Leah
As she crossed the Sagamore Bridge, Leah Powell did not look down. It was a childhood game she used to play with her little brother James, sitting in the back seat of the family car: who could make it the farthest across the span of the bridge without looking down. The bridge was precariously high, the steep views of the Cape Cod Canal below both breathtaking and alarming. Thirty-five-year-old Leah had bigger concerns.
Despite the surrounding cars teeming with luggage carriers and bicycles and colorful kayaks, Leah was not Cape bound for family fun. Nor was she a visitor. But could she even call herself a local if the only time she’d been back in ten years was when her mother was dying? As her car landed safely on the Cape side of the bridge, she realized it did not matter. Leah Powell was headed back to Chatham, Massachusetts, because this summer there was simply nowhere else for her to go.
At Exit 85 she put on her indicator and let out a shaky breath. She was home, if you could call it that anymore. Onlyno one was waiting for her back at the gray shingled cottage she’d grown up in. Not her father, who had found it too hard to stay after her mother died and rented it out to zealous vacationers, before moving to New Jersey with his second wife. Nor her brother, James, who lived in a tidy saltbox in Duxbury with his tidy wife and matching towheaded children. The only thing waiting for her at the old family cottage were dust motes and memories.
Until that morning, Leah’s home was in Back Bay with her ex-fiancé, Greg. She’d moved in right after he proposed, three long years ago. At first, it was perfect in too many ways to count, which should have been her first warning. Leah worked downtown in publishing and Greg around the corner in the Prudential Center. Her salary was paltry by comparison to his, and it would never have afforded her the Victorian brownstone on its own. “Don’t worry, we’re in this together!” Greg had said, as he helped her haul boxes of all her belongings from her trusty little Honda Accord, parked at the curb. Still, she had felt funny, moving into his place. After all, Greg had bought it years earlier, before they met. And it was much grander, the neighborhood tonier, than what she’d moved from. Even though he insisted he was happy to pay the mortgage if she covered costs, Leah always had the impermanent feeling that she was a roommate in someone else’s place.
For three years they lived happily, in that dreamy early adulthood state, each working their jobs during the day and hurrying home to order Thai food or whip something up together in the gleaming kitchen for dinner each night. Weekends they triednew restaurants on Newbury Street with friends and went out to the bars. In good weather they wandered the Public Garden and watch the Swan Boats or strolled along the waterfront. On rainy days they perused galleries and museums, lingered in cafés. Boston was vibrant, their options of entertainment endless, and after years of sharing a cramped apartment with three roommates in Somerville, Leah couldn’t believe that Back Bay was her neighborhood; that this was her new life. But as the years went on and the wedding date kept getting pushed back, doubts crept in. Part of it was her fault. Leah was still grieving for her mother and wasn’t ready to celebrate a fresh new marriage with such a fresh loss. Part of it was Greg’s fault. Though she initially appreciated his patience, as the months rolled on and no date was set, he seemed fine to continue to coast. He didn’t worry when other coupled friends, who’d gotten engaged after they did, celebrated first and second anniversaries. Or when they had their first child. He seemed content to be a forever-fiancé, and Leah began to wonder if she might be, too.
The other issue was that each of them was already married to their job. Publishing was just as tough an industry to survive in as it was to survive on. Leah toiled in her career, starting at the bottom as an editorial assistant her first year out of college at UMass, barely earning enough to survive. Two years later she was promoted to assistant editor where she had a stroke of luck editing a debut bestseller. Her work on that project earned her the title of associate editor to Lindsay “Bestseller” Boyer, who had her own imprint. Lindsay was legendary, rumored to have the magic ear for discovering bestselling debuts. For the nextfew years, Leah felt simultaneously thrilled and intimidated to be part of Lindsay’s team. Her increasingly postponed nuptials didn’t concern her nearly as much as establishing herself at Morgan Press.
