CRITICAL PRAISE FOR LYNDA CURNYN

ENGAGING MEN

“Curnyn delivers another fun and frothy crowd-pleaser.”

—Booklist

“The author of Confessions of an Ex-Girlfriend has done it again with Engaging Men…a truly funny and thoroughly enjoyable read.”

—Romance Reviews Today

“This dose of chick lit features entertaining supporting characters and may inspire readers to think about what they really want out of relationships and life.”

—Romantic Times

“Angie’s emotional adventures will strike a chord with women of all ages. Engaging Men is a great read…”

—Barbara Fielding, The Word on Romance

CONFESSIONS OF AN EX-GIRLFRIEND

“…Curnyn pens an easy, breezy first novel that’s part Sex and the City with more heart and part Bridget Jones with less booze.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A diverse cast of engaging, occasionally offbeat characters, the hilarious sayings attributed to them, and a fast-paced style facilitated by Emma’s pithy sound-bite ‘confessions’ add to the fun in a lively Manhattan-set story…”

—Library Journal

“Readers will eagerly turn the pages.”

—Booklist

“…absolutely hilarious secondary characters. They alone are worth the cover price.”

—Romantic Times

In memory of my father,

James Curnyn

Bombshell
Lynda Curnyn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book truly wouldn’t have been possible without the amazing people in my life who inspire me endlessly.

Richard Hoelderlin, whose own search for his birth parents first drew me to the idea for this book. You are gone, dear friend, but your good heart is not forgotten.

The story was brought back to me by another friend, Julie Ann Coney, who shared with me the sad, beautiful story of her search for her birth mother, and gave Grace’s story its shape.

Thanks to my dearest friend, Linda Guidi, a true beauty with a big heart, for her generous support and inspiration.

Dora Hoelderlin for providing background on adoptive search. Gerry Zdenek for the scoop on the beauty biz. Javier Castillo, for the scoop on the world of advertising (mistakes are mine). Robert Clegg for showing me some chess moves and for providing the most logical (and amusing) explanation of why people fall in love.

My family, especially my brother Jim, who kept it all together for us during a year when everything seemed to fall apart; my brother Brian, who is my biggest fan; Kim Castellano-Curnyn, Upper West Side Bombshell; Trina K. Curnyn (the Kis for Killer Wit); and Dave Webber, who always seems to have answers to my obscure questions.

Sarah Mlynowski, fabulous writer and savvy editor, for reading my drafts.

My wonderful editor, Joan Marlow Golan, who loved Grace from the very first chapter. All the talented people behind Red Dress Ink, especially Margaret, Laura, Stephanie, Margie, Tara and Tania.

And of course, my mother, the original bombshell, and the best friend this girl could have.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

1

“When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.”

—Jean Harlow

It amazed me to discover my relationship with Ethan was only as strong as the latex between us.

“Oh, God,” he said as he looked down at me, just moments after what I had assumed was his orgasm. But what I had taken for a look of euphoria on his face turned out to be utter panic.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, gazing down at where he kneeled between my legs. He was studying me in a way that made me feel vaguely embarrassed, despite the fact that we had been dating six months and were, by most standards, in a relationship.

“It’s…gone,” he said with disbelief.

“Gone?”

“The condom. It’s disappeared. Inside you.”

Alarmed, I immediately sat up.

“No, no, no—don’t move,” he said, squinting down at me as if about to perform surgery.

With a sigh, I swung away from him, slid off the bed.

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

“To get it out,” I replied, heading for the bathroom.

A sudden calm descended over me, probably because Ethan was panicking so much, I didn’t feel the need. But once I was in the bathroom alone, I was scared. I sat down on the side of the tub and, a bit frantically I’ll admit, investigated. I was relieved, momentarily, when I fished out the errant bit of latex. And horrified when, upon closer examination, I discovered the damning tear.

I leaned back against the tiled wall, the “what ifs” whirling through my mind. And I discovered, with something resembling surprise, that my chief reason for alarm—the possibility that Ethan and I—that is, the idea of a baby—was not so…alarming. I was thirty-four years old. I was a Senior Product Manager for Roxanne Dubrow cosmetics and made damn good money. I had a somewhat posh one bedroom on the Upper West Side. If I wasn’t ready now…

Okay, so it wasn’t perfect timing. I was about to start work on Roxanne Dubrow’s next big campaign, which I was hoping would lead to bigger things for my career. And then there was Ethan. Things were going just fine between us, but a baby? I tried to imagine Ethan, with his pinstripe suits and wire-rimmed glasses, cuddling a child. At first, the image was a bit peculiar. All I could come up with was the look of disgust on Ethan’s face as the imaginary child upended its breakfast on his Italian silk tie. But then I mentally put Ethan in a T-shirt and jeans, set him in a lush suburban backyard tossing a ball to a tow-headed little boy and, suddenly, a warmth swept through me, taking me by surprise. I could do this. If I had to.

In this quasi-calm state I returned to the bedroom. Ethan sat up on the bed, looking at me with anticipation. Though he was still naked, he had put his glasses on, and I felt a sudden urge to laugh. What was it about a naked man in glasses that looked so surreal? I wondered as I flopped down on the bed beside him, a kind of gleefulness swimming inside me. Then I looked up at Ethan’s handsome, well-chiseled face, studied his usually cool gray eyes and saw the panic still frozen there.

“Well?” he said, staring down at me.

Oh, right. The condom. I remembered the issue at hand. The issue that up until ten minutes ago might have caused me the same kind of terror I saw in Ethan’s eyes.

“I found it,” I said, gazing up at his usually adorable face and suddenly realizing how very much like a hamster he looked when he was nervous, all pursed mouth and squinty eyes. I rolled over, burying my face in the pillow to hide the smile that threatened to tug at my lips. After all, I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t worried. I was—in a fashion.

I gathered myself together. Then confessed. “It was…torn.”

“Torn?”

I turned to look at him over my shoulder. “Down the middle.” Then I shrugged, as if to say, These things happen.

I felt him lift off the bed, heard him pad out of the bedroom, then across the living room. Knew when he had reached the bathroom with all the damning evidence in the faux marble wastebasket I kept there. “Oh, God,” he said again.

I was surprised at how quickly the hurt stabbed at me. I knew we hadn’t planned this. It wasn’t something we discussed while sharing moonlit walks and cozy little dinners at all the best restaurants New York had to offer. Yet, I never expected Ethan to react as if I’d just passed him a venereal disease. Just what, exactly, was so horrifying about the idea of us having a child?

By the time he came back to the bedroom and stood before me in all his bespectacled naked glory, I was angry.

“What do we do?” he said.

“Do?”

“Maybe you should…rinse or something.”

“Or something,” I replied, my voice thick with sarcasm.

“Hey, isn’t there that pill? What’s it called again? It’s just for emergencies like this,” he began, his face filled with a frantic hope. “Yes—the morning-after pill. How do we get our hands on something like that?”

The hamster suddenly morphed into a rat. I wondered what I had ever found so incredibly handsome about Ethan Lederman the Third, as he called himself whenever he got pompous after a few martinis.

Then his face changed, as if he remembered something. That something quickly became apparent when he kneeled next to me on the bed. “I’m sorry, Gracie, I didn’t mean…it’s not that I didn’t want…that is… We can’t have a baby together. I can’t. It’s just not part of the plan….”

But it was too late. The wall had risen up, thick and unyielding. And I did the only thing a self-respecting woman could do.

I threw him out.

“You broke up with him?” Lori said, gawking at me from her desk just outside my office.

“Not exactly broke up,” I replied. I instantly regretted sharing this bit of news with my admin, who had inquired about my Saturday night date with Ethan the moment I walked into the office. With a shrug that I hoped made my indifference obvious, I had blithely replied, “He’s history.”

Now I realized that I had opened myself up to a conversation I didn’t want to have. Trying to deflect Lori away from the subject that had caused her perky little features to go slack with shock, I placed the bag I carried on her desk. “Guess what I brought us?” I said, pulling out one of the two giant muffins I’d bought. “Your favorite—chocolate banana chip,” I continued, setting it before her.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, barely acknowledging the muffin, which I had spontaneously decided to pick up this morning. Things at work were so hectic lately, I’d decided we could use a treat. The powers-that-be at Roxanne Dubrow, the family-owned cosmetic line we all slaved for, had been calling meetings two and three times a month, all in the name of a new product line and—hopefully—higher profit margins. Though my boss, Claudia Stewart, was under the most pressure, as she was supposed to come up with the next Big Idea, Lori often took the brunt of the workload, as Claudia and I had been sharing her ever since Jeannie, Claudia’s own assistant, had gone on maternity leave. I sometimes felt guilty. After all, Lori was twenty-three years old and made a third of what I made—and probably a quarter of what Claudia made.

“So what happened?” Lori asked, jumping up and going to the coffee machine to make a pot.

I sighed, dropping my pocketbook onto an empty chair and sliding off the light jacket I wore as a concession to the surprisingly cool September morning before I headed for the hall closet to hang it up. What could I tell her? That I realized Ethan was a selfish bastard who cared nothing about anyone but himself? That there was a possibly—albeit a remote one—that I was carrying this cretin’s child? That the very idea of sharing anything grander than body fluids had nearly caused dear Ethan to lose the filet mignon he’d dropped a wad of cash on at dinner all over the Italian loafers he’d parked under my bed?

She was too young for the truth. It would only disillusion her. And since I firmly believed a woman needed some illusions in order to have any sort of romance in this fine city, I lied.

“He got a job offer,” I improvised, “in Fiji.” A smile almost curved my lips as I tried to imagine Ethan, with his pasty white skin and perspiring brow, weathering a tropical climate. What had I ever found attractive about him anyway?

“Do they even have accounting firms there?” Lori asked, bewildered.

“He’s, uh, he’s going private.”

“Oh,” she said, still studying me. She turned away to the coffee machine, but I could sense that the wheels were still churning in her head. Pulling the now-full coffeepot off the warmer, she filled two mugs and handed me one. Hoping to make my escape with my muffin and my sanity, I thanked her for the coffee and stepped toward my office door. But her next words stopped me.

“He didn’t ask you to go with him?”

I paused in my doorway, realizing I was getting in too deep with this story meant to keep me from getting in too deep. “He, uh, he wanted to make a clean break,” I said, realizing how much more accurately those words applied to me. “You are the queen of the pre-emptive breakup,” Claudia was fond of telling me, commenting on my knack for ending it all succinctly with my man of the moment before said man could do the deed himself.

This answer seemed to satisfy Lori, for she sat down at her desk and began thoughtfully picking a chocolate chip off the top of her muffin. Still, the sight of her concerned frown filled me with unease. I crouched down by her desk and looked up at her. “You okay?” I asked.

She nodded. “I’m fine. I just thought you and Ethan were, like, meant to be.” Then she blushed, causing a strange ache to fill my chest. “I guess I’m just a dopey romantic, huh?” She forced a smile that did not reach her eyes. Eyes in which I found myself searching for all those emotions I couldn’t somehow muster up myself about Ethan.

Thankfully, Claudia stormed in at that moment, preventing me from pursuing any dangerous thoughts. I could tell by the way Claudia blew past us with barely a glance that she was not in a good mood. Which didn’t bode well for Lori…or me.

I decided to take the bull by the horns, and after giving Lori’s hand a quick, comforting squeeze, I abandoned my breakfast on her desk and headed for Claudia’s office, which stood opposite mine.

“Hey,” I said, as I stood in the doorway. Claudia had already tossed her coat onto the low black sofa that lined one wall and was scrutinizing herself in the mirror that lined the other. The way she was studying her tall, pencil-thin, black-clad figure said she wasn’t satisfied with what she saw, although she looked like her usual well-kept self. “How did spa-ing with the bigwigs go?” I asked. Claudia had just come back from an exclusive spa in Switzerland, where, while sipping flavored waters and sitting half-naked, she attended meetings to decide the fate of Roxanne Dubrow cosmetics. Though the company prided itself on being able to attract an older, wealthier client, sales had recently begun to wane. So Dianne Dubrow, CEO and daughter of the company’s founder, had decided that a week at a Swiss spa brainstorming with all her top execs would result in a brilliant new direction for the company—or at least a well-pampered upper management.

But Claudia apparently didn’t feel very well-pampered. Smoothing a newly manicured hand over her long, dark hair with dissatisfaction, she stepped behind her desk, glared hard for a moment at the sleek black surface before looking up.

