Back to 1987: The Valentine I Didn’t Choose (If I’d Known Then #1)

Prologue

The thing about 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 that she’d refused to get fixed because she said it gave her character. “Pre-med. Full scholarship. I got in.”

Something swelled in my chest, pride, joy, a fierce rush of love that felt almost too big for my body to contain.

Emma. My goddaughter. The little girl I’d read Charlotte’s Web to during her first round of chemo, curled up in a hospital bed that seemed to swallow her whole, fighting a battle no eight-year-old should have to fight.

She’d won. She’d won everything.

“Emma.” My voice came out thick. “Oh my God. Harvard?”

“Harvard!” She was bouncing now, the camera shaking with her excitement. “I haven’t even told Mom yet because I wanted to tell you first because you’re going to freak out appropriately instead of immediately planning a Harvard-themed party—”

“Your mother is definitely planning a Harvard-themed party.”

“Crimson tablecloths. I’ve already made my peace with it.” Her face softened into something more serious.

“Aunt Mags? You know why I want to do this, right? The whole doctor thing?”

“Because you’re brilliant and you want to help people.”

“Because of you.” She said it simply, like it was obvious.

“When I was sick. You were there every single time. Every chemo session, every bad day, every night I couldn’t sleep.

You read me that book about the pig and the spider, and you cried harder than I did when Charlotte died, and you told me I was going to be okay. And I believed you.”

I pressed my hand against my mouth. The hallway blurred.

“I want to be that for other kids,” Emma continued. “The person who sits with them when it’s scary. The person who makes them believe they’re going to be okay.”

She shrugged, trying to make it casual, failing completely. “Pediatric oncology. That’s the plan. Well, the plan is to survive organic chemistry first. Then pediatric oncology.”

“One impossible thing at a time.”

“Exactly.” Behind her, someone called her name, one of the endless stream of friends Emma seemed to collect without trying. “I have to go. Pizza and horror movies with the other single people. Very anti-Valentine’s.”

“That sounds perfect.”

“Right? Way better than hearts and flowers.” She blew a kiss at the screen. “Love you, Aunt Mags. Go drink better champagne than whatever’s at that party.”

“Love you too, sweetheart. And Emma?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m so proud of you. I’m so—” My voice caught. “Your mom and dad will be over the moon.”

“Dad will start researching the best coffee shops near Harvard Yard. And Mom will cry. Standard Owens family response to good news.”

One more grin, bright as the sunrise. “Call tomorrow? Someone needs to talk her down from the decorations.”

“I’ll call. I promise.”

The screen went dark. I stood in the hallway for a long moment, phone pressed against my chest, feeling everything at once.

Emma was going to be extraordinary. The sick little girl who’d clutched my hand through blood draws and terror was going to grow up to help other children the same way. She was going to save lives.

And I got to watch it happen. Got to be Aunt Mags, the cool godmother who took her to Fenway games and let her order dessert first and had a spare bedroom in the South End that was basically hers whenever she wanted it.

I’d chosen not to have children of my own.

Made that choice deliberately, years ago, when I realized that what I wanted most was exactly what I had.

My career, my independence, my carefully curated life.

Some women were meant to be mothers. I was meant to be Aunt Mags—showing up when it mattered, loving fiercely without the daily logistics, building a life that was entirely my own.

I didn’t regret it. Not even on Valentine’s Day.

The walk home took twenty minutes, cutting through the Common where couples wandered despite the cold, their breath making clouds in the frigid air.

I passed a restaurant where Kirk and I used to eat sometimes, back when Kirk was my husband instead of my pleasant memory, back when we were two people who’d married because we never argued and didn’t realize that was because neither of us cared enough to fight.

We’d been divorced twelve years now. He’d remarried a woman named Susan who adored him, had four kids in quick succession, moved to a house in Newton with a big backyard and a golden retriever.

We exchanged Christmas cards. Got lunch twice a year when he was in the city.

He was happy. I was happy for him. Some things that don’t work aren’t anyone’s fault—they’re just not the right fit, like a key that almost turns the lock but not quite.

Kirk had been safe. That was why I’d married him. After Jack—

I stopped walking. Just for a moment. The thought had snuck up on me, the way it did sometimes, on nights like this.

Jack Cavanaugh. Decades ago, I’d been twenty-three, and sitting across from him at Rosetti’s on Valentine’s Day, telling him I needed space when what I really needed was to stop being so terrified of wanting something this much.

He’d looked at me like I’d hit him. That was the part I never forgot, the hurt in his eyes, the way he hadn’t fought me because he was tired of fighting for someone who kept running away.

I’d walked out of that restaurant and told myself it was the right decision. Married Kirk five years later because Kirk was easy, calm, and he never made me feel like I was standing on the edge of a cliff deciding whether to jump.