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sometime
, Matthea had written.
We’ll drink tea and ponder the vagaries of love, the secrets of life, the mysteries of the universe…
    If ever there was a time for that conversation, it was now.
    Matthea’s house was on Nob Hill, at the top of an impossibly steep street. I rang the bell and we waited nervously on the stoop. Robinson didn’t even know what we were doing here, and I refused to tell him. If you ask me, a person doesn’t get enough good surprises in life. Birthday, Christmas… that’s only two times a year to count on.
    But when the front door opened, I was even more surprised than Robinson. Since Matthea North and I had so much in common childhood-wise, I guess I thought she’d look like an older version of me: slender, medium-sized, with the full lips and wide-set eyes of a beauty-queen mother somehow diluted into a slightly less remarkable prettiness.
    Matthea looked like Bilbo Baggins. In a Gypsy costume. Under five feet tall, bedecked in scarves and necklaces, she reached up to take my hand. “You must be Axi,” she said. Her green eyes, set deep in rosy cheeks, positively twinkled at me.
    I swallowed. “Yes!” I said brightly. “Robinson, this is… the one and only Matthea North.”
    He turned toward her, smiling his wide, gorgeous grin. “Hey, you wrote that book—the one about the town even worse than ours.” If he was fazed by her clothes, he didn’t look it.
    Matthea laughed. Older ladies love Robinson.
    We followed her into the darkness of her home, and alreadyshe was chattering about how Mark Twain never said the famous line about how the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco, but he should have, because it was absolutely Arctic today; how birdsong had evolved over decades to compete with the sound of traffic, and weren’t those sparrows outside just deafeningly loud; how she’d gotten a bad fortune in her cookie from Lucky Feng’s, but did we know that it was the Japanese who’d actually invented the fortune cookie?
    She motioned for us to sit on a dusty-looking Victorian couch. “I loved your short story about that old deli, Axi,” she said, “the one about that girl and boy who are best friends but maybe something more—”
    “Oh, yeah, thanks,” I said hurriedly, not wanting to cut her off but needing to.
    Robinson cleared his throat. I could practically hear him thinking:
You wrote a story about Ernie’s? And us?
    I ignored him. Of course I’d written about him. He was my best friend, wasn’t he? The one who knew me like no other. The one I thought about approximately 75 percent of my waking hours, if not more.
    “Thanks for letting us come over,” I said. “I really wanted Robinson to meet you. I can’t get him to finish any book, ever, but he read yours in a night.”
    “It gave me… insights,” Robinson said, looking pointedly at me.
    Matthea laughed. “Axi and I share certain background details, don’t we? But Axi’s much smarter than I was at her age.”
    “She’s ornerier,” Robinson said. “That’s for sure.”
    I kicked him in the shins—lightly.
    Matthea produced a pitcher of iced tea and a plate of lemon cake, and Robinson helped himself to two slices.
    “So, how’s the writing going, Axi?” Matthea asked.
    “Um, not much at all lately,” I admitted, reaching for my own slice of cake. “Please tell me there’s some secret to keeping at it. Not giving up. Believing in yourself. That kind of stuff.” I tried to keep the desperation out of my voice.
    Matthea sighed and began to braid the fringe on her scarf. “My dear, there is no universal secret. There’s only the secret each writer discovers for herself. The path forward.”
    I could feel my shoulders slump. Of course. There’s no such thing as a magic bullet. Who doesn’t know that?
    “Are you aware that European kings used to have their hearts buried separately from their bodies?” Matthea asked.
    “Um… no,” I said, and I saw Robinson raise his