1
Prologue
February 14th, 2014
The thingabout being fifty and single on Valentine’s Day is that everyone assumes you’re sad about it. I wasn’t sad. I was annoyed.
Specifically, I was annoyed at the heart-shaped confetti someone had scattered across every horizontal surface in Harrison & Webb’s conference room, which would inevitably end up tracked through the hallways and stuck to manuscripts for the next three weeks. I was annoyed at the playlist, which was heavy on Celine Dion and light on self-awareness. And I was deeply, profoundly annoyed that the champagne was this bad, because someone in this publishing house should have better taste.
“You’re making your judgy face,” Richard said, appearing at my elbow with a glass of something that looked significantly better than what I was drinking.
“I’m making my ‘this champagne costs eight dollars a bottle’ face. There’s a difference.”
“There really isn’t.” He clinked his glass against mine. “But I forgive you, because you’re about to be in a much better mood.”
I raised an eyebrow. Richard Wells had been my boss and mentor for twenty years, and I’d learned to read the gleam in his eye that meant he was about to drop something significant.
“The board met this afternoon,” he said, keeping his voice low enough that only I could hear. “It’s done. Effective March first, you’re the new Editorial Director of Harrison & Webb Publishing.”
For a moment, I couldn’t quite process what he’d told me. I’d known I was in the running, Richard had been grooming me for years, and the corner office had always been the unspoken destination of my career trajectory. But knowing and hearing it confirmed were two different things.
“You’re serious.”
“As a heart attack. Which, at my age, isn’t something I joke about.” He grinned, looking genuinely pleased.
“A lifetime, Maggie. Three National Book Award finalists. A Pulitzer winner who still sends you Christmas cards. You’ve earned this six times over.”
The salary would be obscene. The kind of money that meant upgrading from comfortable to genuinely wealthy. I’d already paid off my condo in the South End, the one with the bay windows and the built-in bookshelves and the kitchen I’d renovated exactly the way I wanted it, with the navy blue six-burner stove with gold knobs that I’d coveted for a decade. My accountant called it an excellent investment. I called it the only place I’d ever lived that felt completely, unapologetically mine.
And now this. The career I’d spent my entire adult life building, was finally reaching its summit.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Thank you, Richard, you’re a visionary, would be a good start.”
“Thank you, Richard. You’re a visionary with questionable taste in party champagne.”
He laughed, the real laugh, not the polished one he used in board meetings. “There she is. I was worried the promotion might make you pleasant.”
He squeezed my shoulder. “Go home early. Celebrate. Buy yourself something expensive. Tomorrow we can talk about transition timelines and the Hendricks acquisition, but tonight? Tonight you should be insufferably smug.”
I watched him drift toward a cluster of senior staff, already working the room the way he’d been working rooms for years. The man was a master. And in two weeks, I’d be sitting in his chair, steering the ship he’d captained since before I’d learned to read submission letters.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I stepped into the quieter hallway to check it, expecting work, some author emergency or a contract question that couldn’t wait, and found Emma’s face grinning at me from an incoming FaceTime request.
I answered immediately.
“Aunt Mags!” Emma’s voice burst through the speaker, bright and breathless. She was in her room, I could tell from the explosion of textbooks, coffee cups, and laundry that covered every surface. Eighteen years old and still constitutionally incapable of hanging up a coat. “Are you at a party? You look like you’re at a party.”
“I am. A work thing.”
“On Valentine’s Day? That’s so publishing.” She said it like publishing was a personality disorder.
“Okay, so, I have news. Big news. Like, life-changing news. Are you ready? You’re not ready. Sit down.”
“I’m already standing in a hallway. Just tell me.”
“Harvard.” She paused for maximum dramatic effect, grinning so wide I could see the gap between her front teeth thatshe’d refused to get fixed because she said it gave her character. “Pre-med. Full scholarship. I got in.”
