“Love?” they said.
“—my point is that I didn’t want to tell you the truth because I didn’t want you to pity me or think that I was helpless.” Lily looked around at each of them. “I love all of you. I’m so grateful to be part of this family. But if I need your help, I will ask for it, okay?”
The Greenes nodded in silence, stunned by soft-spoken Lily and her not-so-soft-spoken behavior. Calla’s laughter at Tomcat lightly bumping his head against her chin broke the silence.
“For the record, we love all three of you equally,” Benjamin said, speaking for the first time since he’d entered the apartment. “Regardless of what you have or haven’t accomplished.”
“Thanks, Dad.” Lily smiled at her father and took a deep breath. “Now that that’s settled, does anybody have an iPhone charger?”
Everyone shook their heads. Violet, who was still intrigued by Lily’s revelation about her emails with Nick, smiled slyly. “What kind of emails were y’all sending, though?” she asked, wiggling her eyebrows. “Kinky stuff?”
“Violet.” This from Dahlia, Benjamin and Iris.
“No, the emails were . . .” Lily started. Wait. Email.
She could email Nick! Why hadn’t she thought of that before?
She ran to open her laptop, pulling up her personal email account. And the first thing she saw was a message from Edith.
I’ve been trying to reach you every way possible, and I’m hoping that you regularly check your personal email, unlike the way you’ve been ignoring your work account. I need my new business cards! Please bring them to the party!
Was she serious? She wanted Lily to go back to the office and bring her business cards across town, just so that she could hand them out at a party that happened every year?
Forget that. Lily wasn’t going out of her way for Edith like this anymore.
But then she thought about how Edith had bullied their poor book cover designer Jeremy into designing those business cards. Jeremy was kind and patient and never gave Lily grief over the many comments Edith made about his cover sketches. Lily didn’t want his hard, unpaid work to go to waste.
“Where are we going for dinner?” she asked, grabbing her tote bag and useless, dead phone. “I’ll meet you there. I have to do something for work first.”
Iris gave Lily the address for Osteria 57 in the Village, and Lily rushed out the door.
The party was being held on the rooftop at the Moxy hotel in Times Square. Lily spent a good five minutes in the lobby trying to explain that no, she didn’t have an invitation, she simply needed to bring business cards to someone in attendance. After she was finally allowed entry, she took the elevator up to the rooftop. When she exited the elevator, her steps faltered. This party was packed. Clusters of people were spread out across the rooftop. Hotel staff milled among the crowd, holding trays of appetizers. To the far left, there was a large projector screen, displaying a book cover that Lily didn’t recognize. A short white man, who was sweating in his blazer, stood behind a makeshift podium, gesturing to the screen as everyone listened. He must have been an author.
Lily maneuvered through the crowd, searching for Edith. She heard someone call her name, and she turned, spotting Dani and Oliver by the bar. They waved at her, and Lily laughed, waving back. Of course Dani had found a way to score two invites for junior-level staff. Lily kept moving through the crowd. Along the way, she spotted Marcus standing by the rooftop railing, speaking to a tall, brown-skinned woman with long, dark hair. Lily would have to find him and say hi before she left.
She finally located Edith near the back of the party by the bathrooms. Edith was talking with another white woman, who was short like Edith, but her strawberry blonde hair hung loose to her shoulders. She wore a bright orange, sleeveless A-line dress in contrast to Edith’s all-black outfit. They looked like night and day.
When Edith noticed Lily, she waved her forward impatiently. Lily fought the urge to roll her eyes and slipped through the crowd.
“Here you go,” Lily said, handing over the business cards.
Edith didn’t even say thank you. She took the cards and dropped them into her purse. “Lily, this is Bernice Gilman.”
“Oh,” Lily said, looking at the woman who would be her second boss if Lily was unfortunate enough to be stuck at this job by the time Bernice started. “Nice to meet you.”
“It’s nice to meet you too.” With a warm smile, Bernice shook Lily’s hand. “Did you really come all this way to drop off Edith’s business cards? That’s dedication.”