“Got it. You still doing any satire? That Steve Jobs piece you wrote for the blog was one of the most-shared things we ran all year.”
I grinned. “I loved writing for you. But no, not really. Maybe I’ll try again.” I shrugged. “Networking is a big part of the freelance hustle; it’s part of why I’d love to join. But I also…I love it here.”
She smiled calmly. “We do have to follow the normal procedures for you. There’s a waitlist—we don’t want to look shady.”
I worked hard to keep the hurt off my face. “Yes, I’ve read some very intense things about the Herd’s application process!” There were entire forums dedicated to getting in, picking apart one another’s materials in search of a pattern.
“I feel bad about it. The Fort Greene location will let us expand membership—it’s huge. But of course the contractors are taking forever.” She closed her eyes. “I wish someone would start an all-female construction company. I’d hire the crap out of them. I was on-site in Brooklyn on Friday arguing with the head contractor about the floorboards, and the installer showed up and started talking to him literally right over my head. He’s lucky he was wearing a tool belt or I’d have kicked him in the balls.”
There was a beat, and what the hell, I went all in.
“Eleanor, I’ve missed you. I’ve been reading about you everywhere. I can’t believe you made all this happen. You’re my hero. Emphasis on the H-E-R.”
“You know, it’s amazing we’ve put any marketing materials out without your wordsmithery.”
“You need me!” I was pushing too hard, a tinge of desperation under my banter, but I couldn’t stop. “And though I didn’t know it an hour ago, I need this place too. I want to make it my second home until, like, I’m so decrepit they have to wheel me into a retirement community.”
“So glad to hear it. It really has all come together, hasn’t it? I’m so—” It was the slightest of pauses, the tiniest key change. “I’m so happy.”
My sensors went up. They were newly attuned after eleven months of interviewing smiling, close-lipped Midwesterners who viewed me as an uppity outsider. But then Eleanor stretched and grinned and I thought maybe I’d imagined it.
“It will be so great to be able to see you every day,” I told her.
“It will, Katie,” she said. “It will.”
* * *
—
I left Eleanor in her office and skipped through the interconnecting rooms, on the lookout for Mikki and Hana. There was something fizzy in my chest, and I realized with a jolt that this place, this moment, was so annoyingly perfect it looped back into not-annoying. I hadn’t had to fight back tears all day. Chris hadn’t bubbled up in my mind in almost three hours, a new record. The sadness like a layer of black mold over my brain and ribs—I’d begun to think of it as permanent, the way I’d feel for the rest of my life. Mikki waved me over and I pulled my phone from my purse as I shimmied onto the sofa, then froze. There was a text from Mom: “Good luck today! xoxo”
And four voicemails, all from a New York City number I recognized. I looked at the list: The earliest was forty-two seconds long, and the later ones grew shorter, the last just twelve seconds. I swallowed, feeling my pulse thumping in my neck. Then I reached out and slid my finger across them one by one: delete, delete, delete, delete.
CHAPTER 2
Hana
MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 11:06 A.M.
I watched Katie and Eleanor disappear into Eleanor’s office, chatting happily. Katie was wearing leather boots, stained with salt, even though I’d asked her to come in heels. I’d considered texting her a reminder last night, checking if she had any last-minute questions, assuaging the anxiety I thought she might be feeling. But I’d resisted, Mikki’s words echoing in my mind: She’s an adult. You’re not her mother. You’re not responsible for her. All true, and all things I repeated to myself whenever Katie released a tweetstorm of expletive-riddled jokes or a sudden rant about being a woman in the world. Your words hold power, I’d told her once, during a text conversation that quickly devolved into an argument. Your words shape how people see you. Things that should be obvious, one would think, to a journalist such as herself.
But she’d shown up at the Herd on time this morning, looking cute if a bit underdressed, and for the first time since she moved back, she looked alert. For weeks she’d blamed exhaustion and seasonal affective disorder, her voice jagged with sleep when I called her at eleven, noon, sometimes one. It seemed clear something else was bothering her—I had my money on heartbreak—but hadn’t asked.
Katie’s move—what an odd day. She’d found a roommate through friends, a fellow NYU alum with an open room in Bed-Stuy. For a year, while Katie was in Michigan, her furniture had sat in a moving pod somewhere in Queens. When she unpacked it last month, furniture sliding out like pieces of a 3-D puzzle, her eyes remained wide, her mouth a small o. As if U-Pack had bundled up and handed over someone else’s life.
She hadn’t invited me back, so I didn’t know how unpacking had gone. But I’d had her over several times, ostensibly to catch up but in practice to eat dinner while watching a movie, my cat, Cosmo, curled in a furry ball between us. Katie hadn’t said much about Kalamazoo, about those last few weeks when she fell radio silent before announcing her return, but I was trying not to press her. I wanted things to be different, better, this time around, and Katie didn’t respond well to nagging.
Katie would love the Herd, was already impressed—I could tell. She’d been ready to roll her eyes, but the way her face lit up as she walked through…it was vindicating, I’ll admit.
Next to me, Mikki pulled a massive nubby cardigan from her backpack and swung it over her shoulders. She looked so cozy in her billowy pants and blanketlike sweater; I felt the squeeze of faux-leather leggings against my own waist.
“So this is the first time Eleanor and Katie have seen each other?” she asked. “Since she got back, I mean.”
“Yeah, first time.” Too bad—maybe if they’d seen each other sooner, somewhere private, Eleanor could have asked Katie the inevitable How’s your mom? without me cringing and blushing three feet away. It wasn’t Eleanor’s fault, it was kind of her to ask…well, that was the problem: The fault was all mine. I’m the older sister, the one with means and, as a freelance publicist, a flexible work schedule—the obvious candidate for moving back home. And yet I’d put it off, panicked at the prospect of having to spend all that time with Mom. I’d cried with relief and shame when Katie announced she would be the one to move to Michigan.