I’d been too scared to fight for it. Too new, too young, too convinced that Patricia knew better than I did. That my instincts weren’t worth trusting.
Decades of experience told me differently now.
“You’re right,” I said. “I shouldn’t be scouting projects. I should be doing my job.” I took a breath. “But I’ve read enoughto know what works. And this works. It’s not safe, but safe doesn’t win National Book Awards.”
Patricia’s eyebrows rose. In twenty-three-year-old Maggie’s tenure here, I had never talked back. Had never done anything but nod and smile and swallow my opinions like they were medicine I didn’t want to taste.
“Is that so,” she said.
“Yes.” My heart was pounding, but my voice stayed steady. “I know I’m an assistant. I know my opinion doesn’t count for much. But I also know that Harrison & Webb hasn’t broken out a debut author in three years, and that the imprint’s reputation for discovering new voices is?—”
“Careful.”
“—is not what it used to be.” I made myself hold her gaze. “This could change that. If you let it.”
The silence stretched. I could hear the typewriters in the bullpen, the phones ringing, someone arguing about royalty percentages three offices away. Patricia’s cigarette smoldered in its ashtray, a thin thread of smoke curling toward the water-stained ceiling.
This is it,I thought.This is the moment where I get fired.
But I didn’t want to take it back. Didn’t want to smooth things over, apologize, retreat to my desk and my slush pile and my small, safe life. I’d spent a lifetime playing it safe. Where had it gotten me? A corner office and a condo and no one to call on Valentine’s Day.
This isn’t about Jack,I realized with sudden clarity.
This is about me. About who I want to be. About whether I’m going to keep running from everything that scares me, or whether I’m finally going to stand still and fight.
Patricia was still watching me. Evaluating. Making calculations I couldn’t see.
“The prose,” she said finally. “It’s literary. Quiet. The market isn’t kind to quiet right now.”
“The market changes. The prose is permanent.”
A pause. Then incredibly, impossibly, the corner of her mouth twitched.
“You know you’re too young to talk to me like this.”
“Probably.”
“And too junior to be recommending acquisitions.”
“Almost certainly.”
She picked up the manuscript again. Flipped to a page near the middle. Read something that made her eyebrows draw together in concentration, not displeasure.
“I’m going to read it,” she said. “The whole thing. And if it’s half as good as you seem to think it is, we’ll talk about next steps.”
My heart was still pounding. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” She set the manuscript in her to-read pile, the real one, not the polite-rejection one. “If this is a waste of my time, you’re going to wish you’d stuck to fetching coffee.”
“Understood.”
I turned to go. My hand was on the doorknob when she spoke again.
“Maggie.”
I looked back.
Patricia was watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. Something that might have been approval. Or surprise. Or just the interest of a woman who’d spent thirty years in this industry watching young editors burn out at an alarming rate.
