The Opposite of Drowning

by Erin McRae

  She’d never really had friends before. But Harry, and Jonathan, and really anyone at the publisher who found out that she had to work with Philippe. Some of the women in marketing had even started inviting her out for drinks, although she hadn’t figured out how to say yes yet.

  Right now, though, she needed to figure out how to say no.

  And so she paced. But there were no answers in walking, and she flopped back down on the window seat with far more force than its limited padding truly supported.

  “Ow!” Something oddly shaped pressed against her thigh, the muffled outline of it digging into her flesh. She bounced up again and lifted the cushion.

  A key.

  The key to the hope chest she hadn’t been able to find and had irrationally feared would into Cody’s hands. She snatched it up and, after a brief consideration, dug in the desk in the corner for twine, for thread, for anything. When she could find nothing that suited her uses, she went to the chest and unlocked it.

  She piled the contents on the floor – good plates, silver, a set of mother-of-pearl caviar spoons, table cloths, wedding lingerie that likely wouldn’t fit her, a white quilt, and two pillowcases with lace trim. She grabbed one and tugged at the decoration. It pulled away from the plainer fabric of the case, but didn’t tear. She took her teeth to it until it ripped free.

  Eliza placed everything back into the chest as quickly as she could, relocked it, threaded the key onto the lace and tucked the key down her shirt. This was her freedom. For now, a secret, though not for much longer. But as long as she had the key, she could believe she would be okay.

  SHE LASTED A WHOLE day before she had to speak with Cody. He called her, all quiet concern, on Sunday night. He apologized for not trying to contact her before, but Eliza hastened to assure him it was all right. After all, she’d been pretending to have a migraine – circumstances in which she wouldn’t want to be on the phone with anyone anyway. Then he asked if he could see her off at the airport the next day.

  Eliza said yes. Although it was the most public, awful scenario she could imagine. But they were WASPs, and maybe the audience of the whole thing would force their permanent parting into quiet.

  IN THE CAR TO THE AIRPORT Eliza sat silently while Cody, still speaking in hushed tones, suggested she stay in Boston to see a doctor, or at least find a decent specialist when she got to New York. It was only when they went inside the terminal that he noticed the key, strung on its ragged lace, around her neck.

  He touched it casually, the way he often touched her hair or her face. As if he owned it, or as if she was a pet whose attention he wanted. It wasn’t his fault – he was benevolent enough – but he didn’t know any other way to be.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  Eliza swallowed down a sudden burst of adrenaline. “The key to my hope chest.”

  “You found it!” Cody sounded delighted and – ironically, given the circumstances – more interested in the minutiae of her life than he had in ages. “I thought you said it was missing.”

  “It was. It was under a cushion in my old room. Which is strange, but whatever.” Ask, dammit, ask already so I can do this.

  “Why are you wearing it?”

  Eliza took a deep breath. “Because it’s mine. Because I don’t want anyone else to have it or have access to the things in that box.”

  “What’s in the box?” Cody asked, glancing nervously from side to side. “There’s not something dead in the box is there?”

  Eliza gave a sharp laugh in spite of herself. Oh he was lovely, sometimes. But this Cody, who cared about where she found old trinkets and who could make her laugh, she never saw him enough. If she did, maybe...but she didn’t. And now she was here.

  “There’s nothing dead in the box,” she said. “But I hate it. The box, the parties, the photos. The wedding boutique was terrible.” Her words picked up speed as she spoke, as if water was bursting through a dam. “I’ve known this for a while, but finding the key made it impossible for me to ignore. I don’t want any of this. I’m sorry. I’m doing this in an airport, and I am so sorry,” Eliza said and she began to twist her engagement ring around her finger. “I can’t marry you.”

  Cody’s eyebrows knit together in concern. “If you want to elope –”

  “I don’t!” She said with a force that surprised her. “I don’t,” she said a second time, more softly, but more forcefully too. “I can’t marry you. Or anyone. It’s not what I want, and it’s not who I am –”

  He reached for her, as if he were going to take her hand, and then drew back. “Eliza, we can talk about this.”

  “We can, but my answer is going to be the same. And if there’s any hope of this ever being all right between us, I would like, very much, if you would take this ring off my hand.” She held the left one out. Set me free, set me free, set me free she chanted in her head.

  “I’m not going to do that,” Cody said.

  She pursed her lips and looked down for a moment at her hand and at the floor. They were so close the tips of their shoes were almost touching. The world would never look this way again. Then she looked up at the man who was about to be her ex-fiancé and stared into his eyes. He’d be a great and powerful man one day soon, but in a way that would be as completely boring and useless as nearly every other great and powerful man.

  “Then I’ve made the right choice,” she said.

  Eliza took off the ring and pressed it into Cody’s hand. And then she turned, walked to the security line, and showed her boarding pass on her phone, the guard allowing her to pass where Cody could not follow.

  Chapter 10

  These Messages from the Dead

  Harry

  HARRY DRAGGED HIMSELF into the little mews and through the front door of his house wishing he’d spent another day, or perhaps several, in Vienna. Anything would be better than being home with nothing to distract him from grief and his own inappropriate desire for Eliza. About whom he’d written a secret book and who he would have to see at the office tomorrow.

