drawer. Swabbing her sweaty face with a tissue, she once again regretted sleeping in. Noah was not a child who was easily hurried, which meant another hour of daycare money down the drain, only to be followed by the resentful glares of those dried-up crones who thought interrupting snack-time was like starting World War Three.
Snack-time reminded her of the turkey sandwich in her purse, so she got up and put it in the staff fridge before filling a tall glass of water from the cooler.
The phone in her cubicle was ringing when she got back.
It was her boss, Dory. “Where were you? I’ve been calling all morning.” In the ten years Sarah had worked at Shillelagh Press, Dory had risen from senior editor to publishing director and finally to vice-president—a figure of fearsome competence who responded to all urgent messages in five minutes or less. “Never mind. Can you meet me in the upstairs break room in five minutes?”
Dory’s summons were often abrupt. Sarah slipped first one foot then the other out of her sneakers and into her cherry-red work pumps, feeling something swell and throb in her head as she leaned forward. Last night’s celebration of the end of Elliot’s quarantine had gone later than expected. “Maybe I should respond to a few emails first?” She clicked open her inbox and saw the usual smattering of messages she felt little interest in answering.
Her boss snorted. “Just get up here.”
Dory always preferred their tête-à-têtes to take place in private, as though on guard against any accusation of playing favourites. She had hired Sarah at a time when the only entry on her resumé was “part-time nanny on a Bolivian commune,” but Sarah thought the precaution was silly: she’d never even been given so much as a promotion. The only reason her former sister-in-law had offered her a job in the first place was to get Sarah out of her and Elliot’s apartment, where she’d been crashing since she’d returned to the States.
“Thank goodness,” said Dory, handing her a latte from the automatic espresso machine. “I needed to see a friendly face.” She was wearing a houndstooth skirt and buttoned blazer, with black-framed glasses that had slid partway down her nose. Even in three-inch stacked heels, she was shorter than Sarah.
“What’s the matter?” asked Sarah. It wasn’t often that Dory appeared vulnerable or expressed an emotion beyond mild annoyance or impatience with the world at large. “Is everything okay with Julia?”
“Jules is eerily calm for someone who is eight months pregnant, but I feel like one of us ought to be worried. So I guess it has to be me?” Dory sat down at the table and motioned for Sarah to join her. “Honestly, I feel like I can’t win. How to Avoid the Plague is back on bestseller lists thanks to this horrible virus and ARAMIS Girl, and Owen Grant has chosen this moment to go AWOL. Doesn’t want the attention.”
Sarah took a sip of her latte and scalded her mouth. “That doesn’t sound like the Owen Grant I used to know.”
Dory’s eyes popped a little, then narrowed. “You’ve met? How did I not know this?”
“I only knew him a bit, back when I was a freshman in college and he was a visiting writer.” Sarah shook her head, nursing her sore tongue. “It was almost nothing. A flirtation, I guess.” Owen’s then-wife had been her professor. Sarah remembered being surprised, at the time, to discover they were married, then less surprised, years later, to find out they’d divorced. Of all the things from her youth that she regretted, she felt perhaps the most shame for how thoughtlessly she’d accepted Owen’s attention as no more than her due, the just reward of somebody young and beautiful. “Anyway, what happened to Colleen?” Colleen was the senior publicist, who up until now had handled everything to do with Owen Grant.
“There seems to be some problem with Colleen.” Dory frowned. “Or with Owen. It’s not working.” She spun sideways in her chair and stretched out her legs, rotating each foot in turn as though her ankles might be sore. “I warned her not to fall for his act…at least not until he agreed to a good dozen or so events. And now he won’t even return my calls.”
A woman carrying an empty mug poked her head into the break room and Dory turned to glare at her. “Occupied,” she snapped. “Five minutes.” When the woman retreated, Dory got up and locked the door