traveled to Vermont in the fall and Mexico in December. Better to eat apples and honey by themselves and tortillas instead of latkes than to have to listen to Lila say I told you so while Missy hung her head or shot back, “At least I have a job.”
When Lester’s misdeeds had finally been exposed beyond all reasonable doubt, he’d released a combative statement that proclaimed his innocence and announced his retirement. Missy, as promised, inherited the keys to Lester’s kingdom, and all of his surviving authors, but it was as if she’d sat down at a banquet of rotten fruit and spoiled meat. She’d be forever tainted by her association and her loyalty. Last year, one of her authors had won the National Book Award. At the awards dinner, Missy, the author, and the author’s husband had been seated all by themselves at a table for ten.
“Missy,” Jo said. “How are you?”
“Okay. You know. Hanging in there.” Missy sighed and shook her curls. A shaft of sunlight pierced the room, illuminating a wedge of Missy’s cheek, a single eyebrow, one brown eye.
“Are you going to beat yourself up forever?” Jo asked. “Because I’m not going to be able to enjoy the afterlife if I know you’re down here suffering.”
Another sigh, another shrug. “How can I forgive myself?” Missy’s voice was loud and anguished. “I knew. Or at least I suspected. And I looked the other way, because I liked my job, and I liked him. Do you know what I told myself?” Without waiting for her mother to answer, she said, “I’d say that all geniuses are flawed. Some of them drink, and some of them beat their wives, and if all Lester does is, you know, grab the occasional intern, on the grand scale of things, that isn’t so bad.” She rubbed her hands on the sides of her pants. “And when those women would go to hotels so Lester could edit them, I’d think they were dummies. I’d think, What do they expect to happen with a man in a hotel room?” She gave a short bark of laughter. “Some feminist you raised. The only woman I was looking out for was me.”
“So you made a mistake.” Jo wanted to tell Melissa more. She wished she’d spent more time teaching her girls that women should forgive themselves, showing them how to take care of themselves with kindness. The world was hard enough, would beat them up enough without them adding to the pain.
Missy was pacing now, her heels loud on the wooden floors. “You know that thing you used to tell us? That quote about how all it took for evil to flourish was for good men to stand by and do nothing?” Missy asked. Jo nodded. “That was me. A good person who stood by and did nothing.” Missy’s voice cracked. “A good person who stood by while her sister got hurt.”
“So you’ll do better.”
Missy stopped, mid-pace, and hung her head.
“You can’t fix anything that happened. You just have to try to do better from now on.”
“I know.” Missy smoothed her hair, untangled an earring from a curl. “I know.”
Jo heard the door bang open and raised voices and footsteps approaching quickly. Here we go, she thought, gathering what strength she had. And finally, there was Lila, her baby, tanned and glamorous in peep-toe booties and bubblegum-pink lipstick. A short, sheer dress of pleated beige linen skimmed the tops of her knees, and aviator sunglasses hid her eyes. Jo felt herself exhale, felt the taut muscles of her back and shoulders unwinding. When she’d asked Bethie for this one last thing—the thing she wanted most, one last chance to talk to Lila—her sister had promised to try to track down Lila, but Jo hadn’t been optimistic.
Lila was based in New York, at least nominally, but she’d spend months away, visiting points unknown, with traveling companions her family never met. For a while, Jo and Kim and Missy had been able to keep track of Lila by her social media accounts. Lila would post pictures of herself at a beach in Mexico, or she’d snap a shot of herself on a roof, and Kim or Missy would recognize one of the buildings in the background, or she’d show up in Atlanta, on Aunt Bethie’s doorstep, and stay with Bethie and Harold for a week or two. Sometimes Lila took Jo’s calls or returned her texts. More often, both were met with silence. Lila was angry. She was