Emily & Einstein (35 page)

I made my way to the kitchen. Emily sat at the table, one of the Julia Child–inspired creations of butter, sugar, and cream she hadn’t eaten in so long sitting in front of her. She was falling back into her old ways. Good.

My guess was that she would stop running, forget to go to work, get fat, and then Max wouldn’t give her the time of day. Even better.

Beyond that, she would either cancel her slot in the marathon or just not show up. Either approach was fine with me.

The answering machine beeped. I heard my own voice, which never failed to surprise me, the sound so human, so rich and full of life. Then my lawyer. Again.

“Ms. Barlow, really. This is unacceptable. No one wants to throw you out on the street. But if you don’t return my call, I’m afraid we are going to have to resort to extreme measures.”

The next call came from Tatiana.

“Emily? Pick up. I’ve called your cell a hundred times. We need to talk.”

Pause.

Emily didn’t move to answer.

“Emily,”
she added with an impatient sigh. But she didn’t say anything else. She hung up.

“What am I going to do now?” Emily said, more a whisper to the cake she hadn’t yet touched than any attempt to talk to me.

Unfortunately for both of us, I had to go out.

With some effort, I made this clear to Emily. My wife groaned, then got the leash. In the hallway, she glanced around before we made a run for it.

Outside, she stood at the curb, staring at the cars that went by without seeing. When I finished my business we headed back to the building.

My vivid imagination flared when a strange man called out to Emily just as we entered the porte cochere; I knew something was up. I sniffed the air for the smell of a gun. What I smelled was indeed something metallic and what I suspected was a firearm.

“Emily Barlow Portman?” the man said.

Emily looked confused. “Yes?” she said.

The man pulled out some sort of badge. I barely made out the word
MARSHAL
on it. After the flash of his badge, he extended an official-looking envelope. As was most anyone’s natural instinct, Emily reached for it.

“You have now been officially served Notice of Eviction.”

Emily stiffened as she quickly scanned the contents. When she lifted her head, the marshal was already gone.

“We’re being evicted,” she said to me, her voice devoid of emotion. “We have until the first week of November to move out or we’ll be forcibly removed from the premises. The complaint is filed by the Portman Family Trust.”

She stared at the pages as if she couldn’t believe it.

Believe it, I wanted to shout.

I felt the old feelings of superiority stir inside of me, feelings I clutched at like finding an old familiar blanket that made me feel safe. Whatever motivation there had been to be good, more charitable, vanished, and with that the last of my adrenaline evaporated.

Which is when the real change began.

The new sensation was different. Not the stabbing pain, dizzy feeling, or even my memory growing dim. It was beyond a physical shift. I realized with a start of surprise that the essence of me, the Sandy me, was being erased.

What amazes me, even now as I remember back on it, is that I was so small and petty that in that moment I still didn’t care. As the world around me began to lose its crispness, scents diminishing, sounds muffled, all I cared about was that while I might have been swirling around the drain, I had every intention of taking Emily down with me.

emily

For years I believed my mother wore a suit of armor. As I got older I began to see a chink in the molded steel. My mother’s dream was to be great, to make a difference. When I was growing up I assumed she had achieved both. Now, years after her death, I wonder if she believed she accomplished either. And I have to ask: Did she push me to pursue greatness primarily because of her own unfulfilled need to be remembered for her own accomplishments?

—
EXCERPT FROM
My Mother’s Daughter

chapter thirty-six

The sound of my BlackBerry alternately ringing and buzzing woke me from a deep sleep. It was Monday morning, four days after my party. I felt as if a semi truck had run me down, a feeling no doubt caused by the sheer number of phone calls and e-mails I had been avoiding since Jordan departed. I still hadn’t come up with a way to tell Tatiana that there would be no book.

I groped around in my satchel for the wireless device. Scrolling through the messages I saw several from the publisher.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

CC: [email protected]

Subject: Emergency

Emily:

It has come to my attention that there is a problem with the manuscript of
My Mother’s Daughter
. Please see me in my office as soon as you get in.