Her eyes roamed over me, taking in my blouse, my flared pants, my pointy-toed pumps, as if assessing their worthiness. It was the kind of once-over I could never get used to, despite the fact that she did it fairly regularly. It was as if Claudia were measuring me to make sure I met the high fashion standards of the illustrious firm of Roxanne Dubrow. Or at least to see if I were someone worthy of taking on as a confidante, even a friend, as Claudia was wont to do, especially when things weren’t going her way.

“There should be a four-letter word for beauty,” she said finally.

“Tell me,” I said, sitting down in the chair across from her desk and preparing to hear about whatever brave new innovations the executives at Roxanne Dubrow had decided upon.

She sighed, gazing out her window and studying the generous glimpse of skyline it afforded. “They’ve chosen the new face for Roxanne Dubrow,” she said, turning to face me once more, “and she’s sixteen.”

“What?” I asked, completely confused. Roxanne Dubrow cosmetics were devoted to the mature woman. As in: edging toward forty. In fact, Priscilla, the model who was last year’s face, was a bit too young at age twenty-five. “I don’t get it. How are they going to pull off ‘Beauty beyond thirty’ with a sixteen-year-old?”

“That’s just it,” Claudia replied. “Roxanne Dubrow is creating a new image. A new, younger image.” She sniffed. “I suppose it’s only a matter of time before they replace us with sixteen-year-olds. After all, who better to tell a woman how she should look than someone with a Ph.D. in benzyl peroxide?”

“Hmmm…” Studying Claudia’s frown, I wondered if perhaps the younger image worried her on a more personal level. With her dark eyes and the shiny brunette hair she dared, at age forty-two, to wear longer than shoulder length, Claudia was a beautiful woman. But she was incredibly age-conscious.

“So tell me what that child was sniveling about out there,” Claudia continued, confirming my suspicions. Ever since I had hired Lori fresh out of college a year and a half ago, Claudia had taken an immediate dislike to her. A dislike that seemed to have nothing to do with her work and everything to do with the fact that Lori was younger than Claudia had probably ever been.

“Oh, boy trouble,” I said vaguely.

“Poor girl,” she replied sarcastically. “Did Dennis the Menace discover someone else while playing in the sandbox?”

Knowing Claudia was about to take her anger at the top brass at Roxanne Dubrow out on Lori, I decided to sacrifice someone a bit more thick-skinned. Myself. “I broke up with Ethan.”

This got an eyebrow raise. “Pourquoi, darling? Do tell.”

“I discovered what a self-absorbed jerk he was.”

This got a laugh. “Oh, Grace, don’t tell me it took you—how long have you been with him, six months?—to figure that out?”

“Yeah, well. I must be getting soft in my old age,” I replied.

She studied me for a moment, then a savage smile creased her well-lined lips. “Alas for Ethan. Another hapless victim of Grace’s axe.”

“Stop that,” I replied, worried that she might be right. I quickly did a mental checklist of my most recent dating history. Before Ethan there was Drew, who was as utterly eligible as Ethan had appeared to be, but just as emotionally unavailable, I had discovered. Like Ethan, Drew had only lasted six months. In fact, six months might be my record since Kevin, my college boyfriend, whom I’d kept around for a solid two years before giving him the boot. I had been pretty brutal back then, too, I thought, cringing at the memory of how I had dropped every T-shirt, cassette tape and pair of boxer shorts Kevin had ever left at my place in the hall outside his dorm room, just moments before graduation. The truth was, I had an intuition for when I thought a guy would break up with me, and I never, ever let a man get the better of me. The only time that had happened was with my high school boyfriend, who had thrown me over for a cheerleader in a vain effort to win more votes for homecoming king. Still, he hadn’t gotten away without enduring a few cutting barbs from me in front of the entire football team. Because even at the tender age of sixteen, I had a knack for laying a man low.

“It’s not like he didn’t deserve it,” I muttered now, then realized there was no way in hell I could reveal to Claudia the cause of my breakup with Ethan. Because even though, statistically speaking, there was only a minute chance that last night’s incident could have resulted in pregnancy, I didn’t want to give my boss any food for thought. Losing her assistant to baby fever was hard enough. Having her Senior Product Manager go on maternity leave during Roxanne Dubrow’s next major marketing campaign would be nothing less than betrayal in Claudia’s eyes.

Fortunately, she had her own beef against Ethan. “He used too many hair products. What was with that Brylcreem look he sported to dinner that night?” she said, referring to one of the few times I had put my sharp-tongued boss and my well-groomed boyfriend in the same room together.

“I think he was going for Antonio Banderas in The Mask of Zorro.”

“He looked more like Pee Wee Herman on his latest adventure.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. “He had more facial moisturizers in his medicine cabinet than we carry in our winter product line.”

“There is nothing worse than a man with more beauty products than a woman.”

“Nothing,” I agreed, laughing harder, until Claudia’s office was echoing with the sound of our mutual glee.

Until I remembered that there was one thing worse than a man addicted to skin care. And that was no man.

“I’m never going to have sex again,” I said with a sigh.

“Please. As if a blond bombshell like you has ever had to worry about that,” she said.

She was right, I realized as I stood to leave her office a short while later. With a glance in the mirror on my way out the door, I felt my courage return. There I was, Grace Noonan, blond, busty and single for about the sixth time in as many years. Was it because a five-foot-nine-inch blonde with a 38-C chest and legs up to her eyebrows could afford to be choosy? Or was it because I couldn’t afford not to be?

I got my answer when I found myself in the foyer outside Claudia’s office once more, watching in horror as Lori struggled to swipe away the tears that were gushing from her eyes.

Alarmed, I rushed forward, crouching beside the chair where she sat, her thin arms folded against her narrow frame. “Lori, honey, what’s wrong?” I asked.

“I’m s-so s-sorry, Grace,” she sputtered. “I just thought, you know, that some people were meant to be together.” She burst into a fresh avalanche of tears that I found, frankly, bewildering. But not one to turn away a fellow female in distress, I took her hand in mine.

“Lori, honey, it’s okay. Things with Ethan and me…were kind of going nowhere anyway,” I began tentatively, “We’re both…very different. There was no way it would have worked.”

Lori snuffled, then raised her gaze to me. “I thought…I thought he was the…one,” she said, and then, as if the very thought that Ethan Lederman the Third wasn’t Prince Charming destroyed her, she released a fresh torrent of tears.

Though I was surprised at this sudden display of emotion over a man who couldn’t even remember my admin’s name, although she had fielded enough of his daily phone calls to me, I wrapped my arms around her.

And as I rubbed a comforting hand over her back, I wondered if maybe I had jumped the gun with Ethan. After all, I never did let a man get the best of me in the whole breakup scenario, which often left me alone on more Saturday nights than I cared to count. But as I listened to Lori babble into my now-tear-stained silk blouse about true love and soul mates, I began to suspect her lamentations might not be about me and Ethan. She lifted her head, gazed at me with reddened eyes and said, “I know it’s only been a year and a half, but I really thought he was the one….”

Now I was positive this watery display had nothing to do with me and Ethan. After all, we had only been dating six months.

“What’s going on with you and Dennis?” I asked, honing in on her.

“Oh, Gracie, he’s applied to graduate school. In…in London! I know it’s something he’s wanted, like, forever, but I thought—well, I just don’t know what’s going to happen to us!”

As I pulled Lori back into my embrace for a soothing hug, I felt a depth of yearning I had not known for a long time. For the kind of love that could break hearts. For the courage to even seek it.

2

“There aren’t any hard women, just soft men.”

—Raquel Welch

Though I have mastered the art of the breakup, the aftermath always kills me. I’m not talking about regret. I’m not the kind of woman to cry over a man. I do just fine with these things. It’s everyone else I can’t deal with.

Like my friend Angela.

“Gracie, what the hell happened this time?” she said when she caught me on the phone, which I had been avoiding. I never call friends in the post-breakup period. Too much explaining when there really isn’t much to explain. Besides, I hate it when women overanalyze relationships. And though I love Angie dearly—have ever since I dated her older brother during our shared term at Marine Park Junior High in Brooklyn—she suffers from this particularly female malady.

I gave her the snapshot version.

“Asshole,” she said, succinctly summing up Ethan. At least I could count on Angela to agree with me, once given the facts. She wouldn’t have me accept anything less than worship from a man, now that she had settled in with her own worshipful partner, her roommate and best friend-turned-lover, Justin. Of course, she wasn’t about to let a little thing like one of my umpteen breakups slide, either. “I’m coming over.”

“No!” I replied, then realizing my abrupt rejection of her brand of girlfriend comfort had probably hurt her feelings, I hedged. “I mean, I’m tired. I have a big day at work tomorrow….” The last thing I wanted was to be soothed and coddled. I was fine, really. In fact, I felt almost…relieved. I was back to my natural state. Alone.

Knowing I wouldn’t be able to hang up the phone without agreeing to a least an hour of the sympathetic cooing and all-out Ethan-blasting on my behalf, I finally made plans to meet her for drinks that Thursday.

Then, because there was one other person to whom I felt some obligation to at least give the larger details of my life to, I called my mother.

As usual, I was not afforded the luxury of speaking with her alone, because as soon as she heard my voice, she beckoned my father to the phone. “Thomas, sweetheart, pick up the extension. Gracie’s on the phone!”

My parents had retired and moved to their dream house just outside Albuquerque, New Mexico, four years ago, and though I was happy for them, I hadn’t had a private conversation with my mother since. Maybe it was because her naturally frugal nature demanded that a long-distance call involve more than two speakers, but she seemed to treat my every phone call as some wondrous event she couldn’t resist sharing with my father. Or maybe it was just that she shared everything with my father. He was, as she would often tell me over a glass of wine that would inevitably turn her dreamy-eyed and nostalgic, the love of her life.

“Grace?” my father’s deep baritone boomed over the line, a voice that up until his retirement had filled the awestruck college students who had frequented his seminars with reverence.

“Hi, Dad,” I replied, a reluctant smile edging the corners of my mouth. It wasn’t that I didn’t love talking to my father. It was just that breakups resulting from sexual mishaps weren’t the kind of thing I felt I could confide in him.

So I described our demise as a couple as a desire for a “clean break.” “We didn’t really have the same goals,” I said, realizing that this was probably true. I mean, I did want to have a baby. Always imagined I would—someday. But I hadn’t realized the extent of my desire until the other night. Funny how something like a little broken latex can bring so much…clarity.

“Better you realize that now, Grace, rather than later,” my mother said, turning my recent relationship disaster into a triumph, as was her nature. Though she had been happily married to one man since the age of twenty-five, my mother seemed to have a different prescription for happiness for me. “Besides, you have your career to focus on now,” she said, as she’d been saying ever since I had landed the Senior Product Manager position at Roxanne Dubrow three years ago. In her mind, I was the single career woman she never was. My mother had studied the cello since she was nine and dreamed of joining the symphony. But she had given up that dream shortly after her marriage to my father, settling instead for a life as a music teacher in the public schools. She hadn’t, however, given up her belief that a woman’s first duty was to herself and her goals. She never failed to tell me how proud she was of me for staying true to mine. “If the girls at Hewlett High could see you now,” she always said, referring to my rebellious youth and somewhat colorful reputation. If my yearbook had allowed for those colorful attributions of yesteryear, mine would have read, “Girl most likely to single-handedly destroy her life.”

Yet now I was a shining beacon of success. Sophisticated. Cosmopolitan. Successful.

Even my father gave one of his familiar murmurs of assent—it was the only thing that reminded me he was still on the line—whenever my mother went off on how exalted my position at Roxanne Dubrow was, how magnificent my life.

I suppose it was pretty magnificent, I thought, once I hung up the phone and glanced around my apartment. At least from a real-estate point of view.

I live in a doorman building on the Upper West Side. That’s code for mega rent, though mine wasn’t up to current astronomical rates since I had snagged this apartment almost six years ago.

Six years. I had been twenty-eight at the time, and had just landed my first job managing my own product. Granted it was for a pharmaceutical company—not as glamorous a position as my current one—but I was jubilant. I finally had a salary fat enough to leave behind my third floor walk-up in the nowhereland of Kip’s Bay. I even had an assistant, though I barely knew what to do with her back then. I was moving toward my thirties still buoyant with the belief that I was entering the best part of a woman’s life, sexually, emotionally, financially. By thirty-five, I’d been told once by a college professor whom I admired, a woman usually has everything she wants.

I looked around my living room, decorated in soft whites. It was the kind of space I had always dreamed of having: lush, romantic, inviting. I thought about the fact that just this past summer, at our annual company summer outing at the Southampton Yacht Club, Dianne had told me that she thought I had “vision”—the kind of vision, she implied, that upper management at Roxanne Dubrow appreciated.

Yes, I did have a lot going for me, I thought. Then my eye fell upon two ticket stubs that had been left on the coffee table from the opera Ethan and I had attended the other night….

