Jen felt herself lean forward, into Nan’s space. She held her breath.
“‘He will cover you with his feathers and under his wings you will find refuge. His faithfulness will be’—”
Without warning, Jen was yanked backward into a patchouli-scented embrace. Her cheek was crushed against Maxine’s beaded necklace.
“I’m free,” Maxine said. She released Jen from the clutch. “Shall we?”
Jen looked cautiously around the hotel conference room. “There was a woman here when you came up, right? Quoting a psalm?”
Maxine nodded, lowered her voice. “Oy. Sorry. Some of the fans are a bit … Well, let’s just say that this tour has been confirmation that it takes all kinds to make the world go ’round. Are you crying?” Maxine tilted her head and squinted at Jen.
“Your talk was so great,” Jen said, in broken voice. “Flower got me, and I know, I know. Preservation of resources.”
“Flower is just fine,” Maxine said, “very happy at the preserve, I promise. Listen, Laurence, my manager, wants to join us for dinner. He’s hoping you don’t already have one.”
“A manager?” Jen said. “For what?”
“You know, things like this.” Maxine gestured to the ballroom, now empty, and its rows and rows of chairs.
“Why on earth would he want to meet me?”
“Your book.” Maxine overenunciated the words like Jen was being dim. “Your grant.”
“I’m just in the research stages.”
“Fair warning: he’s pretty aggressive. Actually.” Maxine snorted. “You’ll be an excellent match.”
“Me?”
“Please. I was there when you hid those books in the library so no one else could find them for that paper on—was it novice management?” Maxine clasped her hands together gleefully. “I can’t believe I remember the topic.”
“It didn’t happen like that,” Jen said.
“It did. You hid the whole stack in the lower archives, you little rat.”
Jen recalled hazily the jostle of books in arms, a rushed walk, a charged feeling of battle-readiness. The memory should be embarrassing, but Jen only felt a dull melancholy for her loss of ambition.
It had been electric to feel such purpose, to have that fiction of control over her life.
“I was a total asshole.”
“No.” Maxine wagged a finger. “You were a tigress.”
“I’ve become a soft-boiled egg. I sit in the audience and weep for Flower the elephant.”
“Not buying it.” Maxine regarded Jen with an annoyingly superior grin. “People don’t change that much.”
* * *
“Hello?” Jen called. She walked into the kitchen. “I’m home.” She stepped out of her shoes, rubbed her heels.
The boys had left a half-full pot of congealing ramen noodles on the stove. And a pile of dirty bowls in the sink, but she didn’t care.
Dinner had been delightful. Laurence the manager had handed Jen his card, with a sincere-enough call me whenever you’re ready and a double-cheek kiss. She felt inspired to sit down at her computer and finish that leatherback-turtle study, maybe even take a peek at the one involving monarch butterflies.
Upstairs, a door slammed. There was the thunder of footsteps.
“Hello?” she shouted again. Above her head was the screech of something being dragged across the wood floor. She heard Colin’s footsteps on the stairs.
“You won’t believe who I saw tonight,” she said in a half shout. “I won’t make you guess, it was Nan, who said you’re wonderful, and then I got a personalized psalm, something about feathers, do you know that one? It made me think of Emily Dickinson, ‘hope is the thing with feathers,’ which is ironic, because I think it was about worry, which is the opposite of hope. She smelled it on me, but it wasn’t entirely my fault because—”
Jen glanced up.
Colin was still in the doorway. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“We have,” he said, “a bit of a situation.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Holla123 unfriended Abe,” Colin said in a rush.
Jen felt an all-too-familiar tsunami of hatred toward Holla123. “That little bastard,” she said.
She clipped up the staircase to Abe’s room and Colin rushed to keep up. “The thing is,” he stammered, “Holla123 is apparently only nine years old.”
“What?” Jen stopped midway up the stairs. “Did we know that?”