Two Weeks Later
THERE’S A SPECIAL PLACE IN HELL FOR tourists in New York.
Specifically, the ones who amble down the sidewalk, three abreast, like they’re forming some kind of shield wall.
Even with her limping stride, Ava soon outpaces them. She steps off the curb to get around, nearly clipping a string of fast-moving bicycles. She twists, they veer, disaster is averted, but Jesus Christ. One of these days, she’ll get out of this place.
She knows she’s been saying the same thing for more than ten years, knows everyone has a love-hate relationship with New York, but more and more she finds herself fantasizing.
Half of publishing seems to be working remotely these days.
She could move upstate, get a house in the middle of nowhere.
Ava thinks back to Skelbrae, and mentally revises nowhere to a small town. One with emergency services and good cell coverage.
But for the time being she’s still here, surrounded by tourists and locals alike. The trees are blooming, and everyone appears to be taking the same cue to go outside, enjoy the few precious weeks before spring warmth gives way to summer heat and the city becomes miserable once more.
Her foot aches dully in its air cast. It’s not broken, at least, but when it comes to injuries, New York isn’t exactly an accommodating place.
She briefly considered hailing a taxi before her pride kicked in and she hobbled down and up three flights of subway steps before taking the last two blocks in limping stride.
She passes a boutique window full of well-dressed mannequins, declaring that season’s color to be pink, which feels like a sick joke. A little on the nose, she’d say if it showed up in an author’s book instead of in her life.
Back at her apartment, a bag of clothes sits by the door, waiting to be donated.
She never owned a lot of pink, and she left most of what she’d bought for Priscilla behind on Skelbrae as she was fleeing for her life, the pink cat’s-eye glasses swallowed by the long grass or dashed upon the rocks.
But as soon as she was safely back in Brooklyn, she culled every trace of salmon, fuchsia, or blush from her closet, blouses, scarves, and shoes, as if she could purge the memory of those three days along with them.
She even threw out a pair of perfectly good bath towels, despite the fact they were closer to coral than rose.
By the time she reaches the chic Park Avenue bar, a film of sweat has broken out across her brow, and a drop runs like a finger down her back.
Escaping into the caverned quiet, she sighs in relief.
She’s always amazed how New York effects that strange and sudden transformation, trading the too-full, too-bright streets for dim and intimate interiors.
She beelines for a quiet booth in the back and slides onto the cushioned bench as gracefully as she can, navigating her cast beneath the table. She nestles her glasses—a new pair, peacock blue—up into her freshly styled curls and sighs.
Her phone buzzes in her pocket, work emails still pouring in.
It never stops. As if what she went through back on Fletch’s private island wasn’t bad enough, when she made it back to the mainland and the phone she’d left at the front desk of the hotel, she was rewarded with 193 new emails, half of them marked urgent, even though none were, in fact, emergencies.
Her first call was to a hospital.
Her second was to Eleanor.
As if on cue, Fletch’s agent sweeps in, the scent of spring clinging to her tailored pantsuit, her silver hair swishing like a curtain around her face.
“Avaline,” Eleanor says, using her full name, even though Ava is almost positive she knows it irks her.
“Eleanor,” Ava replies as the agent slides into the booth beside her. Ava can’t help but notice the dog sticking out of her bag. A geriatric Chihuahua with a snaggle tooth and a lolling tongue.
“What is that?” asks Ava.
“This? It’s a Birkin.”
“Not the bag, Eleanor, the animal inside it.”
“Oh. That’s Edgar.”
Ava pinches the bridge of her nose, knowing the answer before she asks. “Sienna and Malcolm’s Edgar? I thought you hated dogs?”
“I do,” Eleanor says, producing a small porcelain cup and a bottle of Fiji water.
“I suppose that’s why he’s wearing an Hermès scarf?”
Eleanor gives a nearly imperceptible shrug. “I was going to take him to the shelter, I’ve just been so busy. You know how it is.”
Ava nods, knowing that dog will never see the inside of a shelter. At least someone gets a happy ending.
Eleanor holds up two fingers, flagging the server. When he arrives, he gives a pointed look from the pet in her purse to the NO DOGS sign, but makes the smart decision to say nothing.
Eleanor orders a vodka martini. Ava asks for a glass of Chenin Blanc and is tempted to add “the largest one you have.” She doesn’t, but apparently her expression says as much, because the glass that arrives is fuller than it should be.
