Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [104]
By the end of May, we finally moved into our new home in Greenville, and spent the first few weeks meeting our neighbors, learning the layout of the town, and making new friends. Miles had always been outgoing and friendly; he met lots of kids and frequently played with them. Ryan, not yet two, was still a toddler. He hadn’t learned to talk yet and seemed much more introspective. He showed little of the curiosity that Miles had at his age and it often seemed as if his mind was elsewhere. He screamed in terror whenever we put him in the car, and seldom responded when we tried to get his attention. When we discussed it with our pediatrician, he said not to worry and assured us that Ryan would grow out of it.
“He’s not even two yet,” he said. “Just give him a little time.”
In July, I started the process of soliciting literary agents; I sent out twenty-five query letters and the first agent to respond, Theresa Park, was willing to work with me on the novel; the next twenty-four would all end up passing on the project. By October 1995, the novel was as ready as it would ever be.
Aside from worries about my dad and the move, the year had been quiet until then. My sister had gone through yet another negative CAT scan—she was tested every three months—and my brother was doing well in real estate. My dad, if struggling in his personal life, was apparently functioning smoothly in his professional life. For a short while, it almost seemed as if things were normal; looking back, I now realize it was simply a lull before the storm broke full force.
While both my agent and I had high hopes about how the novel would be received, hopes were one thing, and reality was another. In my heart, I knew that I’d be pleased if I secured enough of an advance to pay off the credit card bills, or perhaps buy a decent car for my wife. Anything would have helped; I was living a typically middle-class lifestyle with the same budget concerns as everyone else in our neighborhood; the mortgage on my house was $125,000.
The novel, entitled The Notebook, was sent to publishers on a Thursday and Friday; on Monday, I listened to a message that my agent had left on my voice mail at work, one that asked me to call. It was a little before noon, and I was getting ready for a luncheon at one of the doctors’ offices. I’d brought all the food, set everything up, and was waiting for the doctors to finish with their morning patients so I could tell them about the effectiveness of Lederle’s antibiotics and antihypertensives.
Using the office phone, I dialed my agent, and she came straight to the point.
“You have an offer from Warner Books,” she said. She sounded a little breathless on the phone.
“And?”
“Warner Books would like to offer you one million dollars for the book,” she said.
I blinked, pressing the phone hard to my ear. Thinking I had heard her wrong, I asked her to repeat what she’d said. She did, and it was all I could do to sit in the chair without falling to the floor.
In one fell swoop, less than two months before my thirtieth birthday, I realized that I’d just become a millionaire.
How was I supposed to react in a situation like that? I had no idea, nor did Cathy. I can say, however, that even though I’d had my agent repeat the number not twice, but three times, I still believed I’d somehow been mistaken in what I’d heard. A few minutes later, however, my agent and I spoke again, and she informed me that the deal had closed.
I immediately called Cat, but she wasn’t in. Nor was Micah when I tried to reach him—he happened to be out of town. Or Dana. Or my dad. None of them were home, and with the news of the sale still bubbling inside me, the doctors finally began arriving at the luncheon. Despite the earth-shaking news I’d just received, I somehow forced myself to talk to them about pharmaceuticals.