Chapter 30
Harper and I appeared in little boxes next to each other.
Emily and Bronwyn were together in a generic conference room.
But Bronwyn, with her blond luminous presence, managed to light up more than her fair share of their Zoom square.
After the usual awkward Zoom hellos, I channeled Lucy’s star turn this morning and forced an upbeat attitude.
“Thanks for switching to Zoom for this meeting. I didn’t want to be distracted with note-taking.
Does anyone mind if I record it?” An instant later, hoping to short-circuit any potential objections, I followed with, “Great, thanks!” and hit “Record.”
Emily jumped right in. “So, Thea, we wanted to check in today on your progress with getting your boyfriend to agree to an interview. I still think we could land the Today show if we offered an exclusive. That would really help us manage the situation.”
“A morning show would be exciting,” Harper said reluctantly. We both knew that was never going to happen. “But Thea has some unfortunate news to share, which is why I asked for this meeting. Thea?”
“I do.” I hesitated. “But before we get to that, I have a quick question for Bronwyn.” I gave her my most disarming smile. “Max, that’s my boyfriend, gave me this necklace,” I said, holding it in full view of the camera while examining Bronwyn’s inscrutable facial expression.
“It’s really pretty, Thea,” Bronwyn said, giving nothing away.
“I learned the strangest thing today, though—”
“Thea,” Harper’s voice warned. “Everyone’s busy. Let’s get to the point.”
“I am, Harper,” I retorted, then continued addressing Bronwyn: “My friend Coco said that after my launch party, she loaned you this one-of-a-kind piece so you could wear it to a party in the Hamptons and post on social media about her new jewelry line. But then you never did. So, Bronwyn, how did Max end up with this necklace?” I hoped no one could detect the note of desperation in my voice.
Deep down, I was still praying there might be a logical explanation I hadn’t been able to dream up.
An explanation that wouldn’t make me the gullible nutjob who fell for a con.
Bronwyn bit her bright-red lower lip.
I tried again. “Do you know Max? Did you give him the necklace?”
This time Bronwyn looked uncomfortable as she shrugged, but she still didn’t answer my questions.
“Bronwyn, for heaven’s sake, what’s going on?” Emily asked her underling.
I examined Emily’s face for any sign of a tell. I didn’t want to assume this was all Bronwyn, but Emily looked as confused as I’d been with Coco, which meant either she was in the wrong profession or she was unaware of Bronwyn’s game. A game I was only now beginning to see the outlines of myself.
Bronwyn nibbled on the straw of her oversize pistachio-green tumbler. She smoothed a tress behind her ear. Finally, she turned to face her boss. “Emily, you know how you’re always talking about how we need to take risks and be creative to break through the noise on social media?”
“Uh, yes,” Emily said, shifting in her chair.
“Well, during that marketing offsite last winter you said because we’re a smaller publishing house, we always have to be thinking outside the box for our authors. So that’s kind of what I did here.”
Emily pushed her tortoiseshell glasses up her nose. “Bronwyn, you need to share exactly what you did. Right now.”
Bronwyn looked down and took a deep inhale.
“I was so excited when you assigned me this book,” she said, her chair still facing Emily.
“That day, you told me Love You to Mars and Back wasn’t Thea’s debut and you said how much you’d liked The Long Way Home.
So of course I googled it and learned what happened to her husband after the book was published.
It was so tragic, and the mirroring of his death in her book must have been incredibly painful.
It stuck with me. Then in the lead-up to the launch, when we were developing our marketing plan, I had a call with Harper because she wanted to talk through the interview topics that would be off-limits.
Harper mentioned that Thea had actually based the astronaut character, Zach, on her late husband, which I thought was so sweet. ”
My eyes darted to Harper’s Zoom box. All I’d wanted was for Harper to give them a list of off-limits topics, not to deliver a treatise on the reasons why.
Bronwyn kept talking. “After that call, her book made sense to me on a whole new level. The astronaut going to Mars was a metaphor for her husband’s death—”
“Excuse me,” I interrupted. “But since this is my life you’ve been toying with, maybe you could address me directly?”