  He dropped his suitcase by the door and stooped to pick up the mail that had accumulated on the hall floor. Most of it was junk, but amongst the anonymous white envelopes was a package. It was small, about the size of a trade paperback, and addressed to Harry in Steven’s handwriting.

  Harry left the rest of the mail where it was and took the package into the kitchen. He slit the flaps of the box open, careful not to cut or mar the so-familiar hand spelling out Harry’s name and address.

  Inside was, indeed, a small volume. The cover was plain brown leather, the pages heavy cream. All of them were covered in Steven’s tidy script.

  You fucking bastard, Harry thought. He snapped the book shut and set it on the counter. You sent me your diary.

  HARRY RETURNED TO HIS office the next day with the diary tucked into his bag. In the current circumstances, focusing on the minutiae of other authors and their careers was difficult. Which was no more than Harry deserved, and yet he felt a chill, no matter how irrational, every time he saw the diary sitting innocuously on the corner of his desk. Maybe he should have left it at home, but he wanted to keep the diary where he could keep an eye on it.

  After a huddle with Jonathan to triage the worst of the disasters that had occurred while he had been gone he spent the morning playing catch-up with his inbox and avoiding picking up the phone. If people wanted to talk to him, they could come and find him. Even without the distraction his attention kept straying: To the city he’d just left, to the manuscript he’d just finished, to the woman he’d written it about – and to Steven’s diary.

  At lunch Harry grabbed a sandwich from a place down the street and cloistered himself at his desk again. He needed to deal with the thing he’d written about Eliza, and he needed to deal with Steven’s diary. If he didn’t, he’d never be able to focus on any of the work he was paid to do.

  He managed the first issue by sending the book to Anika.

  I didn’t entirely waste the
trip to Vienna, he wrote her in the email. These aren’t the words I was supposed to write, but I still made words!

  As soon as he hit send, he wished he hadn’t. He felt acutely embarrassed by his own weakness, and whatever ego had made him think the book about Eliza was a problem Anika could solve.

  But calling Anika and telling her to ignore the email was even worse a prospect, so he turned to Steven’s diary. Harry handled the pages carefully so as not to get any of his lunch on them, pausing here and there to read passages without any order or plan.

  It was, all things considered, a perfectly ordinary diary. Steven had started it soon after his diagnosis. The earliest entries were about mundane things. His concern about his health and the effect an extended illness would have on Mallory. Griping about the weather. Recounting a stag he’d seen on a walk in the woods. Noting with pleasure phone calls he’d gotten from Dennis, Meryl, and Harry himself.

  Harry’s cell phone ringing startled him out of his perusal. He glanced at the clock and realized with a jolt an entire hour had passed. He set the diary down gently and picked up his phone with trepidation. It was Anika.

  “Harry, what the hell have you done?” Anika asked without further greeting.

  “What do you mean, what have I done?” Harry asked. There were a lot of things she could reasonably fault him for. But he wanted to know on what perfectly fair grounds she was going to attack him.

  “You’ve sent me a ninety-page memoir – I mean, I think it’s a memoir? – that’s absolutely brilliant and perfect and I didn’t know you had it in you, but what the hell am I supposed to do with ninety pages? Also your Vienna book is still missing.”

  He knew the only words he had been able to write in Vienna were some of the best he’d ever produced. And now, to his utter glee, they were making someone who wasn’t him completely miserable. “Copping to the second and relying on your wisdom and expertise on the first.”

  “You’re the absolute worst.” Anika sighed. “Also, as someone who would like to consider herself your friend, can I suggest you get your personal life straightened out? For the sake of your sanity.”

  At that moment, the subject of those ninety pages appeared in the doorway of Harry’s office. After days of daydreaming and writing about her Eliza was standing right in front of him. She was pale and drawn but also looking at him with a certain level of judgment and curiosity that he had missed desperately. Harry wondered what was wrong. He also wondered how much of the conversation with Anika he was going to be able to have without giving away the fact that he was suddenly being confronted with the subject of his book.

  In her left hand Eliza held her tablet, but that wasn’t what Harry’s eyes latched on to.

  “Your hand,” he muttered at Anika. And then, even more absurdly, he hung up on her.

  He stared at his cell phone, startled and confused by his own actions, then blinked up at Eliza.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. She wasn’t wearing her engagement ring. And that, combined with her pallor and the dark circles under her eyes, made Harry wonder. What happened with her fiancé? Hope and dread warred in his chest, and he chastised himself for both. Whatever Eliza was dealing with, he needed to not make it any worse. In any way.

  “I’m fine,” she said shortly. Then she gave him a faint smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Do you need to call back whoever you just hung up on, or can we talk about the media proposals for Paris that I’m afraid to show to Philippe?”

  Oh God. Paris! Harry could feel himself panicking.

  “Um. It was my agent. I should probably email her. At some point,” he managed.

  Eliza stared at him. “All right. Sounds good. I just have to –” she said after a long moment, turned, and fled.

  Harry stared after her and wondered, sincerely, what the hell was happening – with Eliza’s ring, with her relationship, with his book – and what on earth he was supposed to do next.