My stomach clenched, and I ran my hand soothingly over what Ethan had once referred to as my Botticelli belly—like the goddesses depicted by the old masters, I was a bit more rounded about the hips and breasts than today’s waif standard. Yes, Ethan had always liked my body. Just as I had liked his. And it had been enough, I supposed.

Until last Saturday night.

What had I expected of him, really? I wondered, finally rousing myself from the sofa and grabbing the ticket stubs to toss before I hit the bathroom for my nightly cleansing and moisturizing ritual.

I had expected nothing.

And that was exactly what I got.

“Morning Mist,” Claudia said when I stepped into her office the next day and found her gazing at a tiny glass jar with branding I recognized to be that of Olga Parks, our main competitor in the older woman’s market.

“Morning to you, too,” I said, wondering at the gleam in her eye.

Claudia shook her head, picking up the glass vial in one hand and holding it before me. “Have you seen this yet?” she demanded.

I glanced at the bottle, hearing the reprimand in her voice. One of my jobs was to keep an eye on the competition, and clearly Claudia thought I had been remiss in this area.

I decided to set her straight. “Olga Parks. Spring line. Two years ago.” I remembered the product well, as I myself had been seeking something to restore the dewy look that seemed to disappear just after my thirtieth birthday. At $65 for two ounces, Morning Mist hadn’t promised to restore moisture—that was the job of the $85 moisturizer it had been paired with. Morning Mist had more of a cosmetic purpose; sprayed on my face, it added a sheen that suggested I had run a mini-marathon during a ninety-degree NYC day. That was a little too much dewiness for me, and I had mentioned that in my report to Claudia, also two years ago.

But my manager had already moved beyond ire to fascination. “Why didn’t we latch on to this concept? It’s pure genius!” she said, spraying the back of her hand and studying the resultant sheen. “Look!” she said, holding out her hand to me, as if the evidence were clear. “When was the last time you saw that kind of glow on your skin?”

“At the gym. It looks like sweat, Claudia. Besides, aren’t we supposed to be focusing now on products for women who are still suffering from excess oils?”

I saw a shudder roll through her, as if the very idea of catering to our younger counterparts disturbed her. “Speaking of which, where is our slick little admin this morning? It’s ten o’clock and she has yet to make an appearance. I need her to run off some sales figures for me.”

I knew from the soft-spoken voice mail waiting for me on the phone this morning that Lori had been feeling a bit under the weather and was going to try to be in by noon. Though I detected in her somewhat despondent message that whatever ailed her was probably more emotional than physical, I covered for her. “She has a touch of a stomach virus. She said she’ll be in by noon.”

“Girls today,” Claudia said with disgust. “Bunch of wimps.” She shook her head. “They’ll never be what we once were, will they, Grace?”

And we’ll never be what they are now, I thought. Ever again.

Not wanting to dwell on that, I decided to steer Claudia back to the purpose of our meeting, which was to debrief me on the corporate agenda that had been hashed out in the Swiss Alps. “I’m ready for the debrief if you are,” I said, eyeing Claudia as she gazed with a mixture of fondness and disgust at the pretty little jar.

“Right,” she said, a look of resignation descending over her aristocratic features. “Well, first I should tell you it wasn’t so much a brainstorming as a corporate screwover. They didn’t invite us up there to come up with the new vision for Roxanne Dubrow, but to cram their new mandate down our throats. I guess Dianne figured her distasteful little plan would go down easier with a little sparkling water and pâté.”

“Don’t tell me Burkeston finally got the go-ahead from Dianne on that product line she’s been testing forever?” Winona Burkeston, Director of Research, was a bit of a maverick. Though she was close to fifty herself, she had been pushing to get a youth line at the company’s forefront for years.

“What, are you living in a cave, Grace? Burkeston’s gone. Has been for what—two months now? They called it a resignation, but I think she was forced out. Dianne sent down the memo herself. Surely you must have—” Claudia frowned. “Maybe I didn’t pass it on to you.” She shrugged, as if the fact that she repeatedly forgot to pass on vital corporate info really wasn’t an issue. “Anyway, she’s been replaced. By a pretty little Brit named Courtney Manchester, who looks like she’s all of sixteen herself and fresh from London with some fancy degree and a pair of tits I’d swear were silicone if I hadn’t caught sight of them in the steam room.” Her eyes narrowed. “You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if those perky tits helped push her agenda through. You know how Michael is when it comes to a fresh piece of ass.”

That sent an unexpected stab of heat through me. And why shouldn’t it? Because Michael Dubrow, the baby of the Dubrow clan and only son, had once claimed me as his piece of ass, for a brief, passionate period in my early history at Roxanne Dubrow. But just as quickly as we got caught up in the perilously romantic idea of our being together despite the company-wide stir an affair between the Dubrow heir and the new—well, I was new at the time—Senior Product Manager would create, we were weighted down by those same facts. Well, Michael was, anyway.

“C’mon, Grace, you can’t be serious,” he had said when, during a romantic weekend rendezvous in the Hamptons, I had speculated on the future. “You and I are friends,” he declared, his only acknowledgment of the deeper intimacy I thought we shared indicated by the way he squeezed my hands in his. “Besides we work together. Think of what people might say….”

In truth, the only thing I had been thinking of until that point was that I had found my soul mate. Yes, even I had fallen under the spell of that foolish notion once. In fact, I was so enthralled by the idea of Michael and myself as the future golden couple of the Dubrow clan that I was blind to the reality of us. Instead I was focused on the moment when I could tell the world that I was in love—yes, in love—with Michael Dubrow. But that moment never came. Because as soon as I realized that Michael wasn’t dreaming of an “us,” the very notion effectively ended in my mind.

Ironically, there was no drama at the end, despite the strength of feeling I had developed for him during our short affair. No damning speech. Not even a real breakup. I ended things just as easily as they had started over cocktails at a sales conference four months earlier. Not two weeks after our debacle in the Hamptons, Michael and Dianne came to New York for a few days of meetings. When, at the end of the first day of strategizing in the corporate boardroom, he discreetly suggested we sneak away for an after-work drink, which was usually code for “Let’s go fuck,” I politely declined, saying I needed to get to bed early that night if I hoped to be fresh for our next round of meetings in the morning. It was a clever blow-off on my part. Michael Dubrow considered himself a model employer, and I knew he would never argue with good employee behavior. As predicted, he didn’t argue. And after a while, he stopped asking. Soon enough our relationship went from intensely personal to coolly professional. As if everything that had come before didn’t matter. As if he didn’t matter to me.

Now I knew that, on some level at least, he had.

“What in God’s name is wrong with you?” Claudia asked, startling me out of my reverie.

I quickly composed myself, masking whatever dismay might have shown on my face with a lame excuse about not getting enough sleep the night before. I had to. No one knew about me and Michael. Not Claudia. Not even Angela. And whether out of some warped loyalty to Michael, or a desire not to reveal that bit of romantic foolishness on my part, I wanted to keep it that way.

Fortunately, Claudia was too wound up by the evil she saw in our new corporate direction to be bothered inquiring into my feelings.

“You know that little product line we bought from that floundering U.K. company? Sparkle?” Claudia said, referring to the makeup line we acquired a year ago when the idea of getting into a younger market was just a sparkle in Dianne’s eye. “Dianne—and Michael, I suspect—have decided that this line is going to save Roxanne Dubrow.” She rolled her eyes. “The vision is to rename it in a way that subtly links it to the mother brand—hence, the ‘child’ brand revitalizes the ‘mother.’”

“Makes sense,” I said. “Kind of like how Teen People revitalized People magazine.”

Her eyes narrowed on me, as if I had betrayed her by simply pointing out the rationale of the plan.

I backpedaled a bit, not wanting to get on the wrong side of Claudia so early in the workweek. “So does this ‘child’ have a name?” I said with what I hoped was the right amount of disdain in my voice.

“Oh, it does,” Claudia said, turning her gaze full on me. “Roxy D.”

It was good. And I said as much.

“Well, I’m glad you agree,” Claudia said, her tone thick with irony. “Because a full two-thirds of our marketing budget for this year is now being redirected toward making Roxy D a household name—or should I say a dorm-room name.”

“Hmmm,” I muttered noncommittally, while the impact of that sank in. For the past three years, my role, under Claudia’s leadership, had been to develop marketing and advertising that positioned Roxanne Dubrow as the premiere mature woman’s cosmetic company.

“Now they’ve brought in this little chippy from the U.K., and apparently she’s cast a spell over the whole Dubrow clan—or at least Michael. But you know how Dianne listens to everything her brother says as if he were some sort of marketing genius.” This earned another roll of Claudia’s eyes, as she hated the fact that Michael, simply by virtue of his role as heir to the Dubrow crown, frequently imposed his point of view on everything from marketing to packaging to color palettes. He was very hands-on, and though I was loath to admit it, it was one of the things I had admired about him. His passion for the business. His ambition.

“Suddenly Dianne is positively dazzled by the idea that the Roxy D brand is going to lure all those twentysomethings back to the Roxanne Dubrow counters. And she’s wagering big on that assumption,” Claudia finished, naming a figure that had me sucking in my breath.

The last time our department had seen that kind of money was during the heyday of Roxanne Dubrow’s Youth Elixir—not that I had been around to witness that. Created in the early eighties, Youth Elixir was the moisturizer that Roxanne Dubrow had made its reputation on. Youth Elixir promised to refresh, refine and, most of all, restore all the vital moisture that started to seep out of the skin the moment a woman reached the big 3-0. It was a pretty good product. In fact, I might have been tempted to drop $65 for two ounces of the stuff if I didn’t get it by the case for free.

“So what about the Youth Elixir campaign?” I asked, bewildered about where the money for the advertising for this would come. Youth Elixir had been such a perennial bestseller for Roxanne Dubrow that just six months ago, Dianne had advocated making the moisturizer the center of the Spring campaign. During a corporate strategy meeting held right here in the New York office, she had stated that putting the company’s flagship product on the front lines once more would remind consumers of the powerhouse product that had made Roxanne Dubrow what it is today, and hopefully convince new consumers to try it. But apparently that had all changed.

“It’s on the backburner,” Claudia replied, giving me a look weighted with meaning. As if she saw this as the beginning of some end I could not yet fathom. “The idea is that if we successfully lure the younger market to the counter with Roxy D, they’ll eventually graduate to Roxanne Dubrow.”

“Hmmm,” I said again, wondering at the implications of this for me. After all, the Youth Elixir campaign was to be my campaign to run, under Claudia’s leadership, of course.

As if in answer to my unasked question, Claudia continued, “You and I are going to have our hands full over the next few months working on this dreadful new campaign.”

I looked at her, feeling a bit of relief that I was to have a role in the campaign that was to be the company’s lifeblood, judging from the amount of money we were sinking into it. I had seen the careers of product managers of yesteryear shrink to nothing during budget changes. Though Roxanne Dubrow had acquired other brands over the years, I always felt fortunate to be working on the signature brands, especially when budget time came.

“We need to do some testing, develop a new package,” Claudia was saying now. “Line up the talent for the print campaign….”

My mind immediately began to roam over the current crop of models out there. “Well, there’s no shortage of younger models,” I said finally, realizing that the youth fever had already taken over in most marketplaces. That Roxanne Dubrow might, in fact, be a little late in jumping on this particular bandwagon.

“Oh, Dianne has already made her decision,” Claudia said now, and I could tell how much it irked her to receive all her marching orders from on high. “She wants Irina Barbalovich,” she declared.

I quickly wrapped my mind around that. Irina had been embraced by the fashion world ever since she had been plucked from her parents’ farm in rural Russia to walk the runways of Paris at the tender age of seventeen. In fact, in the past six months, she had gotten more magazine covers than Cindy Crawford at the height of her career. Which meant we were going to pay through the nose for her. Now I understood where most of that budget was going. Irina was the next generation of supermodel, and the fact that Dianne hoped to head up our spring campaign with her was big. Roxanne Dubrow usually chose a no-name stunner they inevitably turned into a star. Now it looked like Dianne was hoping to harness the power of the industry’s latest supermodel. “Didn’t you say they wanted a sixteen-year-old?” I asked, somewhat inanely, still trying to figure out the implications of this for us in marketing. “I think Irina’s closer to nineteen by now…” I continued, remembering a profile I had read of her when she did a recent cover for Cosmo.

“Sixteen, nineteen. Whatever,” Claudia said, waving a hand dismissively, as if anyone under the age of twenty was not worthy of her regard. “She’s the next big thing, and if we don’t bring her on board soon, my dear Grace, we may find ourselves without a campaign at all.”