“Right, sorry, Thea.” Bronwyn nodded and faced the camera.
“And then I thought about how the astronaut returning five years later must have been your way of imagining your family reuniting and your husband meeting his daughter for the first time. It felt so poignant, especially because my dad died when I was eight. I used to imagine that he was on a business trip and would come back to us,” Bronwyn said, fidgeting with her gold hoop earring.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said reflexively, even as I thought, If she isn’t lying about that, too. “But please, keep going.”
“Love You to Mars and Back is such a beautiful story. I worried your book would end up as just another midlist romance if we didn’t make the connection to your late husband and share the inspiration for the book.”
“But that’s exactly what I instructed you not to do during that call,” Harper snapped, suddenly finding her voice. “It was in Thea’s contract.”
“I know, I know,” Bronwyn said with a sigh.
“But this was the first book I was fully responsible for launching, and I really wanted it to be a hit. I thought maybe I just needed a creative approach to get Thea comfortable enough to talk about her late husband and why she wrote Mars. It seemed like a golden marketing opportunity if I could only figure out how to unlock it. Obviously bringing her husband back to life wasn’t a possibility.
” She giggled nervously. “But I thought maybe, if this time she experienced a happy coincidence, it might change her thinking . . .”
I felt my whole body tense up as the full extent of Bronwyn’s “creative approach” came into focus, but I still had to ask. “Max wasn’t actually an astronaut, was he?” My voice caught as shame flared inside me.
Bronwyn looked back and forth between Emily in person and me on the screen. Finally, she conceded, “No, sorry, he’s not. He’s an actor I know. A really good one.”
Weirdly, my brain seized on this opinion. Because if he was a really good actor, then maybe falling for his schtick wasn’t so completely effing batshit.
“I put in a ton of time researching, coaching him, and planning your dates. He studied so hard for the role and took it really seriously. We both dissected the book and watched YouTube videos of your husband Sam’s matches and post-match interviews so he could really capture his essence.”
Bronwyn said all this as if it should make me feel better. But the thought of them poring over Sam’s mannerisms to imitate him in order to trick me was absolutely appalling. All of a sudden, I wanted to leap through my monitor and strangle her with her own flowing mane.
I was about to go apeshit on Bronwyn when my phone buzzed with a text from Harper: Stay calm. Let her get the whole thing out before Emily realizes she needs to end this. Smart call on recording btw. I thumbs-upped her text and kept my mouth shut.
“I had breakfast with Max the morning after your launch event to go over the final details of the meet-cute we’d planned at the dog park,” Bronwyn continued, “and that’s when I gave him the necklace in case he wanted to use it.”
I couldn’t help but feel the sting of the word “use.” I flashed back to our final prelaunch meeting when Bronwyn had asked me so earnestly, Tell me what a day in the life of Thea Packer looks like?
I want to plan your events and interviews with the least possible disruption.
I’d told her about our regular dog park outings. My teeth clenched.
“Then, once Max told me you’d confided in him about Sam and why you’d written Mars”—she paused before continuing—“you know, during the Barnes & Noble date?”
As she glanced at me for some sort of confirmation that I might happen to recall this date, my blood heated to a rolling boil at the casual way she detonated one bomb after another.
As though I might not remember where I’d been when I revealed my most vulnerable truth to a man I thought I might love.
As though there had been three of us there in the fiction section that night.
Although in reality, I had to admit it was sounding more and more like it had been a three-way date—and relationship.
He might as well have been miked for how violated I felt.
But I heeded Harper’s instructions and pressed my lips together.
“That was when I was pretty confident you were ready to talk more openly and help us lean into your incredibly strong marketing hook, so I arranged the craft-writing podcast and planted those questions with Jessica.” Harper and Emily gasped in tandem, but Bronwyn didn’t seem to notice.
“And then things just sort of took off, you know?”
Unfortunately, I did know.
This was all so fucking humiliating, the level of deceit off the charts. And still, I had more questions. Working to keep my voice calm, I said, “Right after we met at the dog park, I googled him and found his LinkedIn and an old NASA group photo. Then later, all of that disappeared.”