Sibby waves a hand. “I’ll tell you about it. A small production. Who knows if I’ll get it.”
“Sib, that’s so great. What’s the—”
Sibby snaps her fingers, as though she’s trying to wake me out of a hypnosis. “Focus, Meg.”
I drop my bag, take a few steps, and sink onto the area rug, sitting across from their spots on the couch. “It went okay with Cecelia. But on the way home I got offered the Make It Happyn gig.”
They both get excited at first, until I fill them in on the details, adding some extra padding to my throw pillow eyes with a few additional tears.
“Ugh,” says Sibby. “You can’t take it.”
“I don’t know if I cannottake it. I’m going to lose so many clients because of this. People trust me with a lot of details about their lives. And they’re right to be angry. To be suspicious of me.”
“Lark was suspicious,” Sibby says, and my stomach drops.
“Lark, I was serious. There’snothingin there. I haven’t done this in months. I was going through—”
“Suspicious is the wrong word,” Lark says reassuringly. “I was . . . hopeful?”
“Hopeful?”
Lark cracks the planner, presses her thumb against the pages so they shuffle past in the way of a flip-book. She shrugs. “I stared at every page, every letter. When I got to the end I realized I was looking for something pretty specific.”
“God,” says Sibby. “The suspense iskillingme here.”
Lark smirks, but then she looks at me. “I think it’s not working out with Cam. Or it’s not working out in New York. I’m not sure which.”
“Oh, Lark,” I say.
“Well, it’s not New York’s fault,” Sibby says, defensively, and I can’t help but smile. But then I feel another pang of sadness about Reid, Reid and Sibby. It would have been fun, to watch them argue about New York, to teasingly pile on him about it. But maybe that will never happen now.
I refocus on Lark. “Did something happen?”
She shrugs. “No, but . . . I mean. You’ve met him.”
“Yikes,” says Sibby. What Reid and Sibby would one hundred percent have in common is absolute derision for a shark-tooth necklace.
“I don’t know if it was ever right between me and him,” Lark says. “I don’t know if we can work it out, either. I don’t even know if Iwantto.” She looks down again at the planner, smooths her hand over the cover. “I think maybe I was hoping you had the answer.”
“I definitely don’t,” I say, and I mean it. I am the last person to be advising people about their relationships. “But I will talk through it with you as much as you want. If you need that.”
“She’s good at that,” says Sibby. “One time she lettered me a gorgeous pro/con list about getting a tattoo.”
“I think that’s why I’ve been stalling about the wall. I’m sorry for that, by the way. But I—”
“Lark, it’s completely okay. If that house isn’t your home, we shouldn’t do it.”
“But you could use the money.”
I purse my lips, lower my brows in a look of censure. “We’re not doing that, Lark. We’re friends.” I borrow a line from Cecelia. “You’re more to me than the jobs, okay?”
She nods, lowering her eyes, and I send a glance toward Sibby, relieved when I see that she looks totally comfortable. If seeing Lark here had been painful for Sibby before, it certainly doesn’t seem to be now.
“Okay,” Sibby says. “Shedoesneed money, though, if she’s not going to do this”—she pauses to prepare her big voice—“extremely badjob idea. Meg, what if I—”
I cut her off before she can suggest anything ridiculous, such as calling her dad. It strikes me suddenly how many things have changed—not only in the last terrible, stressful day and a half, but also in the last few months. One gray day in spring, a man I never thought I’d ever have occasion to see again came through the doors of the shop and confronted me about my letters, and I felt as isolated as I’d ever been in my life. Now, it’s a gray summer day and it feels as if the whole city knows about my secret, but at least I’m not facing the fallout alone.
“I can handle this,” I say, feeling a whole lot more capable than I did when I walked in here. “I need to . . . start over, I guess. I’ve done it before, right? I’m going to start contacting my clients, and I’ll try to reassure them the best I can, though it’ll probably be difficult to—”