I didn’t miss the threat beneath her words, but I took it with a grain of salt. Claudia was forever hinting at the annihilation of our jobs. I sometimes wondered if it was the only thing that motivated her to get out of bed and come to work these days.

“We’ll get her,” I said, ready to take on the challenge. After all, there is nothing like a full work life to keep a woman from remembering how empty her love life has suddenly become.

3

“Give a man a free hand and he’ll run it all over you.”

—Mae West

If Roxanne Dubrow’s new marketing plan sent a shudder through Claudia, it was like a balm to my soul. As I put together an agenda for the coming month, filled with meetings with New Product Development, entertaining bids from ad firms, talking with the sales reps about in-store positioning, I knew I was going to be okay. Even Lori seemed to shrug off her own personal crisis when I filled her in on what needed to be done for the new campaign. Maybe it was the excitement of seeing the new product that would one day be Roxy D, as boxes of Sparkle had already been shipped in from the Dubrow compound on Long Island for us to review. Or maybe it was the dozen long-stems Dennis had sent, which seemed to ameliorate any wounds his newly announced future plans had caused. For a brief moment, I even hoped for my own long-stems—not that I wanted Ethan back, but a girl did like a man to grovel a bit. Although I hardly expected that from Ethan. One of the few things he and I had in common was a stubborn streak a mile wide.

Besides, I had already begun to build up a wall of indifference to him.

So I was dually armed when I found myself sitting before the one person whose whole purpose, at least for the forty-five minutes a week we spent together, was to probe at whatever feelings she believed I was having.

Shelley Longford, my therapist.

“You broke up with him?” Shelley said after I had blithely related the story of my mishap with Ethan, after spending more than half the session seated in the chair across from her in a tiny, nondescript office on the fourth floor of an equally nondescript office building on W. 72nd Street, relating the more mundane details of my life. The new campaign at Roxanne Dubrow. The fact that I was having trouble getting my super to come up and fix a crack that had begun in the ceiling of my pretty, albeit ancient, bathroom. I think I was starting to bore myself, which probably made me blurt out the news of my breakup.

In truth, I took a certain satisfaction in the shock that wreathed Shelley’s normally composed features. I had been seeing her just four months, and this was the first time I seemed to get some sort of rise out of her. The most I had seen before was a nervous tuck of that shiny dark hair behind her ear, or a narrowing of her dark eyes. Now, after her somewhat harried exclamation, I felt a sort of…triumph.

“Well, what would you have done?” I asked now, knowing she would somehow find a way to turn the question back on me. This therapy business was so tricky, and if it hadn’t been for the endless prodding of the social worker on my case, I wouldn’t even be here. It was so pointless somehow. I had been coming once a week for four months now, sitting across from a woman I didn’t know—and didn’t want to know, judging by the tastefully drab decor of her office, her bad haircut, her aloof manner and the fact that I was paying her $140 for forty-five minutes of relative silence while she asked questions that seemed to have nothing to do with me. Questions that always seemed to lead to one answer—an answer I refused to give her.

“Well, there are a lot of things one could do in a situation like the one you experienced with Ethan,” Shelley began, carefully leaving herself out of the answer as I’m sure she was trained to do. See what I mean? How can you warm up to someone like this?

I raised my eyebrows, stubbornly resisting the impulse to make life easier for her as I waited for her to fill me on all these options I allegedly had now that Ethan Lederman the Third had accidentally let a few of his precious sperm loose in a woman he had been sleeping with for months, yet somehow couldn’t see himself actually propagating with.

“You could have talked,” she said, after a lengthy pause. A pause that cost me quite a few bucks at these rates. I could have invested in the new Stila lip shade with more result.

“About?” I said, not wanting to give her anything.

“Your options,” she said.

“Options?” I began, feeling my temper suddenly—and surprisingly—spike. “Let’s see, what exactly were the options that Ethan Lederman the Third presented me with? Ah, yes. There was the douche—very clever on his part. Made me wonder if he’d ever been down this road before. Oh, and then there was the morning-after pill. That’s right. Get rid of it before it even gets started. Nice clean solution. Better than say, throwing it in the Hudson after it was born….”

When I saw I had not managed to make a dent in that composure of hers, I continued, “Look, the bottom line is he wanted nothing to do with anything real between us. It was all too glaringly apparent that he didn’t want a child with me. That he didn’t want…me.”

This last word came out on a squeak, making me realize how dangerously close to tears I was. I grabbed the arms of the chair to take the tremble out of my fingers. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, a voice inside me chanted. Within moments, I managed to swallow back whatever emotions threatened. But it was too late.

Shelley Longford had seen it all. And I knew exactly where she was going to go with it.

As it turned out, I only had to endure another ten minutes of therapy. Ten minutes of avoiding the truth Shelley tried to gently guide me to, but which I strictly avoided at all costs. I even hated the words: fear of rejection. Her next maneuver was to try and—gently but persistently—tie it all back to my mother. Not my mother, really. My mother was a perfectly nice, perfectly respectable music teacher, now retired and living with my perfectly respectable father in New Mexico. What Shelley wanted to talk about was the woman who gave birth to me. Kristina Morova, who, as I learned three years ago after months of digging through public records, resided a train ride away from me in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. And refused to acknowledge my existence. The only response I had gotten to the certified letter I had finally gotten up the courage to send to her seven months ago was the return receipt with her signature on it. A hastily scrawled “K. Morova” that I had run my fingers over at least a dozen times since I had found it in my mailbox. No note inviting me to meet her at some mutually acceptable location, so that I might get answers to all those questions that had plagued me for most of my life and, for some reason, even more so after I turned thirty. No tearful phone call to express her joy at the possibility of meeting the child she’d given up, for reasons as yet unknown to me, at the age of seventeen.

Nothing.

I had been told ahead of time by the search agency that this was one possible outcome. In fact, this was the reasoning behind sending a certified letter in the first place, so that I could be assured that the letter had been received and that I would, at least, be saved from any emotional trauma caused by a random postal error. Yes, now I knew that whatever emotional trauma I was allegedly dealing with, according to Shelley, had to do with the simple fact that my mother knew I was alive but didn’t want to know me.

I had accepted this realization with the same type of angry calm with which I had tossed Ethan out of my apartment a week earlier. Fuck him, I had thought as I watched him angrily pull on his clothes and make tracks out my front door.

Fuck her, I had thought after enduring the two weeks of complete silence that followed the sending of my letter. Yes, I had been disappointed, but even more, I had been mad. Mad at her for not caring. So mad, in fact, that I had taken a car service out to her modest two-family house in Sheepshead Bay, only to stand outside filled with a desire to take the pretty little planter at the center of her neatly edged lawn and toss it through her front window.

I didn’t, of course.

Instead, I had gotten back into the car, sinking into comfortable anonymity behind the tinted windows, and had gone to see Barbara, the social worker who assisted me with my search. And after listening to me rail for half an hour over everything from Kristina Morova’s impossibly well-kept flower bed to her frailty as a human being, Barbara had finally managed to convince me to do what she had been trying to get me to do since I had taken up my search. Seek counseling.

Not that the sixteen weeks I had been seeing Ms. Shelley Longford, C.S.W., with a specialization in psychotherapy, had made a bit of difference.

Even now as I carefully let myself out of her office after assuring her that yes, I would be there the following Wednesday at six-thirty, I wondered why I bothered.

I was fine really. I had all the information I really needed to know about Kristina Morova. That she was one of two daughters. That there was no real history of disease in her family, other than a few diabetics and some spotty cancer.

I mean, strictly speaking, I really didn’t need to know anything else, right?

“How are you really, Grace?” Angie said as we sat over drinks the following evening at Bar Six, a little bistro in the West Village.

“I’m fine,” I assured her for the third time since we’d sat down, martinis before us. I didn’t want to get into an analysis of the demise of my recent relationship, knowing full well that Ethan had likely not even given it a second thought himself. That was the annoying little difference between men and women. When a man exited a relationship, no matter who ended it, it was as if the woman was erased from his mind. Women, on the other hand, could be borderline obsessive, measuring every perceived slight, every phone call or lack thereof, and coming up with a complex analysis of his emotional makeup.

I decided to take the male tack, effectively erasing Ethan from my own mind and turning the conversation to what I hoped would be a more fruitful subject. Angie. “So what’s going on with the show?”

Angie was an actor and had, a year earlier, gotten her first big break when she’d landed a primetime drama on Lifetime, playing Lisa Petrelli, single mom and NYPD cop. Though the show hadn’t garnered huge ratings, Angie had gotten a nice bit of critical notice for what Entertainment Weekly had called her “endearingly anxious” portrayal of a woman struggling to raise two kids and save the world, or at least the New York City precinct that was her beat, from crime. The funny thing was that all of that endearing anxiety came from the fact that Angie herself had never encountered child-rearing first hand and was mostly struggling to keep from being railroaded by the two child actors who played her kids.

“The network is reviewing its programming as we speak. But it’s looking like a second season might be too much to hope for,” she said, fresh anxiety washing over her features. With her large, dark eyes, heart-shaped face and deep brown shoulder-length locks, my friend Angie is almost a dead ringer for Marisa Tomei. Not that I ever would say that to her—she’s heard it often enough over the years. But she made her peace with it once she earned some critical acclaim of her own as Angie DiFranco, obsessive-compulsive-yet-utterly-charming actor. That boost to her career has resulted in a subsequent boost to her self-esteem. I have known Angie since we shared secrets and sorrows at Marine Park, where I lived until my parents decided that Brooklyn was turning me into too much of a bad-ass teen and dragged me off to Long Island at age sixteen. Angie and I stayed friends, spending our summers together on the beach, then once I got my driver’s license, weekends filled with shopping, club-hopping and, when we both managed to have boyfriends at the same time, double-dating. In all the years I have known her, I have never seen Angie look so radiant. It was as if her life were finally coming together, though the nervous frown now marring her pretty features suggested otherwise. Sometimes my friend Angie, who had an acting career on the rise, an amazing boyfriend and a rent-stabilized two bedroom in the East Village, needed to be reminded of just how magnificent her life was.

“Maybe that’s for the best,” I said. “Aren’t you supposed to start working on Justin’s film in the spring?” Her boyfriend was a screenwriter who had received much critical acclaim himself for the feature-length film he’d made as a film student years ago. Now he had a brand-new screenplay and a leading lady, as he’d written a part especially for Angie.

“Yeah, we’re starting in April….” she said, beginning to gnaw at her lower lip at the very thought.

It wasn’t that Angie didn’t believe in her talented boyfriend. It was just that, despite the steadying assurance his love gave her, she was given to panic over anything that she didn’t know the outcome of beforehand. Which was just about everything, I supposed.

“Well, then, there you go,” I said. “Your future’s so bright, you’re gonna have to go out and purchase a pair of Ray•Bans.”

“I guess,” she said, unconvinced. I had known Angie so long, I could practically read her mind. See the little hamsters of anxiety on the wheel of her thoughts, running frantically on those “what ifs” that plagued her. What if I can’t carry the role? What if I get some life-threatening disease? Her father had died of cancer and like her equally neurotic mother, Angie seemed to think her own death by malignant cell growth was a foregone conclusion. And, most importantly and probably the real source of her anxiety, what if I’m a complete and utter failure?

“You’re going to do great,” I said, picking the anxious thought out of her brain before she could voice it. I had heard the spiel one too many times: It happened whenever Angie embarked on a new gig.

She gave me a sheepish smile. “But what about you, Grace?”

“What about me?” I said. “I have a new campaign at work,” I said, reminding her of Roxanne Dubrow’s new mission, which I had filled her in on earlier. “And since Claudia’s in denial about the whole younger, brighter, better schtick the powers that be are on, I may have to shoulder a lot of the burden of developing it myself.”

“I mean what are you going to do about Ethan?”

“What’s to be done?” I replied with a shrug. “It’s over.”

She pursed her lips, as if aware she was treading on territory I didn’t want to traverse. “I mean, don’t you think you guys should talk? For closure?”

“I got all the closure I need,” I said. Like Ethan, I was capable of walking away without a backward glance. Which was why I was sure Ethan was doing just fine without me. Just like Michael Dubrow was apparently, I thought, the reminder of Claudia’s suggestion that he had moved on to his next “piece of ass” sending a surprising flood of anger through me. I shrugged it off. I guess that was just the kind of man I was attracted to: independent or, as all the self-help books Angie had tried to foist on me of late put it, “emotionally unavailable.”

