Noah looks up from his computer to me. “What does she wish for? When she stands on the Gapstow Bridge and lets herself dream big?”
I close my eyes. What did my mother want? I used to think it was to set the bar high for everyone she loved, to give us something to reach for. Recently, I see it differently. I don’t think her final words to me were a gauntlet, but an expression of her faith. I think my mom already believed that I could really, really love someone—because she’d shown me how, by loving me that way in the ten years we had together. I think her words were a parachute, tucked away but always there, ready to catch me when I’m ready to leap.
“More,” is what I tell Noah. “She wants more time. More memories. More laughter. More little moments you don’t think you’ll remember but you do. She doesn’t want it to end. She wants more of what she already has.”
Noah’s typing like Rachmaninoff. He types for several minutes without pause. “This is what I needed.” When he looks up at me, his eyes are bright and excited. “I don’t know how you did it, Lanie, but you got me writing again.”
“Duh,” I say. “It was my Fifty Ways list.”
“That must be it.” He gives me a look I can’t quite decode.
I take a second egg roll. “These are phenomenal, by the way.”
He smiles, and takes one, too, and we chew happily for a moment. The mood seems right to mention sales conference that morning.
“So . . . I floated a title to the team today. . . .”
Noah’s brow furrows in alarm, a look I haven’t seen on him since our early days.
“I’m sorry,” I say, “I should have checked with you first, but I was in the hot seat at a meeting and, honestly, the room loved it. I think it’s pretty good.”
He shakes his head. “I already have a title.”
I brace myself. It’s been well established that Noa Callaway sucks at coming up with titles.
“It’s Two Thousand Picnics in Central Park,” he says.
I exhale, laugh, then make a mind-blown motion with my hands. Noah grins.
“Yours, too?” he asks. I nod. “Well, that’s a first! With Alix, it was always war.”
“I remember. One of my first acts as her assistant was to book her a weekend at some New Mexico retreat so should could eat peyote and come down after the Fifty Ways title showdown.”
“That’s where she went?” Noah laughs.
“Around that time, I started picturing you looking like a young Anjelica Huston,” I say. “You had your gorgeous side. And your witchy side.”
I expect him to laugh, but Noah looks down at his hands.
“Not an Anjelica Huston fan?” I ask.
“It isn’t that,” he says. “I wish you hadn’t gone so long not knowing the real me. It would have saved us a few bumps.”
“It’s okay,” I say. Because it is—now. But Noah’s right, it was choppy there for a minute. “Though I have wondered . . . why are you so sealed off, even from people at Peony?”
“When Alix bought Ninety-Nine Things,” he says, “she wanted to keep my gender in the background. We pulled it off because, back then, no one had heard of me. By the time I signed my second contract, there was so much money involved, Sue insisted on the NDAs.”
I had always thought the anonymity was Noa Callaway’s personal preference. But of course, it makes sense that it was Sue.
He looks at me. “I wanted to come clean to you at the first chance. Sue didn’t like the idea, but—”
“You went over her head?”
He nods.
“Noah?” I say tentatively, feeling out my question like the first step into the ocean. “Is there a part of you that wants to come clean to your readers?”
“It’s too late.” He shakes his head. “I don’t want to disappoint them. I also don’t want to stop writing.”
“No one wants you to stop writing—”
“I have a feeling some people would enjoy a public comeuppance,” he says in a way that lets me know he’s given this some thought.
“What if we got out ahead of them,” I say. Meg has pulled off mightier miracles. “We could plan a campaign around revealing who you are. We could coordinate it with this book’s release. . . .”
I trail off because my mind is whirling. This dilemma has a moral aspect, and it has a business aspect. In the grand scheme of things, a man publishing novels under a woman’s name registers low on the evil scale. But these books have been so successful that maintaining the secret feels manipulative, like we’re trading on a lie. I also have a fiduciary responsibility to my female-owned-and-operated publishing company. And I need a job to live. But what if I could bring the moral and the business aspects together? What if honesty proved to be profitable?
I realize then that Noah hasn’t said anything, and his posture has grown rigid. I ease off, telling myself it is enough, for now, that Noah has a book idea. That he’s writing rich, compelling characters. That he plans to finish a draft in a month.
We can take on his pseudonym and gender identity in the next breath.
But still, as the train speeds on toward Washington, I feel good to have planted this seed. And reassured to know that Noah doesn’t relish the fortress of his pseudonym.
“Can I ask you something unrelated?” I say.
“Please,” he says.
“How’s your mom?”
He takes a moment to answer. “The disease is progressing faster than we hoped. The doctor and I need to revise our plans, to prepare. We could have done it over the phone, but I’m her only family. I need to do everything I can.”
“I was ten when my mom died,” I say. “I can’t imagine being responsible for decisions about her care.”
“Would you . . .” Noah’s eyes meet mine and hold them. “Never mind.”
“What?”
“I was going to ask if you’d like to meet my mother. I think she’d like you, and, to be honest, I could use a friend there with me. If not, I understand, you’ve already taken so much time today—”
“I’d love to,” I say. I’m flattered that he thinks his mother would like me, and that he wants me there.
“Really?” He smiles. “It wouldn’t take long. I’d get you back to Union Station for a later train. I don’t know how she’ll be today, of course. Some days are better than others.”