Around an hour from downtown Atlanta, a storyteller checks the numbers on his latest release.
“I’m a storyteller,” says Ed Payne of Marietta, who worked at CNN among other outlets and has published several books as a children’s author. “And you never know where your stories are going to come from.”
His newest book is Vail’s Tales. He worked with his usual illustrator, Britt Sekulić. But this one is different. He didn’t write this one alone.
And his partner is someone he’s never met … and never will.
“I hadn’t expected to author this with a nine-year-old,” Payne says with a grin, “but especially with a nine-year-old who lost her life.”
The co-author’s name is Vail Johnson. She was nine years old when she died in her sleep.
Vail’s family lives 800 miles away in Pilot Point, Tex., around an hour from downtown Dallas. Her bedroom remains as it was three years ago.
“I don’t want to forget what she smelled like and what her shoes looked like,” says her mother, Susan Chance. “For now, it just keeps her spirit alive in this house.”
Vail played softball. She rode horses. She traveled the country with mom Susan, stepdad Chad, and sister Jade. More than all that, she wrote. “She would just spend hours writing these little stories,” Susan Chance says. “They just had her wit and humor in them.”
One August evening, Chance says her daughter declared at the dinner table she wanted to be an author. That was the night Vail went to bed and didn’t wake up.
“A little after 5 the next morning,” recalls Chad Chance, “Jade comes down and is like, ‘She’s gone!’ It was that quick.”
Vail’s autopsy revealed what had gone unnoticed: an extremely rare form of myocarditis, an infection that attacks the heart. Vail had shown no symptoms. The virus stopped her heart instantly.
The three years since have been a struggle. Vail’s parents kept her room, set up a foundation in her honor, and told her story. A year after Vail’s death, Susan and Chad Chance decided to pursue Vail’s dream through a friend of a friend 800 miles east.
They sent Vail’s writing to Ed. They asked him to use his skills to mold Vail’s vision.
“Both of our minds were on the same page,” Susan Chance said. “I actually flew to Atlanta and had dinner with him, and the minute I saw him, I knew this was the guy I wanted to work with on this project.”
Eighteen months later, the project has been published: four stories, about friendship, faith, and mermaids, with one spine and two authors.
“Every time I sent a story to Susan, she said she cried,” Payne says. “At first I feel bad, but she said, ‘No. It’s the best kind of cry.’ I think this has been healing for them, maybe cathartic.”
“He e-mailed it over, and I bawled,” Susan Chance says. “After all these three years, I feel like Vail has really come alive in her book again.
“I just want to tell her, ‘This is what you wanted. This was your dream. And it has come true.”
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Matt Pearl’s Untold Atlanta series tells the stories we don’t hear often enough: the stories of our communities and the people who make them special. If you know of a great untold story to share, follow Matt on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram or e-mail him at mpearl@11alive.com.