name, despite the scandal it evoked, because the name was also associated with men of letters. He himself had been a writer until just a few years ago, when his dementia could no longer be ignored. He’d written books on the psychology and the politics of war, all of them so encyclopedic that I never was able to get through even one. Before family gatherings I would scour the reviews of his latest work, usually written by sycophants afraid of his wrath if they even hinted at any possible mistake or potential improvement. I just needed to know enough to field his questions and assure him that I’d read and liked his work. My father, for all his posturing, was a very insecure man.
My mother, Jean, on the other hand, had always been wonderfully self-deprecating, and I loved her for it. She was pretty and stylish and able to poke just enough fun at my dad to keep him humble and put others at ease but not so much as to hurt his delicate ego. It was a kind of dance they both knew well. It had been choreographed long ago and was played out regularly for the sake of their marriage, their friendships, and their child’s psychological well-being.
When I was growing up in Stamford, Connecticut, we lived on a tree-lined street among stately, if somewhat tired, old homes. We were not wealthy by any means, but we were comfortable. My father taught at West Point until he retired more than a decade ago. He’d made enough money to keep his family well, save for college and retirement, and even manage an annual ski vacation at Stratton in Vermont. His books were far from bestsellers, but they turned a small profit. Since retiring, he spent his days reading and rereading the newspaper while complaining about the state of the world to his wife, often repeating himself four or five times. My mother had long ago ceased mentioning this. Instead, she just let him prattle on, tuning him out while nodding and saying, “Uh-huh,” over and over.
Being an only child, I’d had to entertain myself a lot. Growing up mostly among adults had made me precocious and willful, traits my mother adored and my father found exasperating. When I elected to go to college on the West Coast, my mother had been beside herself.
“Why Seattle? It rains constantly there,” she’d said. “All the best schools are right in our own backyard. You could live here!” My father said very little on the subject, perhaps anxious to rid his house of my frenzied manner.
At any rate, I did indeed move west, to Seattle specifically, and it certainly did rain a lot, although not as much I’d expected. “It’s not so much the rain but the clouds,” locals would say. Perhaps so, but for some reason, the rain never bothered me. Besides, when it was clear it was spectacular. The entire city was ringed by mountains, beautiful lakes, and trees—lots of trees.
So it was that on a cold, rainy evening in early March nearly ten months ago I found myself at my desk, staring at my computer screen, unmoving for the better part of an hour. I sat staring, stewing, and searching the nether regions of my brain to no avail. I’d been there before—devoid of ideas, wanting for inspiration and finding none. I was attempting to harken back to my old, true style of writing: cynical, sarcastic, and somewhat derisive. That was the way I’d written in high school and college and then later for a local television station. But, alas, it wasn’t to be. I’d had so many ideas brewing and brimming of late, but now that I’d finally given in and agreed to put them to page, they’d abandoned me like smoke from a fire. Again.
I retreated to the kitchen for some water. Returning, I looked at my massive chair, in front of my mammoth desk, under an oversized monitor that flashed beautiful pictures from around the world. I wanted to throw my glass at it, all dramatic and ridiculous, like a silent-movie actress. Experience taught me that such histrionics wouldn’t end well, however. One usually just found oneself picking up shards of glass through tears, inevitably cutting one’s hand and ultimately paying to replace said items. So, I resisted this time and decided to give up, at least for the evening. My glass miraculously refilled itself with wine, and I hunkered down deep into the sofa, which swallowed me until I had no escape. Fortunately, I was able to retrieve the television remote just before reaching the abyss.
I put on something I’d recorded but then pushed the mute button so I could think more clearly. What happened to me? I wondered. How did I get where I am now? I thought back on my college days and my struggle to find myself there. I’d known I wanted to write but hadn’t been able to commit to any particular type of writing for long. First, I’d wanted to be a journalist, but I’d soon realized that writing about things other people did wasn’t all that interesting to me. Then I’d decided I wanted to be a screenwriter, but that was more about explanatory dialogue and character placement than I liked. Later I was sure I wanted to write for television, and I had for a while. After college I’d worked as part of a young troupe of comedy writers for a local late-night Saturday Night Live wannabe show in Seattle. When that had ended ten years ago, I’d felt very lost and unsure of where to go next, at which point I’d decided to write the Great American Novel, no less.
Unfortunately, that had not gone so well either. I’d come up with what I thought were interesting storylines, but they’d never translated to the page. Then I’d slipped into a pretty deep depression, made worse by dwindling funds, a squalid apartment, and an expanding waistline.
It was around this time that I came across something in the local paper, something that would change the course of my life. On page three of the Arts section I saw the headline “Romance Novelist Convention,” followed by a short article. The event was to be held at the Seattle Convention Center the following weekend. According to the article, there was a lot of money in romance novels. In fact, it was a multibillion-dollar