“Of course you did,” drawls Eleanor.
“Oh, oh, can I pick my name? I was thinking... Rufus. Oh, Rufus Beaumont! That’s got some gravitas, and—”
“Holden,” says Ava sternly. “This is very important.Ifwe go through with this, you make your appearance, and then you stay out of the way. You don’t engage with the authors, or with me. There’s a guest cottage on the island. You will stay there until the weekend’s over. Can you do that?”
To be honest, it sounds alittleless exciting when she puts it that way, but it is still better than book reports.
Holden straightens. “Absolutely.”
Eleanor smiles. Ava blows out a shaky breath. “Okay. Fine.” She nods at the door. “Give us a minute.”
He rises cheerfully and doffs an imaginary cap, already wondering what Rufus will wear.
Ava
Chapter One
A Few Moments Later
AS SOON AS THE DOOR SWINGS SHUT,Ava sinks back in her chair and pinches the bridge of her nose. She feels a headache coming on. “This,” she says, blowing out a long breath, “is a disaster.”
“It’s certainly not ideal,” hedges Eleanor, “but given the circumstances, it could be worse.”
“Oh really?”
“Of course. Arthur could have died somewhere public.”
Ava lets out a small sound. It might be a laugh. Or a sob. She isn’t sure.
Eleanor’s mouth twitches, a little ruefully. “Thankfully,” she goes on, “Skelbrae is remarkably remote.”
Ava swallows. She doesn’t want to ask, but she has to know. “How did it happen?”
For an instant, Eleanor’s notorious composure actually falters. Real emotion flickers across her face. She glances down at her hands. “He drowned.”
The words land like a blow. Ava flinches. “Oh Arthur,” she says, almost to herself.
“He was truly a titan,” says Eleanor.
“End of an era,” Ava murmurs. In truth, the end has been looming for some time, between Arthur’s stalling and his insistence that this would be his final book. She’s honestly been torn between hope that he’d really retire and free up the space for new talent and fear of the void he’d leave behind. What will this mean for the publisher—forher?
She thought she’d be prepared for the end, no matter what it looked like.
But now the end is here, and everything feels wrong.
Trying to make sense of it, her mind keeps going back to the beginning.
The day she first met Arthur Fletch.
His longtime editor (posh, white, male) had just retired, and Ava was up for the job. She was secretly thrilled. She’d long been a fan of Arthur’s work.
In fact, she even kept an excerpt from his very first book tacked over her desk. It read:
People say that pain is a gift, because it reminds you that you’re alive.
That is, as far as I’m concerned, a crock of shit.
Pain is a gift because it makes you angry.