Don’t worry,she’d tell herself in moments of doubt. One of these days you’re going to make it to editor. But she knew that to distinguish herself at Morgan, she needed to discover new talent, which is why she always kept her eye out for fresh manuscripts. Unlike others in her office who stuck to assigned projects, Leah trolled the slush pile of unsolicited submissions. That was where she’d stumbled across Luna Hoya, a new voice with an edgy pitch for a memoir. It was so compelling she’d stayed late at work in her tiny cubicle, so late that Greg had texted, asking if she were alright.
“I think I’ve found something!” she’d gushed into the phone. “This writer. Her opening, I can’t put it down.”
Greg had laughed. “Can you tell me the rest over takeout?”
It’s exactly what she’d done, and even Greg, who wasn’t much of a reader outside of the odd John Grisham, had to admit he found Luna’s story absorbing. Over fried rice and dumplings Leah read the first twenty-five pages aloud, and then more at bedtime. “You should show it to Lindsay,” he said, before he turned out his light. “First thing tomorrow,” Leah agreed.
Two things had happened the next morning. Lindsay, who was initially reserved about Luna’s sample pages, finally relented. “Well, Leah, you’ve been looking for a passion project. If your gut is telling you this is it, go ahead and ask the author for the rest of the manuscript.”
Leah was thrilled by the greenlight. Lindsay didn’t offer them liberally.
The second thing to happen that day was Greg’s old girlfriend, Rebekah, reached out to him from out of the blue. “She’s back in town and asked to meet for a drink, that is if you don’t mind,” Greg said sheepishly that night.
“Oh. Rebekah.” Leah knew all about her. Greg and Rebekah had dated as undergrads at BC, and maturely, because that’s how Greg described her, decided to part ways for graduate school. The last Leah had heard was that she was living in New York and never attended reunions. Which was perfectly fine with Leah. Greg was a good-looking guy, but from the old college photos Leah had stumbled across in a box in the hallway closet, Rebekah looked like she’d been plucked from a prep-school brochure: blond, confident, pearls.
“She’s new in town, and I think she’s feeling out of sorts.” Leah did not point out that Rebekah had gone to BC and therefore knew Boston like the back of her manicured hand.
“I don’t know,” she said, not wanting to make a big deal out of it but unable to ignore the stirring of anxiety. “Is it just a drink?”
Greg nodded vehemently. “Just one. Just as friends.” Then, “You should join us.”
Leah declined. She was tired from the adrenaline rush of her workday, and she trusted Greg. “Go ahead,” she’d told Greg. “No harm in one drink.” It had been such a good day, nothing could touch it.
Six months later, Luna’s manuscript had shaken LindsayBoyer’s imprint and the rest of her publishing house to its very foundation with a scandal that made national news. The debut story that had landed on every major most-anticipated list was still deserving of the acclaim: the problem was, it wasn’t Luna’s. She’d stolen it from someone else.
“It’s a real shame,” Lindsay said when she let Leah go. “You’re a talented editor, Leah, but you should’ve vetted her more carefully. There must have been some red flags along the way that you missed.” After nine years at Morgan Press, Leah was jobless.
If that seismic blast wasn’t enough, it was followed days later by a miserable-looking Greg calling her into the living room one. “I don’t know how to say this,” he’d begun.
Leah already knew what bomb was about to be dropped. “Just say it,” she’d managed, lowering herself onto the couch.
“It’s about the marriage.”
She’d sunk into the depth of the cushions, staring past his handsome profile at the clouds forming outside as if on cue. “You mean the wedding.”
“I mean the marriage. Who are we kidding? We’ve been engaged three years and haven’t been able to pick a date, let alone a venue. Have you even narrowed down a dress?”
She had not. But that was on both of them. “Have you picked out a suit?”
He sat down beside her. “Neither one of us seems invested anymore. And now, with everything that happened at Morgan…” At least he’d had the decency to tear up. “I’m sorry, Leah. I really am. But I don’t see a path forward for us. Things are just too uncertain.”
“My joblessness or your feelings about Rebekah?” she’d pressed, hot tears streaming down her cheeks. Greg didn’t answer.
When she shared the news with her father, he swiftly removed the Cape house from the Realtor’s summer rental listing. “Come home,” he’d said.