Nate

Damn. Was it possible that Nate already knew Jordan had fled without finishing the book? Did Tatiana already know?

No way.

I calmed myself. Perhaps they were just trying to get ahold of me in order to tell me that the book had to be pushed back, or better yet, pulled altogether. I couldn’t imagine that was what Nate wanted to tell me, but that didn’t stop me from sending up a silent prayer.

An hour later I strode through security and went straight to Nate’s office.

“You wanted to see me,” I said, trying to act casual.

But whatever calm I had managed to drum up disappeared when I realized Nate wasn’t alone. Tatiana stood at the window, her jaw clenched with anger. Victoria sat in one of the leather side chairs looking smug. She held up a partial manuscript with one hand. The pages flapped as she shook it.

“You call this a book?” she said to me. “This is fifty pages of garbage.”

“Victoria,” Tatiana snapped.

“I’m just saying, it’s a mess.”

Tatiana turned that glacial stare on me.

“How did this happen?” she asked.

I marshaled my thoughts. “I’d appreciate it if someone would explain what’s going on.”

“The manuscript that was due last Friday is a disaster,” Nate said. “Many of the pages are barely coherent. Though that’s the least of our concerns. Bad pages can be fixed. The missing part of the book is the bigger problem.”

“How did you get that?” I asked, my tone careful.

Tatiana glanced over at Victoria, who went red.

“You said it had been turned in,” Tatiana stated.

“It’s Monday!” she said. “It
should
have been turned in.”

“Then how did you get it?” Tatiana persisted.

Victoria huffed. “It was out on a desk in one of Emily’s bedrooms, sitting there plain as day. How in the world was I supposed to overlook it?”

I had been in Jordan’s room several times, and not once had she left a single page out for anyone to see. And there was no way Jordan would have willingly forked anything over to Victoria. To find the manuscript Victoria had to have searched hard.

“Let me see that.”

Victoria handed it over, albeit grudgingly.

Nate raked his hand through his hair. “This is a debacle.”

But I hardly heard. I flipped through the pages. The opening was there, still phenomenal. But once I got beyond that the manuscript was indeed a mess. Paragraphs filled with a garble of incomplete sentences. Disjointed statements such as:
Insert description,
and
Figure out what the hell Mom was thinking then.
But I could still detect Jordan’s voice in the words that were written.

Nate droned on in his serious way. “We never should have chased attention. Caldecote has always been known for good sense! Now we’re going to be an embarrassment. We have everyone in the media talking about this book, and now, it’s a disaster.”

“We’ll have to pull it,” Victoria added, barely able to hide her pleasure. “And everyone is watching us, Tatiana. Everyone is watching
you.
”

“Enough,” Tatiana said. Everything about her exuded calm, but it was like the calm before a storm.

Victoria turned smug. “I know how to fix this.”

“How?” Nate asked.

“We move fast to plug the hole in the schedule with an exceptional book. A book that will make everyone forget Emily’s fiasco.” She paused, squared her shoulders. “I have that book. I will come to your rescue, Tatiana.”

Tatiana’s eyes narrowed.

“What’s the book?” Nate pressed.

“It’s a story of a love that can’t be denied set during the Great Depression. I see it as a cross between
Doctor Zhivago
and
The Grapes of Wrath.
But this book is filled with hope and triumph. It’s the kind of story that will fill readers with courage during this modern day when we are struggling with our own form of trying times. The book is based on the true story of the author’s parents.”

As much as I hated to admit it, the idea had merit. As I had done with
Ruth’s Intention,
Victoria could play the nonfiction angle to get attention.

Unable to take any more, I left the room, Jordan’s partial manuscript still in my hands.

“Emily,” Tatiana said.

But I kept going. I needed time to think.

*   *   *

The next morning I woke with a start. I didn’t gasp awake because I had dreamed of Sandy’s accident, or even of the night before he died. Yesterday I had wanted Caldecote to pull Jordan’s book just as I’d had moments when I believed it was time to pry my fingers free from this old apartment. But after a night of sleep, I realized that after I had made it this far I would hate myself if I gave up now.