“Well, what does Shelley think?” she asked. Now I knew Angie was desperate to probe my inner state. Because in the months I’d been seeing Shelley, Angie had acted a bit like my therapist was the enemy, siding with me whenever I found fault, which was often, with the woman I was paying 140 bucks a session to cure me from whatever she believed ailed me. I secretly thought Angie was a bit jealous of Shelley. I guess she figured I should be able to confess all to her and get the advice I needed. She was, after all, my best friend.

“Oh, you know her,” I said. “She’s always trying to tie everything back to Kristina. Some perceived slight she thinks I’ve suffered from a woman I’ve never met.” I waved a hand in the air, hoping to communicate the blandness I felt inside. “I thought I was safe from all that crap when I went to a psychoanalyst. Maybe I’m not remembering my Freud right, but isn’t it my father who’s supposed to fuck up my emotional life?” I sputtered out a mirthless laugh. What father? The original birth certificate I had managed to track down hadn’t listed one. And the father who raised me was probably a candidate for Man of the Year, judging by the way everyone—my mother, his students, even the neighbors—worshiped him.

Now Angie was studying me as if, for a change, she thought my therapist might be on to something. “Another martini?” I said, downing the last of mine.

She frowned.

“C’mon, Ange,” I said, trying to rouse her. “This is New York City. There are plenty of men—” I waved a hand at our waiter, who I noticed was a particularly fine example of the breed “—and Stolichnaya to go around.”

And plenty of work to do, I realized. But I was feeling more than up to it. It was a good thing, too, because Claudia had picked up the smoking habit she had given up months earlier after she had discovered a new line in her upper lip. Apparently she had bigger things to worry about now that Roxanne Dubrow had ruined her life, as she alleged whenever she returned reeking of smoke from the handicapped bathroom. I didn’t mind her frequent absences, seeing as I felt like I could run this campaign single-handedly, with the assistance of Lori, of course.

But Claudia roused herself from her nicotine stupor just in time for the focus group testing. Because if we hoped to understand the desires, and insecurities, of the 18-to-24-year-old set just as keenly as we understood the desires, and insecurities, of the over-30 set, we needed to do some research. Even Dianne left the Dubrow family enclave in Old Brookville, Long Island, where she ran the Dubrow empire practically from the comfort of her home, to personally conduct the research. Although the building complex that housed Research and Development and one of our manufacturing complexes was only a short drive away in Bethpage, the market tests would be conducted in Cincinnati and Minneapolis. As VP of Marketing, Claudia had gone, too.

Though I was surprised I hadn’t been invited this time, I didn’t mind. In truth, I always found focus group research, although necessary in many ways, borderline ridiculous. As if the New Yorker in me, the woman who had been born and bred in the shopping mecca of the world, couldn’t completely wrap my mind around the idea that a bunch of women from Middle America were going to tell me something about what women truly craved in cosmetic products.

So I was happy enough to maintain the Roxanne Dubrow fort on Park Avenue while Claudia and Dianne headed off to the Midwest to observe a hand-selected segment of 18-to-24-year-olds who had been deemed our new target market.

I was equally glad when Claudia came back, as Lori had started to angst again over Dennis’s pending applications. “What if he gets in? He doesn’t even talk about what that will mean for us….” she whined during those moments when I clearly hadn’t dumped enough work on her. I found myself nodding sympathetically at the appropriate intervals, all the while wondering if what Dennis did or ultimately didn’t do mattered at all. Lori would either go with him or move on. Life went on no matter how much we angsted over it. This was one of the wisdoms that age had brought me. I took some measure of comfort in the idea that I was free from all the pining that came from being twenty-three. It was all so useless in the long run, wasn’t it?

But as much as I hoped to disregard the pinings of youth, once Claudia dumped the focus group findings on me to review, I found myself deluged in information about what the 18-to-24-year-old female wanted most. At least when it came to her appearance.

She wanted color. Lots of it. Shine, sparkle, glitter.

She wanted to stand out. Be unique.

She wanted to be strong, yet feminine. A lithe athlete in strawberry-scented lip gloss.

She owned an average of two Juicy Couture outfits, spent more time surfing the Internet than she did watching TV and preferred cosmetics called “Don’t Quit Your Day Job” to the more descriptive “Passionfruit Pink.”

I also learned that the person she most aspired to be was Irina Barbalovich.

Which is exactly why Roxanne Dubrow, or more specifically, Dianne, wanted her to be their new face.

And so the wooing began. It was simple enough at first. Not many people in the fashion industry turned down a personal phone call from Dianne Dubrow, least of all Mimi Blaustein, CEO of Turner Modeling Agency and agent to its current star property, Irina.

As with most relationships, the courtship began with food. Lunch was promptly arranged. And because a lot was riding on this relationship, restaurant selection was of the utmost importance. Lori was promptly sent on a mission to uncover Irina’s preferences.

This was not such a difficult mission. The Internet was rife with interviews and sites devoted to Irina. Apparently the entire universe wanted to know what Irina wanted, and I had to assume, since no one knew Irina from any other nineteen-year-old up until recently, this desire was that her hips were slight enough and her abs tight enough to make her irresistible in a pair of low-slung jeans; that her bust-to-hip ratio made her absolutely stunning in most any fabric a designer draped on her.

What Lori uncovered was that Irina was a vegan of the worst kind. Nondairy. Wheat-free. And wholly organic.

Thank God we were in New York City, probably the only place in the world where you could find a restaurant that was up-to-the-moment chic yet capable of creating well-presented plates featuring food that had not been tortured during its lifespan, sprayed with pesticides, kept alive by antibiotics or mishandled in any way, shape or form.

That restaurant was Mandela, a short walk away on Madison Avenue, and usually a month-long wait for a reservation. Unless you happened to be dining with Irina, of course.

Miraculously, or not so miraculously depending on how you looked at it, Mandela just so happened to have an opening during the very two-hour spread that Mimi’s assistant had allotted for Irina to make herself available to Dianne Dubrow and Co.

The reservation was made for six people, according to the hastily scrawled note Claudia had left lying on Lori’s desk, which I had come across while dropping off some files.

Six? It seemed like a curious number. Irina and her agent. Claudia, Dianne and me. Who was the sixth? I wondered.

It certainly wasn’t Lori, because although she had, through her administrative support, probably worked as hard as I had to prepare us for this meeting, she never got to enjoy the perks like Claudia and I did. It could have been Lana Jacobs, though we generally didn’t bring in PR at this point—not until we had the prospective model on board. Mark Sulzberg from Legal? Way too soon for that. It wasn’t like Irina was ready to sign a contract with us yet, especially since we weren’t the only players in the fashion industry vying for Irina’s hand.

It could have been Phillip Landau, the up-and-coming photographer who had first captured Irina for Vogue. The two had become almost inseparable since that career-boosting fashion spread, and their constant camaraderie might have sparked rumors of romance, if not for the fact that Phillip was gay.

Still curious, I popped my head into Claudia’s office. “So who’s going to lunch next week?” I inquired.

Claudia looked up from the issue of W she’d been poring over, whether because she was trend-spotting or simply gathering ammunition for her next shopping spree I wasn’t sure.

“Lunch?” Claudia said, gazing up at me in what looked like a drug-induced fog. She was shopping, I decided. Nothing else could put a glaze like the one I saw in Claudia’s eyes right now like the pursuit of the latest handbag or cut of trouser.

“With Irina?”

Her gaze sharpened up immediately, as if the very utterance of Irina’s name put all her senses on full alert. “Well, Irina and Mimi, of course. Me and Dianne,” she said, ticking off each name on the tips of her manicured fingers. “Michael—”

“Michael Dubrow?” I asked, startled. “Why is he coming?”

Claudia eyed me speculatively. I must have been showing a little more emotion than the situation warranted.

Hoping to dispel any suspicion I may have caused, I said, “It just seems peculiar that the vice president of our Overseas Division is attending a lunch to woo our latest model, don’t you think?” Even as I said the words with the veneer of cool indifference that had become my trademark, new anxiety washed over me. I hadn’t seen Michael at close range for quite some time. Shortly after our affair, he had taken over management of the Overseas Division, which kept him out of the country a lot. When he was in the States, he usually worked out of the Long Island office, and even if he did come to New York, he was easy enough to avoid, seeing as the doors to the family town house in Sutton Place weren’t exactly open to all. The few times I did find myself in meetings with him in our Park Avenue offices, there were enough other people in the room for me to maintain a cool, corporate indifference to him from across the room. But the intimacy of sitting across a table in a restaurant from Michael suddenly seemed like too much to bear. It surprised me to what extent he could unravel me after all this time. Maybe I was getting soft in my old age.

“I believe he’s coming to escort Courtney,” she said, feasting her gaze once more on the magazine before her.

“Courtney?”

“Courtney Manchester. The new director of R & D?” she said, looking at me again. “I guess he feels responsible for her. Or something,” she continued. “After all, he did, in a sense, acquire her, right along with the Sparkle line. Knowing him, he probably wants to claim the company’s new baby as his own so he can reap all the glory once Roxy D takes off.” She snorted. “But I suppose with the amount of money this company is dropping on this product, something glorious is bound to happen.”

As Claudia moved on to her typical rant about how Michael—or even Dianne, for that matter—didn’t know a thing about successfully marketing a product beyond throwing a bunch of money at it, I nodded absently, my mind whirling with the implications of what she had just told me. For a brief moment, I wasn’t even sure what bothered me more: the fact that I suspected Michael was openly wooing his next conquest or the fact that, clearly, I was not a main player in Roxanne Dubrow’s next big campaign. I hadn’t even been invited to this fucking lunch.

Before the steam visibly shot out of my ears, I interrupted Claudia’s tirade with a hurried excuse about a call I needed to make to a sales rep, then headed straight for my office, closing the door behind me.

And while I sat there contemplating the fact that my future at Roxanne Dubrow was not as rosy as I had once thought, I found myself clicking on the e-mail archive where I had filed the semiannual corporate newsletters we received.

Glancing through the file, I quickly located the newsletter announcing Roxanne Dubrow’s acquisition of Sparkle and opened it up, my eyes seeking out the article—and more specifically, the photo of Courtney Manchester I had barely glanced at when it first arrived. But I took it all in now.

Like Courtney Manchester’s winning smile. Her russet hair and sparkling green eyes.

Michael always was a sucker for a pretty face. And this one was downright irresistible to him, I was sure.

If he wasn’t sleeping with her yet, it was only a matter of time.

To think I had once let this man inside me without a condom.

But not even my anger could squash the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Why did this bother me so much? I had dumped better men than Michael since, at least in terms of how available Drew or Ethan had made themselves to me.

Because you loved him, a little voice whispered, as I remembered how many nights I had lain awake during our affair, wishing he weren’t so powerful, so ambitious, so hard to nail down for more than just some fleeting yet utterly intimate encounters.

Is that what love was? Longing followed by pain and loss?

If that was true, I didn’t want any part of it.

4

“A man in love is incomplete until he is married. Then he is finished.”

—Zsa Zsa Gabor

If I could have flung myself wholeheartedly into the new campaign, I would have. Anything to avoid thinking about what a disappointment the men in my life were.

But since Claudia had carefully excluded me from any meaningful role in the Roxy D campaign, I no longer felt compelled to work late reviewing advertising firms and drafting proposals. If Claudia wanted this baby all to herself, then she could deal with it all by herself.

I had better things to do. It wasn’t like Roxanne Dubrow was going to survive next year on the strength of Roxy D alone. There was still, according to our market research, a whole segment of women in the 35-to-50-year-old range who had yet to discover the wonders of Youth Elixir, our flagship moisturizer. I decided to concern myself once more with the demographic that needed me most, at least from a skincare perspective. Besides, the Youth Elixir campaign needed all my creative energy if I hoped to keep it afloat now that the budget for it had been cut nearly in half.

I had carefully explained to Shelley the challenge of promoting the Youth Elixir on a drastically reduced budget that week during our session. I could see she was looking for an opening to talk about something with a bit more emotional depth than whether or not I could single-handedly raise Youth Elixir to new sales heights, but I didn’t give her the chance. What was the point of wallowing in whatever problems she imagined remained beneath the surface?

Still, I was aware of some lingering malaise over Michael, one I could not erase as effectively as I had Ethan.

No less than three times that week, I caught myself fantasizing about some big scene in which, with one or two killing statements, I revealed to Courtney as well as to Michael’s doting sister, Dianne, that Michael Dubrow was a womanizing jerk. Which was why I decided to disappear for the few hours that I lived in danger of running into Michael and his entourage.

So, at eleven-thirty on the appointed day—a full forty-five minutes before the Dubrow clan was due to arrive via car service from Long Island—I went to Bloomingdale’s.

