Noah’s development, as if they couldn’t quite believe that she might already understand his special gifts. Or as if they couldn’t believe she was his mother, period.
“Mommy, the story’s over.” Like his reading, Noah’s conversation was precocious, but his occasionally lisping pronunciation made it hard for others to understand him. He tapped on her wrist until she picked up the next book, which she opened with a long, slow exhalation that failed to release the tension in her chest. Even a tender moment such as this one was being overshadowed by her anxiety over Owen, her job, and the virus.
By the time Noah was asleep, Sarah was ready for bed herself, exhausted by her panicked imaginings.
As she drifted off, she had a single buoyant thought about Owen: their mutual interest in one another when their paths had crossed years earlier. Maybe if she could meet him in person, she would have more leverage. Just last week she had read something online about pheromones, how they functioned on a microscopic level to affect people’s brains and bodies, leading to attraction or repulsion according to nature’s unerring plan for genetic diversity. Given the chance to play a role, Sarah thought, maybe nature would lend a hand.
* * *
On Monday morning, recharged by caffeine into a less fatalistic estimation of her prospects, she called the office for the mailing address they had on file for Owen Grant, then grabbed her purse and caught the train out to Bushwick.
Owen’s address brought her to a slim, modern building in grey and white, a steel-and-glass anomaly rising above the mostly two- and three-storey brownstones and turn-of-the-century houses Sarah passed on her walk from the subway. She stepped into an entryway with floor-to-ceiling windows and dialled the apartment number she had written down in her notebook.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Grant, it’s Sarah Bailey from Shillelagh Press. Can you buzz me up? I’d like to talk to you in person about the publicity plan. I’ve worked out a proposal for the next few weeks.”
“Sarah,” he said. “I’m sorry, but as I mentioned the other night, I’m too busy to do any promotion right now.”
“It won’t be time-consuming. Or onerous in any way. We can be strategic.”
“Strategic,” he repeated. “Yes. That’s right. I’m being strategic about what’s really important.”
“Owen.” She had counted on seeing him face-to-face, within pheromone-firing distance, and now she’d forgotten everything she planned to say. All she wanted was to delay any finality of a refusal. She noticed a camera mounted in an upper corner of the lobby. “Can you see me? Do you have a screen?”
“I can see you.”
She glanced up at the camera and waved. Then she addressed it directly. “Look, can I get you anything? While I’m here?”
There was a moment of silence. “I wouldn’t mind a coffee.” He seemed to hesitate. “A cappuccino. There’s a place around the corner.”
Jolted by the promise of success, she raced down the street and spotted the café, slipping ahead of two people hovering in the doorway. While she waited in line, she smoothed her hair and double-checked that her voice recorder app was working. She was back in Owen’s entryway within ten minutes.
“One cappuccino coming up!” she said when he answered. She had a hand on the inner door, ready to pull it open when he buzzed her inside.
“Great.” Owen sounded distant. “You can leave it there on the table.”
Sarah’s hand dropped from the door. Her pulse thundering in her ears, she stepped over to a narrow table and set down the cup next to a vase holding a bouquet of convincing fake orchids. She turned with slow deliberation to make one more plea to the camera. “Please, Owen. Mr. Grant. I just want to help. Please, please call me if you change your mind.”
“Thank you for coming, Sarah,” he said. “I appreciate it. But don’t come back.”
The casual authority of his tone spurred her natural defiance as she stalked out of the building. No, she wouldn’t come back, but neither would she leave. Retreating to a bench a few paces down the sidewalk, Sarah pulled out from her bag a magazine emblazoned with the now-ubiquitous ARAMIS Girl photo, and in an all-too-earnest impersonation of a bad private eye, kept watch on the lobby from behind it. If nothing else, it would be a story to make Elliot laugh—probably while he loaded her things into a rental van and tried in his laconic way to convince her that moving back in with their parents was not a defeat or