my Eeyore face. “Isn’t it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just… I thought Granddad would be more excited.” I drop into Granddad’s big leather recliner. Connor sets his bag and his coffee down and sits on the edge of the couch. “It’s dumb, but I guess I expected a magical moment where he’d say he was proud of me and I’d stop feeling so inadequate.”
“You are not inadequate.” Connor reaches out and traces his thumb over my ankle. Even in my despondency, his touch makes my heart race. “Can I read it? The poem? You never told me what it was about.”
I play with the frayed edge of my red shorts. “Well, it’s kind of about you.”
He grins. “Now I’m really curious.”
I grab my phone and pull up the poem in my email. “Here. Just don’t tell me if it’s terrible, okay?”
“I’m sure it’s not terrible,” he says.
I get up, pacing back and forth, back and forth, in front of the french doors.
After a minute, I look over at him. It’s not a very long poem. Why isn’t he saying anything?
“When did you write this?” he asks.
My heart races at the strain in his voice. “Last week. That day we had lunch. What’s wrong?”
“Ivy…” he starts, then trails off. He stands, putting my phone down on the coffee table.
“Is it terrible? It’s terrible, isn’t it?”
“It’s not terrible. It’s just… The last line—” Connor goes to the bookshelf and retrieves Dorothea’s first journal from the bottom shelf. He pages through it, his brow furrowed. “Ivy, that last line isn’t yours.”
“What do you mean, not mine?” Even though I’m standing in the middle of a patch of sunshine, I feel icy cold.
He holds the journal out to me, pointing to Dorothea’s words spiraling across the page in faded blue ink. I take it from him with a sinking stomach and read. There, at the bottom, Dorothea talks about Robert Moudowney. About sitting across from him at a picnic in the town square and wanting so badly for him to take her hand.
And she uses my words.
Except, they were her words first.
I fumble and Connor catches the journal before it hits the floor.
“No. I didn’t…” I feel like I’m going to throw up. I can’t meet his eyes. Instead, I stare at the portrait of Dorothea above the mantel. She looks unbearably smug in her little gloves and smart navy shirtdress and neat, pin-curled hair. She would never make this kind of mistake. “I thought I made it up. I didn’t realize—”
“It was an accident,” Connor says. “It’s just that one line. I only remembered because the phrase really stuck with me. It was such a great image.”
“The editor said it was ‘sharp and evocative.’ That’s what she liked best about the poem. The part—the part that wasn’t really mine.” I bury my face in my hands. “I am so stupid.”
“Hey.” Connor takes my hands and moves them away from my face. “Don’t beat yourself up. It was an honest mistake. At least we caught it before publication. You can still pull the poem.”
Pull the poem. Of course. Otherwise it’d be plagiarism.
But that means I’ll have to tell Granddad what happened. What I accidentally did. Whatever pride he mustered up for my persistence—my effort, if not my talent—will disappear. I cheated. I didn’t mean to, but I did.
“He’ll be so disappointed,” I whisper. “And he’ll be right. I’m not a poet. I’m not anything.”
“Ivy, I have to ask. Do you want to be a poet? Are you doing this for you or for him?”
I don’t answer.
Connor tips my chin up with one finger until I have to meet his pretty, golden eyes. “I see you jumping through hoops to try to earn his approval, to measure up to some Milbourn ideal, and it’s making you hate yourself. Is it really worth it?”
“I can answer that.”
We both whirl around at the low, smoky voice. Erica. She strides into the room, her spiky blond hair still wet from the shower, her makeup perfectly applied—the slash of red lipstick, the cat’s-eye black eyeliner. She’s dressed in a long, striped black-and-gray tunic and black capris, her hands laden with silver rings and a silver necklace draped around her throat. She looks sleek and powerful, like some elegant cat waiting to pounce.
“Sorry for interrupting,” she says with a smile that’s not sorry at all.
Chapter
Eighteen
“Connor, this is Erica. Erica, Connor.”
Erica takes one look at us—at the distance between us, or lack thereof—and taps her long, taupe fingernails against her pointy chin.