In case you think I was shirking my duties out of emotional distress, trust me, I did have some competitive shopping to do. Some of the major manufacturers had come out with new gift packages, and I needed to see what Roxanne Dubrow’s competitors were up to, didn’t I?

The fact that I dawdled in the designer section on Two once I was done in cosmetics had nothing to do with anything. After all, September was now fully upon us, and I could already feel the cooler weather creeping in. I needed to stock up on this season’s trousers and sweaters if I hoped to make it through the coming winter.

By the time I left Bloomingdale’s a full two hours later, I was armed with enough shopping bags to make my time away from the office look suspiciously like a personal shopping spree. So I opted for a quick cab ride across town to my apartment, where I relieved myself of all non-work-related expenditures, and took a few moments to dust powder over my face and freshen up my lipstick. Because if I was unfortunate enough to run into Michael, I needed to look gorgeous enough to fill him with a pang of regret that he would never, ever, have me in the horizontal—or otherwise—again.

Take that, I said, standing before the full-length mirror in my bedroom and studying the way my light sweater hugged my curves, the way my narrow skirt accentuated my legs. My well-cut jacket that balanced the vamp element the skirt lent the whole outfit, setting me firmly in the tastefully-corporate-yet-supremely-feminine camp. A dab of lipstick (just a refresher, mind you—I didn’t want to look like I was trying too hard) and I left the apartment, more than ready to face whatever Michael Dubrow had to dish out.

Of course, one glance at my watch as the cab rolled toward Park Avenue indicated that I had been gone almost three hours and was likely in no danger of running into any of the Dubrows. The way I calculated it, lunch had ended by two o’clock and Dianne et al. were on the L.I.E. no later than two-fifteen.

Which was why my eyes practically popped out of my head when my cab pulled up and I spotted the Dubrows’ shiny dark luxury sedan parked in front of the building. The driver sat inside reading a newspaper, as if he didn’t anticipate leaving anytime soon.

I paid my cab fare and stepped out onto the sidewalk, knowing full well there was no way I could avoid the Dubrow clan any longer.

The first thing I noticed when I entered the office was that it was eerily empty—and surprisingly quiet. Lori’s desk was vacant, and if not for the furious tapping of keys that I heard coming from Claudia’s office, I would have thought the building had been evacuated.

I stopped in her doorway. “What’s going on?”

She glanced up. “Where have you been?”

“Bloomingdale’s,” I replied, holding up the single bag I had brought back to the office with me, which contained an assortment of offerings from our main competitors. “The winter gift packages are in stores,” I replied by way of explanation.

“Dianne has got everyone gathered in the conference room,” Claudia said. “We’re about to have a champagne toast.”

“Don’t tell me you got Mimi Blaustein to sign over her star property during lunch?”

“No, no,” Claudia said, shaking her head. “Please. You should have seen the way everyone was fawning over that Irina at lunch. Disgusting. As if anyone was really interested in what a girl barely out of her training bra had to say, which wasn’t much.” She rolled her eyes. “No, Irina and Mimi are long gone. Something about a plane Irina had to catch to Paris.” I saw a hint of bleariness in her well-made-up eyes and realized that Claudia was likely exhausted from having to curb her irritation with the girl-barely-out-of-training-bra for the sake of the company’s agenda. “I just wanted to get this e-mail out before the end of day and I was hoping to buy you some extra time….”

“Time for what?” I blinked.

“Oh, God knows. Dianne has some sort of announcement she wants to make.”

Everyone was already assembled, from PR and Sales to the marketing teams for all three of the brands. I spotted Michael right away, chatting merrily with Doug Rutherford, the Director of Sales, who kept an office at the other end of our U-shaped space for when he was in town. In that one fleeting glance I allowed myself, I saw that Michael was just as handsome as ever, with his dark brown hair and thickly lashed blue eyes. Although he had just passed the forty-two mark, he somehow seemed younger-looking than ever. Michael epitomized the phrase “boyishly handsome,” with his (seemingly) guileless features and somewhat petulant mouth and jutting chin. It suited his position as the late-in-life baby, born a full twelve years after Dianne—much to the delight of Roxanne Dubrow and her late husband, Ambrose. And Michael was every bit as spoiled and selfish as that position in life allowed, I had realized just after he had carelessly made love to me as if it didn’t matter. As if I didn’t matter.

Not allowing myself to dwell on that face—or the surprising tremor of feeling that radiated through me, even after all this time—I made my eyes flit about the room until they fell on Dianne, who stood at the helm, her shiny brown hair framing her perfectly made-up face and flawless skin—well, as flawless as a woman of fifty-four could look. She was, as always, dressed to perfection in a fitted ivory suit (the season’s new black, as of last week’s issue of W), and looking like the petite but exquisite queen of the Dubrow clan that she had become when her mother had gone into retirement over a decade ago. The sight of her filled me with a strange sort of relief, as it occurred to me that I had not seen Dianne in probably months. Though she had always ruled the roost from the Long Island office, previously she had made her presence in the New York office felt through frequent visits. I wondered now what had kept her away.

“Makes you want to puke, doesn’t she?” Claudia said, startling me as she came to stand at my side.

“Puke?” I asked, confused.

“Courtney Manchester. The redhead talking to Dianne….”

I shifted my gaze, taking in the woman who stood by Dianne’s side, smiling up at her with perfectly made-up porcelain features. I hadn’t even recognized her. Probably because she looked even more beautiful than she did in that little photo I had dug up.

I decided to play neutral. What choice did I have? “Well, she’s a beautiful woman,” I replied, as if this explained everything, right down to the tremble my body could barely contain.

Claudia snorted. “Please. Wait until you see her teeth. She’s a Brit, remember?”

I tried to focus on this one seeming flaw as I made my way across the room to greet Dianne. I couldn’t very well avoid the CEO of Roxanne Dubrow just because my heart felt like someone had just placed a large boulder on it. Besides, Dianne had already spotted me across the room and had gently waved me over, her face wreathed in the kind of gracious warmth that was a perk of her deluxe lifestyle.

“Grace Noonan!” Dianne said, holding out one well-manicured hand to me and pulling me into a cheek-grazing embrace. Dianne treated her employees as if they were family, only somehow I never truly felt like a member, no matter how many corporate hugs and Christmas gifts I’d collected over time. “We missed you at lunch today. Claudia said you had another appointment…?”

Before I could turn to send my boss a querying glance, Dianne introduced me to the lovely Courtney, who smiled pleasantly up at me. She was a tiny little thing—probably no more than five-four.

Suddenly there I was, smiling just as cordially back and extending a hand. Was this the woman who would convince Michael Dubrow that a relationship with one of his employees wouldn’t destroy the Dubrow empire? I wondered, gazing on her pretty features, yes, there was the matter of a turned front tooth, but it really was quite charming, and listening to the pleasantries she uttered in that beautiful British accent. I took some small measure of comfort in the idea that maybe Michael’s interest had more to do with the profit he saw in the merger between Sparkle and Roxanne Dubrow. Perhaps it was this small ray of hope that gave me strength when Michael himself finally made his way over to us.

Balls, I thought, as he gazed frankly at me, a confident smile on that well-shaped mouth. If nothing else, Michael Dubrow had a set of balls on him, I thought. I felt anew the desire to cut him down to size in front of Dianne, who gazed at him fondly as he stepped into our circle, and Courtney, who looked like she was about to fawn all over him, judging from the way her features softened when he stopped next to her.

“Grace, good to see you,” he said, nodding at me before turning to Courtney. “I assume you’ve met Courtney,” he continued, not taking his gaze from her, as if she were some precious jewel that had caught his eye.

And apparently, she was. Because no sooner had Michael locked gazes with the lovely Courtney than Dianne suddenly remembered that she had gathered us all here for a reason. “It’s time,” she said, with a clap of her hands that commanded the attention of everyone in the room and sent Lori, who, I noticed, had been circulating with a champagne-laden tray, to our circle. Once we had grabbed the remaining five glasses and Lori had tucked the tray beneath the conference table, Dianne stood center stage.

“I’m sure you are all wondering why I have gathered you here today,” she said, flashing us that gracious smile. “As it turns out, I have a wonderful announcement to make. Two, in fact,” she continued, her proud glance flitting over to Michael and Courtney.

“As you all know, last year we acquired the wonderful Sparkle line headed up by Courtney Manchester out of the U.K. And it is our fervent hope that by placing this line under the Roxanne Dubrow umbrella, the future of our great line will be secure. That’s why I am proud to announce that Courtney Manchester, who will oversee the transformation of this new product under Roxanne Dubrow, has been promoted to the position of Vice President of Product Development.”

The room erupted in a smattering of applause, small enough for me to hear Claudia mutter, “As if we didn’t see that coming.”

Then, as if the other thing that was coming was just as obvious, Dianne continued, “And I am also happy to announce another merger, this one a bit more personal.” Raising her glass she said, “To Michael and Courtney, who have just, this past weekend, announced their engagement.”

5

“We are all tied to our destiny and there is no way to liberate ourselves.”

—Rita Hayworth

I stopped at Zabar’s on the way home, feeling a burning need to chop, sauté and simmer. It wasn’t often that I cooked, and on some level, I knew its value for me was more therapeutic than culinary. I had decided on stir fry, mostly because I understood that after the emotionally harrowing events of the afternoon, I would have to chop a gardenful of vegetables to soothe what ailed me. And chop I would, having picked up three peppers, a monstrous eggplant, a head of broccoli, a slew of mushrooms and more garlic than one should consume on Friday night if one hopes to find oneself in the company of others. But I had already decided I didn’t want to socialize. Claudia had pressed me for a post-work cocktail on my way out of the office, but I didn’t feel like standing at some bar, listening to my more-bitter-by-the-hour boss rail against the injustice of Courtney’s sudden rise to the right hand of the Dubrow family, especially when the place she had taken in Michael’s heart still stung. And how it stung. Even more so when I saw the way Dianne embraced the happy couple, welcoming Courtney to the family in a way that filled me with a strange longing. I knew now why I never felt a part of the Dubrow “family.” Because I wasn’t. And never would be.

That thought sent me straight to the liquor store after Zabar, to pick up a bottle of wine. I had felt a determination to make this evening alone just as pleasurable and relaxing as it might have been had I spent it with someone else. I even splurged on a French Bordeaux.

So it was with a bag of produce and a bottle of wine that I sailed through my front lobby. I even winked at Malakai, my ever-friendly and ever-accommodating doorman, who graciously held open the door, eyeing my purchases as I glided through. “Is my tall friend coming by?” he asked cheerfully, referring to Ethan. Malakai always referred to the men in my life by some physical characteristic. My last boyfriend, Drew, had been his “blond friend.” Even Michael, despite the fact that his visits were few and far between, had earned the moniker of Malakai’s “blue-eyed friend.”

This was the problem with doormen. You couldn’t hide your love life—or lack thereof—from them. Though we only had one and he only worked five to midnight, Malakai’s shift covered that crucial period of the evening when everything did—or didn’t—happen in a woman’s life.

“No, no one’s coming by,” I said, with a bracing smile as I transferred my bags to one arm and headed for the line of mailboxes at the other end of the lobby, trying to escape Malakai’s inevitable teasing comment about how he would never let me spend an evening alone if he were twenty years younger.

I knew he meant well, in the way that aging uncle of yours meant well when he sang you the Miss America song when you were six. But I just wasn’t in the mood.

Once at the mailboxes, I slid my key in, then grabbed out the handful of catalogs, bills and credit card offers that were my daily due, when a letter caught my eye, the return address as familiar to me by now as my own.

K. Morova. Brooklyn, NY.

I knew that handwriting, though I did not know the writer herself. Had traced my finger often enough over the signature that had come back on the return receipt for the letter I had sent Kristina Morova, all those months ago.

My mother, at least in biological fact.

The woman whom I had believed, up until this moment, had no interest in meeting me.

I ignored the pulse of pure fear that constricted my throat and quickly slid the letter between the pages of a Pottery Barn catalog, as if to protect myself from its contents, then headed for the bank of elevators that flanked the lobby.

“Finally getting that nice cool weather,” came a voice, startling me out of whatever scattered thoughts I was having. I looked up to see Mrs. Brandemeyer, who lived a floor below me and had been a tenant of 122 W. 86th Street since the sixties. Her long-term residency, combined with her elderly status, seemed to give her certain inalienable rights. Like laundry room usage (you always forfeited the remaining dryer to Mrs. Brandemeyer, who was “too old to be riding up and down, up and down”) or the proprietary air she took when it came to Malakai. She had treated me rather suspiciously when I had first moved in six years earlier. “I don’t like loud music,” she proclaimed just moments after she had learned I was not only single but living in the apartment above hers. Once she discovered that I wasn’t going to be having raucous parties every weekend, she immediately bestowed upon me neighborly chatter about such subjects as the weather, the number of menus she received underneath her door on any given day or the condition of the carpeting in the hallways.

