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—for her?
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.
Angry at the ones who hurt you.
Angry at the world.
And angry people fight.
Now she was potentially being handed the reins to what she’d been told was a talented but stubborn old horse. So she wasn’t surprised when Arthur insisted on meeting her first. An unofficial vetting.
Most authors wouldn’t have had the power to strike an editor from the list, but Arthur Fletch wasn’t most authors, and by then he was making Merriweather enough money that they’d have given him his pick.
Ava felt the pressure as she made her way uptown, the weight of the moment, one when her career would either surge forward or stall out.
Depending on the humor of a middle-aged white man from the Midwest.
There was an awkward moment when she first arrived.
It had been a terrible morning, cold in a way only the city seemed to get, the buildings magnifying the chill.
She’d been rained on, then splashed by a passing bus, and she was soaked to the skin by the time she strode up to the doors of the private club he’d chosen.
One of those members-only places modeled on the good old days when men could drink and smoke and read the paper cocooned by wealth and safe from the intrusion of the fairer sex.
These days the club admitted women, but the man at the door looked at Ava like she must be lost.
“Can I help you?” he sneered, blocking the entrance.
She explained, as calmly as she could, that she was meeting someone.
His gaze scraped over her like a dull blade.
“Are you quite sure?” he said, and Ava felt her face go hot, a torrent of words rising like bile up her throat.
She knew she shouldn’t be surprised. She’d lived in this body for thirty-two years; she’d seen and heard and felt horrible things; but she still felt the furious tears pricking her eyes.
If this was the kind of place where Arthur Fletch felt at home, then she should quit right now.
“Is there a problem?” came a low voice, edges rough.
She turned and saw him coming up the steps. Arthur wasn’t a particularly large man, but he carried himself like one, coat billowing around him, gray hair curling at his temples (this was just before the introduction of the red wide-brimmed hat).
“You must be Ava,” he said, eyeing her with curiosity but also warmth.
“Mr. Fletch!” said the man at the door. “She didn’t tell me she was with you.”
“You didn’t ask,” Ava said through gritted teeth.
“Please,” the man continued, as if he hadn’t heard her. “Come in. Both of you.”
He pulled open the door as he spoke, revealing a hall of warm, dark wood, smelling of coffee and leather. Yet Ava felt physically repelled. And Arthur must have been in earshot longer than she realized, because he gave the man at the door the same withering look the man had leveled at Ava.
“You know,” he said, turning toward her, “I’ve lost my taste for this place. Would you mind terribly if we went somewhere else?”
Her whole body loosened in relief. But she only smiled. “Of course, Arthur.”
The man at the door visibly reddened, his mouth opening and closing like a fish as they walked away.
They’d spent the next hour trading stories over coffee at a nearby diner.
And by the time she got back to her apartment, there was an email in her inbox.
Attached to it was Arthur Fletch’s newest manuscript.
The first in a series about a woman named Julia Petrarch.
The start of a new chapter for both of them.
It wasn’t all sunshine and flowers, of course.
Arthur was a difficult man, stubborn to the point of intransigence when it came to his work, but Ava was an excellent editor, and she convinced him, word by word and scene by scene and year by year, that she was there to make it better.
To make sure his ideas—his brilliant, original ideas—made it from his mind onto the page.
And he was sharp. He never forgot a plot device he’d used, or a piece of dialogue he’d given to a character.
He held on to details, on and off the page.
Ava once told him, in passing, that she’d loved The Velveteen Rabbit as a child, worn the pages thin from constant turning, and nearly a year later he handed her a first edition.
Not for Christmas, or her birthday. Simply because he saw it and remembered.
He could be that kind, and then, that maddening, when it came to covers, or type treatments. He would throw a fit if a copyeditor changed an em dash to a semicolon or, god forbid, questioned the potency of a line.
And then there were the dark spots.
The patches of time where she literally couldn’t get him to answer an email or a phone call or a text. The dark spots had gotten longer in recent years. Stretching from days, to weeks, and then—
“He lived alone,” Eleanor is saying, all business again, “save for the groundskeeper and a handful of staff, all of whom have been dismissed.”
“You don’t think they’ll go public?”
The agent looks at her, affronted. “Give me some credit,” she says. “Papers were signed. And they were all well compensated. By the time the authors arrive, the island will be empty. As for the house itself . . .”
As Eleanor delves into the state of the building, and the necessary preparations, Ava Paulson wonders how she got here.
She grew up bouncing between her mother’s classroom and her father’s library stacks, where she learned not only that she loved to read but that most of the faces on the covers and the heroes on the page didn’t look like her.
She got into publishing to change that. To make a difference, however small, in the literary landscape. And sure, Fletch’s books weren’t exactly breaking any boundaries, but the sheer scale of their success gave Ava the leverage she needed to work on titles that did, to take chances on new talent.
Now she’s listening to Eleanor Vandenberg explain this plan as if pitching a book. And Ava finds herself searching for plot holes, stress-testing the idea even as she knows that it’s crazy.
It’s the kind of corner Fletch loved to back his main characters into, a devilish bind that will require cunning and creativity to escape.
She can practically hear him, teasing her now, the way he did whenever they disagreed. When she’d point out that something wasn’t working, and the hackles would come up.
Well, he’d say, crossing his arms. Have you got a better idea?
Even though they both knew that wasn’t the editor’s job. She was there to poke, to prod, to point out when something could be improved upon. The author’s job was to figure out how.
But now the author is dead.
And Eleanor is looking at her, lips pursed, the question plain on her face.
Have you got a better idea?
And truth be told, Ava doesn’t.
And if she doesn’t find a way to get Fletch’s final book to shelves, the damage will be even greater.
To Merriweather Press and, by extension, to her.
If only she had gotten him to turn the manuscript in on time.
Hell, six months late. Even a year. That’s what they’d say, when they laid the blame at her feet.
But wresting words from Arthur Fletch had been like trying to pry honey from a bear.
Ava blinks. Eleanor is rising to her feet, running a hand absently over her dress to smooth out any creases, even though the fabric is apparently nice enough it doesn’t even wrinkle.
“This is going to work,” Eleanor says with such unnerving certainty that Ava almost believes her. After all, if the universe is going to bend for anyone, it’s probably Eleanor Vandenberg.
As she stands in the office doorway, watching the agent walk away, Ava wonders how she had agreed to any of this. It’s madness. But maybe—just maybe—it could work.
If it does, they’ll close the loop, put Fletch and his story to rest, and never speak of it again.
Eleanor reaches the corner and waves without looking back.
“I was thinking,” says Holden.
Ava jumps at his sudden reappearance. “Jesus, Holden,” she mutters, one hand flying to her chest. She’s had enough surprises for one day.
“What if Rufus is English?” he goes on. “I’ve always wanted to be English, and I think it suits the character, don’t you? Plus, I’m rather good at accents.”
As he speaks, he slips into a posh English voice that, Ava has to admit, isn’t as horrible as she expected.
Ava sighs and looks at him, this young white man with all the eagerness of a golden retriever and the conviction that things will work out, because they always have.
This, she thinks bleakly, is a terrible idea.