I whipped back the covers, pulled on running clothes, and searched my brain for solutions.

Einstein was still in the kitchen when I entered. He blinked when he saw the running clothes, then looked at me with what I can only call astonished frustration, maybe even anger.

I squatted down in front of him, scratching his head. “You want to go for a run?”

He looked tired, though thankfully when I touched his nose he didn’t have a fever.

After I took Einstein out, then returned him upstairs, I headed to the park. I didn’t worry about Max and his increasingly concerned messages. I put from my mind that on the last message he had told me that clearly I wanted him to leave me alone, and he would honor that wish. I refused to think about how much I didn’t want that, because the truth of the matter was whether I wanted to be with him or not, there was no future for us. He was a twenty-seven-year-old ex-Navy SEAL who loved to climb mountains and didn’t know what to do with his life. I was a thirty-two-year-old widow who still hadn’t completely reclaimed herself.

I went to the bridle path and headed north. I lost myself to the rhythm of the run and by the time I hit the top of the reservoir a plan began to form in my head.

An hour later when I got to Caldecote, I went straight to Tatiana’s office. The publisher was there along with the heads of sales and production. It saved me the trouble of having to track everyone down.

Victoria was there as well, which neither surprised nor intimidated me.

“I have a solution,” I announced.

Nate scowled. “We already have a solution.”

“My book!” Victoria crowed.

Everyone ignored her, including Nate.

Tatiana considered me. “What are you thinking, Emily?”

“Give me six weeks,” I said. “Six weeks and I promise
My Mother’s Daughter
will be done.”

“How are you going to accomplish that?”

“Your sister clearly can’t write,” Victoria stated.

“Look, everyone loved the opening pages. They are phenomenal. But Jordan got overwhelmed. She’s never written before. If I have to I’ll hire a ghostwriter for her.” I didn’t mention the one little snag in my plan, the fact that Jordan had already left. “One way or another, I will get the book turned in.”

No one looked convinced.

“We’re in a sticky spot,” I said. “Enough people know about the book that if we pull it off the schedule we definitely look indecisive.”

“We already look indecisive. Face it, we look bad,” Victoria countered.

“No, not yet. No one but the people in this room knows the book is”—I shrugged—“less than perfect.”

Victoria snorted.

I pushed ahead, all the while aware that Tatiana was studying me. “Let me fix this. No one has to know we hit a snag.”

Nate looked grim. Victoria looked at me as if I were delusional.

“Whether you believe it or not, Victoria,” I continued, “Tatiana looking bad, even me looking bad, doesn’t help you.”

“I never said—”

I cut her off. “Caldecote Press announced the mandate that it is focusing on gaining market share in the industry, which everyone knows means that our priority is making money. Even if we hadn’t announced it, Tatiana being brought in says as much. And sure,
Ruth’s Intention
succeeded. But as far as outsiders are concerned, that book was well underway when Tatiana got here.
My Mother’s Daughter
is the first big book acquired under her watch. Announcing a screwup right out of the gate undermines Caldecote’s position as a publishing company capable of redefining its position in the marketplace.”

“One book isn’t going to change the face of Caldecote,” Victoria snapped.

“No, that takes a series of successes. But a substantial embarrassment up front prejudices industry opinions from here on out.”

Nate didn’t look happy, but he didn’t disagree.

“Give me six weeks to help Jordan figure out how to finish it,” I reiterated. “I will fix this.”

Tatiana considered, then turned to the head of production. “Tell me, Erin, if we expedite production can we get it done and have review copies for magazines ready to go out in time?”

I could see the woman doing mental calculations. “Yes, but it’ll cost a fortune.”

“Mercy, what do you think?” Tatiana asked.

The head of sales looked at me, considering. After a second she nodded. “I say we go for it. If anyone can get it done, it’s Emily.”