I was never one for small talk, and this evening it seemed especially burdensome, when I had something large looming between the pages of the shopping catalog I held. So I just nodded and smiled while she speculated about the sudden drop in temperatures.

“It’s going to be a cold, cold winter,” she said with satisfaction as she stepped off, leaving me to ride that last story alone.

I felt a momentary surprise when I stepped into my apartment and discovered it was exactly the same as I had left it that morning, except for the fading evening light that was now slanting through the gauzy ivory curtains. Outside the city glittered, and I took solace in the fact that regardless of whatever Kristina Morova had decided to write in her letter to me, New York City would still be just outside my window, waiting for me like an old friend.

Maybe it was that letter and its unknown contents that sent me into the next flurry of activity: putting the produce in the kitchen, hanging up my coat, straightening the stack of magazines that I had yet to review, wiping down the kitchen counters. Then curiosity must have won over the fear throbbing through me, and I found myself slipping out of my shoes, curling up on the couch and taking that letter in hand with the sense of fatalism that had been subtly stalking me ever since I had sent my own letter seven months ago.

I carefully broke the seal on the envelope, pulled out a single sheet of ivory stationery decorated with flowers at the top. My first thought was that it reminded me of the stationery my grandmother used. The second was that there was only one page of loopy scrawl. I briefly wondered at that, then settled in to read.

Dear Grace Noonan,

I thank you much for your letter some months back and I write to tell you how sorry I am that I did not make my reply sooner but so much has happened. I have news of my sister, Kristina Morova, to share, but I am so sorry to tell you it is not good. My sister died this past December, of breast cancer. I am sorry to bring you such sad news but I know my sister would want you to know.

I also write to tell you that you have a sister, Sasha, just sixteen years old. She is with me now, in Brooklyn.

I am not sure if you still want to meet with us, but I want to honor my sister’s wish and I want to invite you to come to our home. I give you my number in Brooklyn and hope to hear from you about this matter.

Sincerely,

Katerina Morova

I read the letter three times before the contents sank in. Before the cruel truth beneath that shaky cursive and stilted grammar broke through.

She was gone. Kristina Morova was gone.

I felt a momentary relief that at least there was a reason for all the silence of the past months. Followed by a disappointment so keen, tears rushed to my eyes.

Gone. Gone.

Still, no tears fell. Maybe because for me, she had never really been there. Could I really mourn someone I did not technically know?

I stood up from the couch with some idea that I should do something. But uncertain what that thing was, I walked woodenly to the kitchen, stared at the bags of produce I’d left there and, as if on autopilot, pulled out the cutting board. Grabbing a head of garlic from the bag, I peeled away the crisp outer shell on one of the cloves and began to chop, with some idea that this meal must be prepared, come hell or high water. Not that I was hungry, but I needed some sense of purpose, even if it was simply to keep this newly purchased bag of produce from rotting, neglected, in the bottom drawer of my fridge.

It wasn’t until I got to my eighth clove of garlic—about four cloves more than I actually needed—that I came out of my dense fog. And this only because I had somehow managed, in all my stoical chopping, to take a sliver off my index finger.

“Fuck!”

And then, because I felt a rush of tears that was most definitely more than this little cut could possibly provoke, I stopped, took a deep breath, and after dousing the wound with cold water, wrapped my finger in a napkin and grabbed the phone.

“Angie, it’s Grace,” I said into my best friend’s machine. When she picked up the extension, I felt a noticeable relief wash over me.

“What’s up?” she said urgently, as if she sensed some underlying emotion in the three words I’d uttered on her machine. More likely she was just surprised to hear from me. It wasn’t like me to call her on a Friday night to chat.

Then, as casually as I might convey a car accident I had witnessed from the safety of the curb, I told her everything.

“Good God, Grace, are you okay?” she sputtered. Then, “Never mind. Don’t answer that. I’m coming over.”

I didn’t have the energy to argue. Or, maybe for once I didn’t want to. Because whatever feelings I thought I should or shouldn’t be having about Kristina Morova’s death, I did at least sense that something momentous had occurred. Something that couldn’t be glossed over in my usual fashion.

And so I let Angie march into my apartment that night, even felt emotion clog my throat when she hugged me fiercely. It was this, more than anything else, that convinced me I should allow her to console me, to sit on the couch and regale me with advice because I somehow couldn’t bring myself to talk about it. And when she was done with that, to feed me.

“How can you tell if the chicken is done?” she called from the kitchen. She had insisted on finishing the meal— I think the way I sat mutely on the couch during her consolatory speech convinced her that she needed to do something for me. So I had curled up on the couch with the glass of wine she poured me, only to remember that when it came to matters of the kitchen, Angie was one who should have stayed in the living room with the glass of wine.

I felt a smile trace its way across my mouth as I uncurled myself from the couch and meandered into the kitchen. A smile I quickly lost the moment I saw the havoc Angie’s latest culinary attempt had wreaked: mutilated vegetable carcasses littered the counter while strips of what looked like chicken fat swam in an olive oil spill near the stove. The meal itself looked like a disaster in the making. The vegetables were cooking just fine—in fact, they were probably over-cooking. But the chicken was still in huge, cutlet-size hunks.

Apparently, Angie had never made stir fry before.

“Mmmm…I’m not sure it’s going to cook that way,” I said, stepping in and taking over. Once I began pulling the chicken out of the pan and cutting it into smaller strips, I felt better. All of Angie’s coddling had only made me feel helpless, and that wasn’t a feeling I liked to cultivate.

Now Angie stood by helplessly but also visibly relieved that I had taken over, though she kept apologizing.

“Maybe we should order in,” she muttered, eyeballing the still-pink flesh of the chicken as I began to toss the strips into the pan. Angie had a fear of death by microbacteria.

“Don’t worry, I’ll make it edible,” I said, slicing up the last cutlet and stirring it into the mix.

By the time we sat down to eat, I was feeling like myself again. In control. Satisfied. And no longer in the mood to dwell on things that might have been. I hadn’t really lost anything. I was still the same Grace Noonan I was the day before. There was no funeral to attend, no condolences to accept. I wasn’t, technically, the grieving family. So technically, there was nothing to grieve, right?

I had also come to a decision, despite Angie’s prodding that I meet this newfound aunt and sister. Although I was more curious about them than I let on, I decided I didn’t want to know them. Didn’t want to care for the family who had only contacted me out of a sense of obligation.

“That was delicious, Grace,” Angie said, leaning back in her chair, having eaten so heartily of the stir fry once she had been assured the chicken wouldn’t kill her, she looked ready for a cab ride downtown and a pillow. That was fine with me. I was more than ready to be alone.

Unfortunately, Angie had other ideas. “So, I brought over a toothbrush and a change of underwear….” she began.

“Oh, Angie, you don’t need to stay,” I immediately protested. But feeling bad at the hurt look in her eyes, I relented.

She beamed. “Great. I’ll run out and get us some Double Chocolate Häagen-Dazs. This is gonna be fun, Gracie. Just like old times when we used to do sleepovers back in Brooklyn….”

It was more like old times than even I expected, especially when Angie forewent the sofa bed, insisting instead on sharing my bed.

So there we were, lying side by side in the dark, just like when we were in junior high. We had indulged ourselves on ice cream while Angie talked excitedly about the location Justin had found to shoot the opening scene in his film. We eventually moved on to other topics we shared in common, like men.

Angie listened quietly while I expressed my relief over having Ethan out of my life. “I don’t think he would have handled this whole business with Kristina Morova very well….” I said, unexpectedly bringing up the subject I had studiously avoided all evening.

I felt Angie’s eyes on me in the dark. As if she sensed the unease I was feeling. Without saying a word, she took my hand in hers. And despite this independent front I was trying to put on, I was painfully glad I wasn’t alone right then. Even so, it wasn’t until I heard Angie’s breath fall in the deep, rhythmic pattern of sleep that I allowed myself to weep.

I’m not sure how long I let the tears roll quietly down my face, my body shaking with the effort of holding back any sobs that might wake Angie, but the tide eventually stopped, allowing me to turn and look at my sleeping friend with a sad smile. I really hadn’t lost a thing, had I? I still had my best friend. My family, whom, I realized with a sudden shiver of unexpected anxiety, I needed to call.

There was no hurry, I thought as I felt myself slip into sleep. And I was nearly submerged in a blissfully unconscious state when the sound of a cell phone ringing jarred me awake once more.

“Shit,” I heard Angie mutter. She glanced at me as I eyeballed her groggily. “Sorry, Grace,” she said, scrambling from the bed.

I watched her shadowy form move across the bedroom and out the door, which in her hurry to get out of the room, she had left ajar. Open just enough for me to hear her rummage through her pocketbook, locate the still-ringing phone and silence it.

“Hey, sweetheart…” I heard her say.

Justin, I realized drowsily.

“I know, I know. I miss you, too, baby….”

I felt my insides soften along with Angie’s voice as I imagined Justin in their apartment alone, longing for Angie just as surely as she was longing for him.

To be so loved—

My heart sank with sudden swiftness.

I realized I had lost something tonight. Something even greater than a fifty-one-year-old woman I had never known, yet was bound to in the most intimate of ways.

Hope.

6

“You may admire a girl’s curves on the first introduction, but the second meeting shows up new angles.”

—Mae West

The last person I expected to revive my spirit was Irina Barbalovich, but when I stepped into the office on Monday morning and found a seven-foot-tall cardboard effigy of her staring me in the face, I felt oddly bolstered. Maybe it was the way her pretty blond hair blew in the nonexistent wind, or the way she stood, hip jutting, chin tilted as if she had every reason in the world to be happy.

I suppose she did, judging by the amount of money the Dubrow clan was dangling before her pretty blue eyes, hoping to lure her in.

“What’s with the Irina doll in the lobby?” I asked Lori, who was already at her desk.

“Dianne ordered it,” Lori replied. “I think she’s planning on inviting Irina up to the offices for a tour.”

I nodded at this bit of information, studying the face of the woman everybody wanted to call their own.

“She’s pretty amazing, huh?” Lori said, coming to stand beside me. Her gaze roamed from Irina’s cardboard face to mine. “You know, you could be her mother.”

Her mother? Alarm shot through me and my hand went to my cheek, as if my advancing age was suddenly apparent for the entire world to see.

Lori blushed, probably because she realized her comment had landed right on my thirty-four-year-old ego. “What I meant was, you two kinda look alike. You know, similar coloring, the shape of the face…”

I smiled. As a face-saving comment, it was a good one. I suppose it’s not every day a woman gets compared to the reigning supermodel.

I studied the image more closely, then realized that whatever faint resemblance Lori saw likely had to do with the fact that we both had roots in Eastern Europe. I guess there was a similarity in our facial structure and in the slight tilt to our eyes, but she looked more Slavic than I did. “My mother was Ukrainian,” I said, unthinkingly. Then I realized that was probably the first time in my life I had ever referred to Kristina Morova as my mother. And in light of the new revelations I had had over the weekend, the word stabbed at me.

Lori blinked, then frowned. “Really? Didn’t you tell me your parents were Irish?”

Now I was frowning. I suddenly remembered that no one in the office knew I was adopted. Mostly because I didn’t feel a need to share my personal history with anyone, outside of Angie, Justin, the DiFranco family and the few boyfriends I had allowed myself to open up to. According to ninety percent of the world, my parents were Thomas and Serena Noonan, a retired history professor and his lovely musician wife, living in New Mexico.

“My father is Irish,” I said, backpedaling. That was true. Black Irish. My adoptive mother was, technically, a mix of Irish and German and a bit of English thrown in. I bit back a sigh as I thought of my parents, realizing that I still needed to call them—had assured Angie I would do so.

But suddenly I wondered what telling them would accomplish. Nothing had changed in my life. Not really. In fact, once I let go of the harrowing disappointment the letter sent through me, I found myself feeling lighter. More free. I suppose there was something to the notion of living without expectation. If you had nothing to look forward to, you had nothing to lose.

“Her hair’s longer than yours. And not as blond,” Lori was saying now.

“Yeah, well, that’s a good hairdresser for you,” I said, a hand moving to my chin-length locks as I tried to engage myself. “Her eyes are bluer,” I added absently, my thoughts still on all that I did not want to talk about.

“Still, there’s something there,” Lori persisted, as if sensing some unease in me and hoping to cover it over by raising me to the heights of Irina’s beauty.