  Eliza

  AS SHE RAN DOWN THE hallway to escape Harry’s office and her own inner confusion she’d found there, Eliza collided with Jonathan, caught her heel on the carpet, and nearly fell.

  “I need to stop doing that,” she said, apologizing profusely.

  Jonathan caught her by the elbows to steady her. “Are you all right?”

  “No!” she blurted.

  Her nerves had been on edge ever since the dress fitting. She’d gone to Harry’s office only because she needed to ask him about the media proposals; she’d had no plan or intention of confessing or explaining anything. But seeing him had jolted whatever thin veneer of calm she’d been able to scrape together for the last two days, and now she was a trembling wreck.

  “All right, well, you don’t look okay. Why don’t you come sit down for a bit?” He took her gently by the hand and led her to his cubicle around the corner from Harry’s office. The space was small, but there was an extra chair that Jonathan sat her down in. He flicked on an electric kettle on top of a filing cabinet before sitting down himself.

  Eliza folded her hands in her lap and tried to take deep breaths. She felt as near to panic as she had at the bridal shop. She was so relieved for Jonathan’s kind intervention, but in spite of that – or maybe because of it – she still felt on the verge of tears.

  “Thank you,” she said when she felt sure enough of her voice to attempt speaking.

  “Don’t mention it.” Jonathan waved her gratitude away. The kettle began whistling, and he spun in his chair to pour boiling water into two paper cups. Dunking a tea bag into each, he handed her one of them and then leaned toward her, bracing his elbows on his knees.

  “Now. I’m not going to ask you what’s wrong because it’s none of my business,” he said, “but I know my boss, and if you need me to yell at him on your behalf that’s a lot of what I get paid to do.”

  Eliza gave a watery laugh. The warmth from the cup bled comfortingly into her hands. “No. He hasn’t done anything to deserve being yelled at. At least not recently. But –”

  “But?” Jonathan asked.

  Looking at his serious face, his eyebrows drawn together, Eliza marveled that Jonathan was probably younger than she was. Perhaps his air of self-possession was as much of an illusion as her own, but she didn’t think so.

  “But I was going to get married next summer. We’d been engaged for a while and it was a perfect match except it completely wasn’t. I went up to Boston this past weekend for a dress fitting and couldn’t go through with it. I broke up with him yesterday at the airport right before I flew back here. Before I had a plan – I didn’t like the plan, but I had one – and now I don’t have any plan at all, and I have to cancel all sorts of wedding services and find a job for next year, and I don’t even know where to start!”

  “That was a lot of information all at once.” Jonathan blinked at her very seriously. Eliza wondered whether that was a habit he’d learned from Harry. “And if you want to sit and drink tea and pretend we never talked about any of this that’s totally fine. But I also have a lot of experience with logistical damage control. If you want moral support while you make a list of stuff you have to do in the next week or month or whatever, I am super happy to do that.”

  What Eliza most needed a plan for – how to encounter Harry now that she was no longer engaged – Jonathan couldn’t help her with. But everything else?

  “Moral support,” she said, swirling tea carefully in her cup as if she were going to read her future in the leaves. “Sounds pretty fucking awesome.”

  Harry

  IT TOOK HARRY THE BETTER part of an hour, but he finally managed to compose an email to Anika complete with an apology for hanging up on her and a plea that they meet in person to discuss his situation further. To his relief, she offered to see him that afternoon, if he could be bothered to trek the three blocks down to her office. He agreed eagerly.

  Sitting down across from Anika in her office, Harry felt like a schoolboy about to be scolded. Never mind that she was his own age and w
ore her greying hair pulled back in a soft ponytail, more hippie than schoolmarm.

  “Did you have a nice time in Vienna?” she asked. The question was pointed even if her voice was conversational.

  “For a given value of ‘nice time,’” Harry said.

  “Mmm. Well. At least you wrote. But Harry....”

  He ran a hand over his face. “I know. I know.”

  “Do you now?” Anika asked. “I think that’s unlikely.”

  “That’s true, but –”

  “Lucky for you, I’m smart, and I’m patient, and God help me, I’m vaguely fond of you. I think you have a couple of options.”

  “You do?” Harry dropped his hand from his face and looked at Anika with sudden budding hope. He’d expected to be berated. He hadn’t at all expected to be thrown a life raft.

  “Yes. I do. You may make questionable decisions but I’m very good at my job. So. Option one, you can rework this untitled monstrosity to make it a full-length memoir.”

  Harry made a face. The work stood on its own, for better or for worse. Weighing it down with more navel-gazing about his unremarkable life was not going to improve it.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Worse, I think you’re not wrong. It’s exquisite as it is. But the length. I can’t sell that. Not from you.”

  “So it’s not publishable,” Harry said with a flicker of relief. If Anika couldn’t find a publisher for it, he was sure no one could. And then he would never have to be faced with the professional or personal humiliation of having written a book about a woman half his age. A woman who he had thought he could never have but had now possibly just dumped her fiancé.

  He sighed inwardly at the thought. His self-discipline couldn’t wait to fail him.