by Barbara Conrey
Nowhere Near Goodbye Deleted Thanksgiving Scene
Note: One of the first things my content editor suggested was to change my manuscript from a two-person point-of-view (Kate and Emma) to a single point-of-view (Emma). She said the choice was mine. I was crushed. Cutting Kate out of my story was like cutting off my finger. I loved writing Kate, and everyone who had read my manuscript before my publisher picked it up loved Kate. I just didn’t see how my book would survive without her.
But I agreed, and three months later I finished the revision and Kate was gone (except for the prologue and epilogue), and Nowhere Near Goodbye became a better, stronger story.
Note to self: Trust your editor.
Following is a brief deleted scene of Kate’s last Thanksgiving; both Kate and Emma are eleven years old.
Emma
Our first major goal was Thanksgiving; try to find something to be thankful for when your best friend has just been diagnosed with cancer. And not the kind of cancer where a recovery is possible. Kate’s cancer was the Do-Not-Pass-Go kind of cancer, where in the end, she’ll be dead, and I’ll be left alone.
Yet there I was, seated next to Kate at the Thanksgiving dinner table, wondering what I could possibly be thankful for when it was my turn to announce my gratitude. I don’t know why I even worried. Kate managed to cover just about anything any of us could possibly be thankful for. She talked fast like a buzzer was about to go off, and the entire time she raced through her gamut of thankfulness—her family, me, Anne and Miss Maggie, Joey, her dog—she had her eyes on the food like she was afraid it would go up in smoke.
She ended—finally—by telling us she was thankful for all the food her mother had prepared and the appetite to eat it, and then she practically ate herself into a food coma. By her third helping, no one could take their eyes off her, she’d barely eaten in weeks, and suddenly she made professional food eaters look like wimps.
“Stop looking at me; I’m eating,” she told us, reaching for more potatoes. “And besides, it’s impolite to stare.”
“It’s also impolite to talk with your mouth full, but that doesn’t seem to be holding you back,” I reminded her, grabbing the potatoes before she finished them off. “Apparently you haven’t eaten in the last week? What is wrong with you? You are going to make yourself sick.”
“I can’t get sick; I’m dying” And then she proceeded to slide two pieces of pie and a side of ice cream onto her plate.
I looked from her to the heaping plate in front of her. “Kate! You don’t even like pumpkin pie.”
“I know. But it’s probably the last time I’ll have to eat it.”
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