She opens her eyes. “But everything is making much more sense. That’s why he was at the launch that night. That’s why you hid from him at Emergency Brunch. You don’t secretly want him—you secretly work with him!”
“Well, yes.”
It’s funny she put it that way, because it’s not that I actively don’t want Noah Ross. Especially this past month, when we’ve barely corresponded and haven’t seen each other . . . let’s just say I’ve had a couple of very stirring dreams. But I can’t tell Meg this—not right now. Her throat button can only handle so many pushes per hour.
“Lanie, does he want to go public?”
“We’re . . . in conversation about it,” I say. There have been a couple of emails from Noah, feeling out the particulars. Would we leak it to the press? Would he write an editorial? Would the two of us give interviews? Together? How close to publication should such a thing take place? And with what tone? What would be the rip cord if everything went to hell?
I’ve played it casual, optimistic, and slightly vague in my responses to him. The truth is, I need Meg to brainstorm a strategy with me. And then there’s Sue . . .
“What about Sue?” Meg asks.
I look away, do some thumb twiddling. “You know, I think she’s sort of interested in keeping things status quo. . . .”
Meg snorts. “You’d need to leverage her with a killer manuscript.”
I nod.
“And Noah needs to want this for himself. No equivocating. If that’s the case, and you’ve convinced Sue not to fire us all, I think we could spin a story to the press.” She raps her nails on her desk, thinking. “What we wouldn’t want is the Post scooping it first—the headline would kill us.”
“‘Dude Writes Like a Lady.’”
“New York mag would be good, or we could see about Jacqueline covering it for the Times. We’d have to get Patrisse involved for marketing.”
I give her a cross-desk hug. “Thank you, Meg.”
“It will be a giant effing headache,” she says, slurping her coffee with a shake of her head. “Let’s just pray this book is good enough to ride it out.”
My phone buzzes with a text from Aude: Guess what arrived? Attached is a picture of the metal Brinks briefcase sitting on my desk, with a mason jar of golden tulips atop it.
“I’ll do more than pray,” I say, and flash my phone at Meg before sprinting back to my desk.
* * *
My calls are held. My door is locked. My email set to OOO. The rain out my window is a bonus, as my noise-canceling headphones pipe in soothing river sounds.
I light a Diptyque candle, dim my overhead lights, and pour a cup of rooibos tea from the giant pot I brewed. Altogether, my first-read setup is something close to bliss. I’m ready to leave this world, with all its anxieties, and enter Edward and Elizabeth’s:
CHAPTER TWO THOUSAND
It was sunset, as it always was for them in Central Park. The caviar glistened in its tub as Edward skated a blini across the top and fed the first bite to his wife.
“Happy anniversary, Collins.” His pet name for Elizabeth was her maiden name; it was how they were first introduced, and over the years it had stuck. “Here’s to fifty more.”
“Do you believe your life passes before your eyes when you die?” Elizabeth asked, dabbing her napkin to her lips. They had been discussing their mortality since their first date. Her husband was a poet, after all. But recently the timbre of the conversations had changed. Her sister had died the month before. His oldest friend, Theo, had passed that spring.
“I hope it isn’t only a flash,” Edward said. “I’d want to taste the caviar.” He leaned toward her. “And your lips.”
How could fifty years of kissing the same man still evoke that stir within her? The answer was that it hadn’t always, not every single time. There were kisses given for the children’s benefit—see how steady Mommy and Daddy are? There were kisses on ballroom stages, after one of them gave a speech accepting an award. There were kisses one whole summer when she might as well have spat in Edward’s face. But that was decades ago by now. And today, at seventy-seven, the most surprising thing of all: He could still kiss her in Central Park and make her want to take him straight to bed.
“Which of our picnics would you most like to experience at the end? With all your senses.”
“You want me to list my favorite of our picnics? We’ll be here all night.”
She sipped her wine and smiled at him. “I’ll cancel my other plans.”
He took another bite of blini and gazed across the Pond, where a lovely young woman jogged across the Gapstow Bridge. “All right, you want my favorites? We could start with last week’s picnic.”
“Is that because your memory is going?” Elizabeth teased.
He took her hand across the table. “It’s because of the red dress you wore.”
When I come to the end of the first scene, I let out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. I love how Noah chose to open the novel with this prologue set in the present before we zip back in time to how they met.
I’m also relieved by his characterizations. I’d been nervous he might turn my Edward and Elizabeth into a couple I didn’t recognize. But from this opening scene, the lovers I’ve long admired feel true. They read like the people I’d hoped they would be, as vibrant on the page as they’ve always seemed to me when I’ve marveled at them from the Gapstow Bridge.
And, hold up . . . did he give me a cameo on page one?
I smile, reading on, expecting the next scene to deal with a much younger Edward and Elizabeth.
Instead, Chapter One Thousand Nine Hundred and Ninety-Nine takes place only a week before the previous chapter. It’s brief and told from Edward’s point of view, and he really does like that red dress. I read ahead quickly, curious about the structure. Soon I realize what Noah is doing.
He’s writing their story backward.
As a reader, this thrills me. As an editor, it scares me. It will be one hell of an ambitious undertaking to get the story to hang together right. It’s like diving backward off a cliff into the ocean. It requires faith—and deep enough water.
I read on, drawn into the story. Out my window, the light fades to evening as I experience Edward and Elizabeth’s love in reverse. Grown children become pregnancies, then glimmers in the lovers’ eyes. Notable careers give way to apprenticeships and amateur mistakes. There’s a summer Edward and Elizabeth spend every picnic fighting. Reading this era from finish to start, I find such beauty in how they lean on love to forgive each other, even before I know the nature of the betrayal. Noah has included some of Edward’s poetry, and I’m touched to find inspiration taken from my own grandfather’s rhymes. There’s a racy scene in the back of a taxi. Another—even hotter—in a beachfront hut in Mexico. I know I’m alone in my office, but I blush reading them, my mind unable to resist casting Noah in Edward’s role.
Before I know it, my teapot is empty, my headphone batteries dead, and I have arrived at the last chapter. I’m almost sad to be here, but I can’t wait to see how it ends—or rather, how it begins.