Once they have their drinks, the two women sit in silence, save for the sound of Edgar lapping at the water in his cup.
Ava closes her eyes, a quiet exhaustion rolling over her.
She doesn’t know if she has ever been so tired.
It’s not just that she hasn’t been sleeping since the island—or at least, not sleeping well.
It’s that when she was running for her life, she made a list of all the things she’d do if—when—she survived, and now she has.
But she doesn’t feel empowered by her second chance at life.
Instead, the thought of going back to work exhausts her.
It’s not that she doesn’t love working on books.
She does. She always has. She loves the way a well-placed word can shift an entire narrative, the way meaning hides between lines, the way stories can change lives, change worlds.
She loves disappearing into them. She loves making them better.
And sometimes, she even likes the people who write them.
But in a way, Cate was right. At least about one thing.
The industry is broken.
And she’s afraid it’s broken her.
Even Eleanor looks—well, tired is the wrong word. Ava is sure the agent spends a great deal of money to look as well-rested as she does, close to what Ava clears in a year, just to wave away the constant praise that she looks “exquisite for her age.”
But Eleanor’s silence speaks for her. So does the long sip of vodka. And the sigh that slides through her lips as she sets the martini glass back on its coaster.
“Well,” she says at last. “That was—”
“—a clusterfuck,” Ava finishes for her.
“Of epic proportions.”
“I knew Holden was a mistake,” Ava mutters, fingers tightening on the stem of her glass. “But Cate—”
“Yes, that one was . . . regrettable.”
“Regrettable?” scoffs Ava. “She was a hack, a thief, and she tried to murder me.”
Eleanor takes another sip. “How’s the foot?” she asks, with a politeness that says she doesn’t really care.
“It fucking hurts.”
“I bet. You’ve got to be careful, running around in the dark.”
“Yes, well, maybe if you hadn’t fired all of Fletch’s staff, someone would have cut the grass, and I would have seen the snare.”
Eleanor arches a tinted brow. “Be glad I did. This clusterfuck, as you so eloquently call it, would have been worse if we had witnesses to deal with.”
“None of this would have happened if there had been witnesses,” counters Ava. “And honestly, how can you be so blasé? People are dead.”
Eleanor studies her glass. “I’ve been in this business long enough to bury my share of bodies.”
“That saying is usually metaphorical.”
Eleanor’s mouth twitches. She takes another pointed sip of her martini. “Regardless,” she says, voice tucked carefully beneath the current of the bar, “it shouldn’t be too hard to keep it out of the press. Their midlist status isn’t the only reason I suggested them.”
Ava shifts, maneuvering her cast between the table legs. “What do you mean?”
Eleanor waves her now empty glass toward the bartender, and moments later, another martini magically appears.
“Well,” she says, “we had the NDAs, once they got to the island, but there was the time before to worry about. I’ve never met a writer who could keep their mouth shut—gossips, every last one.
And since we had a veritable wealth of options, I made sure to choose candidates who didn’t have many . . . connections.”
And now, thinks Ava, grimly, ones that won’t be missed.
“Jaxon Knight’s parents are out of the picture,” continues Eleanor stroking the dog’s ear.
“Millie’s, too—she had a sister, but it seems they weren’t close.
Sienna and Malcolm had this little treasure,” she adds, stroking the dog’s ear.
“Cate was estranged, but we did inform her mother. She was devastated, of course—but still managed to ask if I was open to queries. Kenzo—well, he may be private, but he had attachments. By all accounts he should have never made the list. But thankfully, that won’t be an issue now . . .”
Ava shakes her head in disbelief. And horror. And, perhaps, a grudging admiration. So many steps, gamed out, like chess. “You should be a writer,” she says darkly. She doesn’t mean it as a compliment, but Eleanor’s mouth twitches.
“That’s what I wanted to discuss. There is still, of course, the matter of the book.”
Ava groans and takes a large gulp of wine. “I should have just written it myself.”
In the ensuing silence, she glances at Eleanor and finds her staring back. She’s never noticed, but up close, the woman’s eyes are so gray they’re almost colorless.
“Well,” she says, slowly. “You still could.”
The moment hangs between them.
Ava Paulson would be lying if she said she hadn’t at least considered it. Hell, she’d considered it back when Eleanor first broached the subject, and if she’d said yes, then this whole horror could have been avoided.