I stared hard at the effigy, suddenly wanted to resist any link to the supermodel. Any link that might somehow tie me to Kristina. But as I studied Irina’s cool confidence, I realized there was something I could learn from her. What was Irina Barbalovich but a farm girl from Russia with a pretty face? She had started her life afresh the moment she had landed in this country. I could start anew, too.

It was all marketing, after all.

So I quickly put aside any lingering emotions and refashioned myself as Grace Noonan, daughter of Thomas and Serena Noonan. Brooklyn born. Long Island bred. Columbia University educated, compliments of my father’s tenure in the history department. Talented, successful, smart.

It was a good thing I did, too. Because despite the fact that Claudia had tried to claim the Roxy D campaign for herself, she needed me.

And, I discovered, I needed this campaign, too. If only to forget…

Forget I did. I even canceled my therapy sessions in favor of the soothing rhythms of work. In fact, I worked so hard, it got to the point where I didn’t even know what day it was.

“Lori, did that agency ever get back to us with a bid?” I said, stepping out of the whirl of paper that had become my office over the past two weeks. I glanced down at the proposal I still held in my hand. “Says here they have to get back to us by October second. Maybe you ought to give them a reminder call—”

Lori giggled, causing me to finally look up at her.

“Grace, it’s the ninth already,” she said, her exasperation apparent. Lori thought it was hysterical how I could sweep through blocks of time without ever realizing what month we were in, or what day we were on. I don’t know why it happened—I didn’t question it. Maybe I figured it might keep me younger longer if I completely ignored the passing of time.

I glanced down at my watch, as if to verify the truth of her words. I frowned. “Ummm, would you give them a follow-up call?” I said. Then, turning on my heel, I headed back to my office, filled with a vague sense that some other event, momentous or otherwise, should have taken place in this time frame.

I was about to consult my day planner when realization hit.

My period. My fucking period.

It was…late.

A flurry of other realizations followed. Like that persistent ache in my breasts of late, with no follow-up act. And my cramps—was it my imagination, or did they feel different?

My gaze dropped to the half-eaten corn muffin slathered in butter that sat on my desk. I never ate corn muffins. This morning I’d had a raging lust for one. With butter, no less. I never ate butter except when I was in restaurants and couldn’t resist the bread basket. This morning it was all I could think about. It was all I craved…

Suddenly the half-muffin I had already ingested felt in danger of making a reappearance.

I sat down, rolling the rest of that muffin right back up into its wrapping and depositing it promptly in the wastebasket next to my desk.

It didn’t mean anything, I told myself, consulting my day planner and trying frantically to remember when I’d had my last period. I never really kept track, but I could usually figure out approximate dates by events in my life, as what I wore was sometimes impacted by the period factor. Ah…here, we go, I thought, spying the words “Met Fund-Raiser” written into the last week of August. I remembered I didn’t want to wear my silver-blue dress because of the old bloat factor—that Botticelli belly of mine sometimes bordered on blubber right before my period. Then came the weekend with Ethan, when he opted out of sex because I was menstruating (he was a bit squeamish—another reason to be glad he was out of the picture). My finger skittered forward to the next event I’d marked. That dreadful Wagner opera that even Ethan hadn’t wanted to endure any longer, so we snuck out, went back to my place and—

“Fuck!”

“Grace, are you all right?” Lori called.

I leaped from my seat, startled. Then, as if by instinct, I strode toward the door. “I’m fine…fine,” I said, nodding distractedly at her. “I, ummm, need to… Uh, hold all my calls.”

I shut the door, went back to my desk, stared down at my day planner once more and began to calculate, counting the days between my period and that ill-fated night. Oh, dear God. I could have been ovulating, for chrissakes.

Of all the nights for the latex to give out…

I put my hand on my stomach, gazing down as if I could divine what was going on inside my body just by looking at it. I tried to imagine a child growing inside me, and suddenly I saw it, alive and nestled in my lap. I could almost feel the warm weight of her—I felt certain that it was a her—against my body.

And I got that feeling again. That warm wash through my veins that I had felt that night with Ethan. Except this time it felt more like…longing.

“That’s insanity,” I insisted to myself, and then, as if to punctuate my words, my intercom buzzed, indicating I had a call from someone in the office. Claudia, I thought, recognizing the extension that lit up my caller ID screen.

I picked up. “What’s up?”

“What do you mean, what’s up? We have an eleven o’clock. It’s 11:05. Not that I want to disturb you.”

I bit back the retort I wanted to make, letting Claudia’s sarcasm slide. I sometimes think she takes delight in seeing me fuck up, which isn’t often. But could anyone blame me for forgetting we were meeting with a prospective ad agency this morning?

Needless to say, I was a bit preoccupied.

My preoccupation did not end with my eleven o’clock. Because it was leaning toward eleven-forty-five when I finally began to emerge from the dense fog that had descended over my brain ever since I’d done my little calculation. I was utterly useless during the meeting. Well, not totally useless. I mutely handed over the focus group research while Claudia pontificated on what we hoped to bring to the younger market to the two reps who had come from the Sterling Agency. Not even the chiseled good looks of the elder of the two—Laurence Bennett, approximately thirty-eight, approximately one position away from agency president and, depending on how you viewed his presentation style, practically flaunting that ringless left hand at us—could revive me.

I might not even have noticed his good looks, had it not been for the gleam I saw come into Claudia’s eye when, after she had gone over the slides laying out the desires, the hopes, the dreams and, more importantly, the buying habits of the 18-to-24-year-old set, Laurence winked and jokingly suggested that he was glad he wasn’t so young anymore.

From then on, I saw a new tension in Claudia’s movements as she went through the rest of the slides. In fact, if she’d had a tail, it would have been riding straight up into the air the way my mother’s cat’s had whenever some randy tom meandered through our yard.

Not that Larry noticed, I was sure. If nothing else, Claudia was subtle about her desires, or that desire was even part of her makeup. Nine times out of ten, the guy never even noticed she was female, much less attracted to him. Which probably accounted for the fact that Claudia hadn’t gotten laid since her husband left her for a younger woman five years ago.

Somehow the sight of her preening today filled me with a sadness I could not fathom. What was the point? I wondered as I watched their heads lean together to examine a chart Lori had created which summed up the research. It all would result in nothing anyway, I thought.

My hand went to my stomach reflexively.

Whereas this…this was…something.

What it was, exactly, had yet to be determined. And probably could have been determined sooner rather than later by a simple stop at Duane Reade for a pregnancy test. Yet somehow I was reluctant to verify what my body seemed to be saying.

Instead I fed it. Quite literally.

I went home that night and ate an entire pint of butter pecan ice cream. And that wasn’t the only indulgence I caved into. There was the bag of jalapeño cheddar potato chips I devoured, quite guiltlessly, along with lunch the next day. The Fettuccine Alfredo I grazed on at a café on my way home from work.

By the time I came home at week’s end, a tub of chocolate-covered pretzels in tow, I realized something else.

I liked the solitude of my life. The sight of my message-less answering machine did not bother me. Not even the memory of Michael’s confident grin as he gazed lovingly at Courtney had the power to hurt me. Nothing did. Not even Kristina Morova, I thought, carefully tucking her sister’s letter in my desk drawer, certain now there was no real reason to reply.

Six chocolate-covered pretzels later, I slid out of my work clothes in the small dressing area in my bathroom, seeking out the soft cotton yoga pants that had become my evening uniform as of late. As I began to slide them on, I caught a glance at my naked body in the mirror on the back of the door and stood, hesitantly turning sideways to check for any visible changes.

And began to imagine that the roundness I saw in my abdomen had nothing to do with my recent indulgences and everything to do with the longing that had taken over my mind.

A baby, I thought, running a hand over the small swell.

Suddenly everything seemed…possible.

A cold breeze accompanied me up the steps of the building where Shelley Longford, C.S.W., kept her neat little office, and as I climbed them I felt, for the first time in weeks, a sense of anticipation. Maybe it was because, for the first time since I had been coming to see her, I was actually looking forward to it.

I had news to share, after all.

“So what makes you think you’re pregnant?” Shelley said, finally breaking the silence she had fallen into ever since I cheerfully made my announcement, effectively sidetracking her interrogation as to why I had canceled my recent appointments. And as I embellished my story with the dates of my last ovulation, the bloatedness I felt, the tenderness in my breasts, I saw her usually placid expression purse with suspicion.

Clearly she wasn’t buying it. “The symptoms you describe could easily be premenstrual.”

I bristled. “I think after nearly thirty-five years, I know my body,” I argued, suddenly aware that I was arguing. In a somewhat calmer tone, I added, “I mean, have you ever been pregnant?”

Suddenly my question seemed inappropriate. For I had never broached the subject of her personal life in a session before. It had never been an issue before and I suppose it wasn’t now, I thought, glancing at her ringless left hand. A flutter of questions rose in me about the stranger who sat before me and I stared at her, hoping she’d give me some information for a change.

Of course, she didn’t. “Have you ever missed a period before?”

“Never,” I said—a bit smugly, considering the fact that I couldn’t entirely remember if this was true. “And I’ve never had a condom break inside me,” I continued, finding the validation I was looking for in the facts of this particular case. “Besides, I feel…different. My body feels different.” It was true. Ever since my period had failed to show up in its usual clockwork fashion, my body seemed to have shifted onto a new timetable. I was aware of myself in a way I hadn’t been before. I woke up in the morning with a heaviness in my limbs that I couldn’t attribute to sadness, for my mind felt suddenly clear.

Now here I was, sitting before a licensed professional and finally giving voice to that which my body already believed, and growing ever more suspicious of her by the second.

Just who the fuck did she think she was, telling me I had cramps? You see, that was the whole problem with this therapy business. As if anyone else could truly tell you what the hell was going on inside of you.

“I’m just saying it’s a possibility you are simply suffering from PMS,” was all she replied to my protest.

I retreated then, deciding I didn’t give a shit what she thought, and moved on to the subject of Claudia, who, predictably, had already started to pine for Laurence Bennett, Eligible Bachelor Number 6,785.

“I just don’t get her,” I said. “If she wants the fucking guy, she should just go after him. But instead, just like she always does when she meets a guy, she’s going to go on and on about how hot he is. Then, when he doesn’t notice the way she’s gawking at him across a meeting room, whine, whine, whine to me about how no one appreciates her for the goddess she is, how she’s better off alone, when what she really needs is to get fucking laid.”

I should mention that Shelley did not utter so much as a word during my discourse on Claudia. This was another thing I found irritating about her. How do you have a conversation with someone who seems to have no response to anything you have to say? It’s so fucking ridiculous. And because she was really getting on my nerves today, I decided to tell her so.

“What makes you think I don’t care about what you’re saying?” she replied.

“You should see yourself,” I said, angrily trying to pull together a prim yet blank expression for her benefit. “It’s clear to me you don’t give a shit about what I just told you about Claudia.”

“Maybe you don’t give a shit about what you just told me about Claudia.”

That silenced me. Probably because I had never heard Miss Priss utter a swear word—or any other word my mother might deem distasteful. Or maybe it was that she was right. I didn’t give a shit—not really—about Claudia’s love life. Or lack thereof. Then what the hell was I blabbering on about it for, especially at these prices?

So I moved on. Or thought I moved on, anyway, to the new campaign, the work I suddenly found myself deluged in. Until I came back around to someone else again, this time Lori. And just as I was summing up my assistant’s weepy little love fest, I realized I was doing it again. Going on and on about nonsense. What the hell was wrong with me? I had more important things to think about. Like the fact that I could be a mother in less than a year.

But knowing that wouldn’t yield the response I wanted from Shelley, and because she indicated in her usual miserly way that our time was up, I decided not to go there again. I mean, couldn’t the woman throw in an extra five minutes of therapy once in a while, for chrissakes?

When I stood up, I suddenly realized I was exhausted. Probably from the effort of talking. I couldn’t remember the last time I had spoken so much in a session.

Then, as if I couldn’t resist getting in one last little bit, I turned to Shelley once I reached the door. “Oh, I guess I should tell you. I got a letter back from K. Morova.” Then I laughed mirthlessly, as if finding humor in the fact that I had been all but obsessing over a signature I had believed belonged to my biological mother, but had in fact belonged to my aunt, who was equally a stranger to me. “As it turned out, K. Morova is also my biological aunt—Katerina, I think she signed it.” Then, as quietly and simply as I might have commented on the weather, I said, “Kristina would have written herself, I suppose, except she died last year. Cancer.” Then I shrugged, tugging my pocketbook more firmly onto my shoulder and reaching for the doorknob. “So I guess I’ll see you next—”

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