Hot Desk: A Novel - 16

When Jane stopped speaking, restaurant clatter and hum filled the silence.

She suddenly leaned her forehead against Rose’s in a surprisingly intimate move. “I’m so sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Rose insisted. They remained like that for a moment. Rebecca’s words stuck in her throat. She wanted to reach across the table to touch her mother, but she recognized a private moment, and for once, she thought, she would restrain herself.

“What I thought back then”—Jane turned away from Rose and fixed her gaze on Rebecca—“was that I had had sex with my best friend’s crush. That I had betrayed Rose. What Teddy would say—what he has said—was that I seduced him, that I would try somehow, like Clara, to entrap him. The words I might use today are different, now that I have more sympathy for the girl that I was then.”

“Words like ‘power imbalance’!” Rose broke in. “Words like ‘assault.’ ” She too looked at Rebecca, who leaned back under the double intensity. “You have to understand, we didn’t have these words for what happened between Teddy—who, may I remind you, was like a god to us—and your mother, who was a young intern.”

Rebecca found her voice, put her hand over Jane’s. “Oh my god, Mom. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry that happened to you and I’m sorry I’ve been harassing you for details.” She had revictimized her own mother!

Jane pressed Rebecca’s hand back. “As hard as it is to talk about, I wish I had done it much sooner. With Rose, obviously. With you.”

“Mom, it’s your story.” Rebecca wanted to encourage her mother’s openness and reward her courage. She could sense Jane’s relief in the telling, the calm after a good cry. Perhaps another piece of garlic bread all around? She offered the basket across the table. “You can tell it how and when you want. Or if you don’t want.”

Rose smiled sadly. “Except that Teddy wrote an entire book about it.”

“What?” Rebecca choked on her garlic bread. “Mom, did you know?”

“I read it today at the town house.”

“Wait—so this unpublished manuscript is all about what happened with the three of you?”

“Let me clarify,” Rose said. “ Teddy’s version of what happened. And such as it was, it was the first I’d heard of the most important details. Once I read it, I knew I had to find Jane again.”

“Is it a memoir, then?”

Rose paused. “He writes in our voices.”

“Fiction,” Jane said. “Self-serving. But close enough that it wouldn’t be hard to piece together who’s who.”

“Wait—what?” Rebecca said, incredulous. “He writes in the first-person voices of you and Rose?”

“It’s an invasion of privacy, to be sure,” Rose continued. “And at best, yes, it’s self-serving. But the worst of it, the truly unforgivable part, is that it’s just bad. Bad writing, defensive, trying too hard to argue against what he became obsessed with in the years before he died: the sense that this new world was passing judgment on him, as I suppose it does.”

“Mansplaining our friendship, the affairs, your marriage.” Jane shook her head. “Putting words in my mouth. The wrong words!”

Rebecca took a moment to appreciate that her mom had retained her explanation of “mansplaining” as the name for a concept she was apparently well aware of, probably more so than Rebecca.

“You’ll see. Everything he did well in The Coldest War he did poorly in this. If this ever got published, it becomes his legacy. Though I would never allow Jane to be exposed like that. Fortunately, there is only the one handwritten copy. Teddy never took to computers.” Rose sat back as Bruno delivered the pasta, refilled the wine, and intuited that no one wanted to banter.

Rebecca concluded that this unpublished novel was definitely going to stay unpublished. As it should! She could still feel the chill of unseasonal snow, hear the crack of pool balls, imagine her mother pulling on wet boots with shaking hands and fleeing the town house. Her heart hurt for Jane. Was it wrong that she was curious about the Lion’s book? Had Rose intimated that she would be able to read it too? Before they shredded it? Before she could raise the topic, Rose changed the subject.

“What about you, Jane?” Rose asked. “Did you still write at all? All these years, were you able to do your own work? Did you keep at it? You were so good!”

“Not at first. But, yes, eventually I did. I kept writing when I could. Children exhaust you in ways I can’t explain.” Jane looked fondly at Rebecca. “They’re worth it, of course. But they do make it hard—in my case at least, almost impossible—to find the self-centeredness you need for it.”

Rebecca flinched. They were certainly going to have to circle back to her and her brothers sucking the life out of her mom and derailing her career as a writer! And exactly when and for how long had her mother been writing? Jane had been so secretive!

“Teddy was demanding and needy as any child,” Rose said. “And his inability to stay away from other women suffocated my desire to have any children of my own. I don’t regret it, though I wish we had been better parents to Atticus.”

“But you loved him?” Jane asked suddenly, looking intently at Rose.

“I loved him,” Rose answered slowly. “I did. Less than he needed. More than he deserved.”

“The Lion.” Jane shook her head. “The fucking Lion.”

Rebecca blinked. First the crying, then the revelations, now the swearing? Her mother herself was the mystery!

“And you?” Rose asked. “You’re happy in your marriage?”

Jane paused for a few excruciating seconds. “I love Sam,” she finally said, and Rebecca let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding. It wasn’t exactly an answer to the question, but maybe that was the point.

“And after all that, you have three wonderful children. And now grandchildren!”

“Oh, that makes me sound so old.” Jane, who had never seemed to care about her age, gave a rueful laugh.

Rose took a long sip of wine. “Your writing, though, Jane. I’d love to see it.”

“I’d love to show it to you.”

Yes, Rebecca appreciated the tenderness and support between her mom and Rose, but what the fuckety fuck were they going to do about this unpublished book? Bury it, right? Burn it? And would she get a look at it first? “May I interrupt to ask what happens now? What’s the plan?”

