I nodded as I clipped the Wilson keys onto my own key ring. Maya handed me my paycheck, we said our good-byes, and I stepped out into the late-afternoon sunlight, three dogs moving sluggishly behind me. But even as I tried to get the dogs to move, Maya’s words were staying with me. The idea that you could rethink the thing you’d always thought you wanted and change your plan—it was almost a revolutionary concept. That you could choose what would make you happy, not successful. It was the opposite of everything I had long believed to be true. I looked back at the office for a moment, Maya’s words still echoing in my head. Then I gave Freddie a pat on the head and pulled the dogs back out onto the sidewalk.
ALEXANDER WALKER
Andie, you okay?
ME
Fine.
ALEXANDER WALKER
It just sounds like you’re crying. At 3 a.m.
ME
I’ll keep it down.
ALEXANDER WALKER
What’s wrong?
ME
I just finished Clark’s second book.
ALEXANDER WALKER
Oh boy.
ME
HOW COULD HE DO THAT?
ALEXANDER WALKER
I think there’s ice cream in the kitchen.
Meet you there in ten?
ME
Better make it five.
• • •
“What’s going on?” Clark asked as I glared at him, taking the stairs to the diner two at a time, my arms folded tightly over my chest.
“I’m not talking to you,” I said, pausing at the ever-deserted hostess stand, looking around the restaurant, and seeing Palmer and Tom sitting a booth over from our normal one. I started to head over to them, Clark following close behind me.
“You’re technically talking to me right now,” he pointed out, and I just glared at him again.
“Hey!” Palmer said as we arrived. Tom slid out from where he’d been sitting across from her and walked around to sit next to her, doing an abbreviated version of his usual complicated handshake with Clark.
“Hello, Palmer,” I said pointedly to her.
“Um, hi,” she said, looking from me to Clark, clearly sensing something was going on.
“Perfect timing,” Tom said, drumming his hands on the table. He nodded at the mini jukebox at the end of the table. “Because I put my money in, like, half an hour ago, and now you two will be here for my song.”
“What’s happening with you guys?” Palmer asked, mostly asking this question to me.
“Well, Andie’s not talking to me,” Clark said as he got a menu from where they were pressed against the wall with the ketchup and saltshakers. “I don’t know why.”
“Oh, yes, he does. He knows what he did.”
Palmer and Tom both looked at Clark. “What did you do?” she asked.
“He killed Tamsin,” I said, glowering at him, while across the table from me, Palmer’s jaw dropped.
“You what?” she gasped.
“Fictionally,” Clark explained hurriedly. “It’s not like she was a real person.”
“Clearly not, to you,” I huffed.
“You bastard,” Tom said, now glaring at Clark as well.
“Wait, why are you upset?” Clark asked, sounding baffled.
“Because it’s all coming back to me now,” he said, shaking his head at Clark. “Really, how could you have done that?”
“Yeah,” I said, turning to him. “Was it all just a big joke to you or something?” After I’d eaten my way through a half pint of cookie dough ice cream, trying to deal with my grief about this, I’d left a series of predawn texts on Clark’s phone that had started sad and then had gotten more and more angry when I realized that all of this was his fault and he could have prevented it if he’d wanted to. When he’d picked me up to go to breakfast, I’d crossed the line into refusing to speak to him.
“Hey, remember when I said I wanted you to read my books?” Clark asked. He shook his head. “I regret that now.”
“You read a book?” Palmer asked, looking impressed.
“I did try to warn you,” he said. “I told you I wrapped up her story at the end of the second book.”
“I thought you meant you gave her a happy ending. Not that she died a terrible death in the highest tower.”
“I’m just impressed you read a book,” Palmer said.
“Technically, I listened to one,” I admitted.
She considered this for a moment. “Still counts.”
“So what now?” I asked Clark, deciding that the time had come to start speaking to him again, especially because there were things I needed to know. “What happens in the next book? And when do you think it’ll be done?”
“Yeah,” Tom said, turning to Clark as well. “When will it be done?”
Clark looked at both of us and then dropped his head in his hands. “Not you guys too.”
TOPHER
Hey.
ME
Hey—how’s it going?
TOPHER
Can’t complain. You around this weekend?
ME
So here’s the thing.
I’m dating someone.
TOPHER
Damn—you’re a total heartbreaker this summer.
ME
Ha ha, no. It’s the same guy as before.
TOPHER
Oh.
Really?
ME
Yep
TOPHER
Well. That’s new.
ME
It really is.
• • •
“Let me see if I can do it,” my dad said, looking down at the six dogs I was holding, three leashes in each hand. His brow furrowed as he looked at them. “Fenway, Bertie, Leon, Duffy, Crackers, and . . .” His voice trailed off as he stared at the Pomeranian in front of him. “I don’t know that one.”
“Bella,” I said, and my dad nodded. “But that was really close. I’m impressed.”
“You get good with that when you can’t ever forget a donor’s name and you get brand-new colleagues every two years,” my dad pointed out.
I’d been heading out on an afternoon walk when my dad had wandered into the kitchen and asked if he could tag along. I’d hesitated before agreeing—what if he saw the reality of what I was doing and was disappointed that it wasn’t more impressive?—but had said he could come. Which meant that I’d already suffered through at least three “take your father to work day” jokes. “Ready?” I asked, intending this to be for my dad, but all the dogs looked up at me, tails wagging furiously.
“I can take some,” my dad said, then took a small step back as he watched the two biggest dogs, Bertie and Fenway, lunge forward. “Uh, maybe not all of them.”
“Here,” I said. I separated out the leashes for Bella and Crackers and handed them to him. “Let’s go.”
We started walking, taking up most of the street with all the dogs. I’d gotten better at scouting new routes, looking for really quiet streets with ample trees and bushes. This was a new route, but I was already liking it—and so were the dogs, judging by the amount of ecstatic tree sniffing going on.
“Do you remember,” my dad said, his words coming out hesitantly, “that stuffed dog you used to have?”
I stared at him for a moment, trying to remember which one he was talking about—at one point my stuffed animal collection had been vast. But a second later, there it was. My dad had given it to me when I was something like six, a small black stuffed dog that came with its own leash. I remembered how thrilled I’d been to get it, how I had carried and dragged it with me everywhere for a while.
“Yeah,” I said, looking over at him. “Of course.”
“I was just thinking that maybe it was good practice for this,” he said, nodding at the dogs and their leashes.
“Was that a Christmas present?” I was searching my memory, trying to recall the details. It was like one day the dog had always been with me, but I couldn’t call up how it had gotten there.