Rose sighed. “The real complication is Teddy’s son, Atticus. Due to my carelessness, he knows about the manuscript. There are stipulations in the will about what Atticus inherits and how. For Atticus to gain access to his portion of what is, frankly, an obscene amount of money, he has to successfully complete an inpatient rehab program. He sees the manuscript as a way to seize some control, perhaps to make some money for the estate. I’m not sure what he wants, and I’m not sure he does either. If the book were ever to get out, it could be, as I said, damaging for Teddy’s reputation as a writer and, more importantly, difficult for Jane—for both of us.”

“But you’re the executor of the estate. You own all the rights including anything unpublished, right?” Rebecca retrieved the lessons Ami and Frank French had imparted as they prepared her to plead Avenue’s case to Rose.

“I do. But I truly want what’s best for Atticus, and I want him to enter rehab in the right state of mind. His whole world is being turned upside down: his father’s death, my selling the town house, the stipulations in the will. I owe it to him to proceed carefully. Jane and I weren’t the only ones who suffered in Teddy’s wake.”

“But you can’t possibly let him publish it!” Rebecca wanted to protect her mom. Anyone could do a little math, a little poking around… and the next thing you know, her mother would have to relive it all in public. This whole thing was unsettling. Rebecca couldn’t even finish her linguine alle vongole !

“Rebecca”—Jane touched Rebecca’s arm—“Rose and I discussed this. We have a plan.” Also, calm down and mind your tone was the subtext that Rebecca heard.

“You’ve been a wonderful advocate for Avenue Publishing,” Rose said kindly. “But I want Atticus to feel involved in these decisions. He hasn’t read the book, so he doesn’t understand the damage that publishing it would cause. But he’s not listening to me right now. He has a friend, an editor, a young man who was connected to Teddy in his last few years. I’d like us to meet with them at the town house to hash this out after you read it. I hope his friend can help us to convince Atticus to let it go on his own. Rebecca, I realize this is very unorthodox.”

Rebecca bristled. Young man? The Lion had written in her mother’s voice. Badly! And defamed her mother! Wasn’t that enough to kill the book right now? On the other hand, hadn’t Rose pretty much just confirmed that she would hand the estate over to Avenue? And if so, why introduce another editor? Probably a more senior editor. Annoyingly, a man. This editor would be there in his capacity as Atticus’s friend, not as an impediment to Rebecca, right?

“Would you like to come by the town house tomorrow after work?” Rose asked. “You could read the book to see what we’re dealing with here. And then we could all meet on Wednesday. I’ll let Atticus know.”

Rebecca looked at her mom. “Is that okay with you? Do you want me to read it?” She held her breath, hoping Jane would agree.

Her mother nodded. “As long as you understand that it’s a skewed version of what happened.”

“Of course,” Rebecca assured her. Bruno whisked away their plates and, because he was an angel, replaced them with tiramisu. She gave him a grateful smile.

“Jane and I were talking this afternoon,” Rose began. “We have unsent letters that we wrote each other. We have stories. We have memories. We were thinking we might want to put it all together somehow. In our own words.”

“I’m going to do a round trip to Philadelphia tomorrow,” Jane announced. “I’ve got some things to collect from the house—letters and journals for this project we’re considering—and then, after Wednesday’s meeting, Rose and I are going to go out to the Southampton house.”

“Where the party is next week?” Rebecca could hardly keep track of what was going on. What had happened to Jane. The Lion’s stupid book. Rose and Jane together in the Hamptons? Atticus. The estate. The party!

“Which you are invited to, of course,” Rose said graciously. Rebecca looked yearningly at her phone. There was so much to tell Gabe and Stella.

The rest of the dinner was a blur of wine, tiramisu, and more stories about Jane and Rose’s adventures at the East River Review . They parted with plans for Rebecca to read the book the next day and for a meeting with Atticus at the town house on Wednesday.

Jane went to bed immediately after they arrived back at Mimi’s, but Rebecca tossed sleepless on the torture couch, thinking about the Lion and Jane, texting Gabe, FaceTiming Stella, doing a deep dive into CookTok, and eventually pulling up BLURB.

BLURB ERR party moving to Hamptons deets please

Anon, please blowout with HUGE budget

NoPoAveBooks can confirm they have called in Tor Productions

RSD0513 ERR has mad EDA $$$

MBeeWrites eat the rich

BLURB EDA estate update: avenue lock?

MargaretTate hawk mills still in the game

Anon, please can confirm atticus will be in the mix

leslieGbergerbrooklyn is that even legal

bookguy2130 [meme of Michael Jordan crying] Did Not Get My Invite to ERR 60th

FlaxFineReads estate update: amateur hour!

Rebecca turned off her phone. “Amateur hour”? Seriously? Fine, she was an amateur! An amateur who was about to reel in the entire EDA estate, thank you very much. Only one thing stood in her way: Atticus and Atticus’s editor friend, the “young man.” Maybe that was two things. For some reason Rose wanted to hear from him. Why did anyone want to hear what yet another man thought? Rebecca kicked off her sheet in annoyance. She tried to turn over, but the couch was inhospitable to any movement. Her heart was still racing from the many coffees she had consumed. Also, tiramisu had caffeine in it! She would never sleep again.

What would she discover tomorrow after reading the book? Did she even want to work on the Lion’s estate after what he had done to her mother? Rebecca entertained buzzing thoughts. Were her eyes really the fresh, new eyes to cast on his work? Her eyes were angry! Not to mention literally and metaphorically wide-open. Snapping them shut, she thought of her mother’s face soft with tears. Maybe there was a way to avenge Jane and Rose by working from the inside, a way to hold the Lion accountable. Once she knew what was in his book, she would make it her mission to destroy it. What was the cliché? Keep your enemies closer than your friends? Maybe she was in fact the exact person who should handle his estate. Whatever it took, Rebecca would be ready on Wednesday.