2
Twenty-seven months later
BY THE TIME EMMA STIRS, THE MORNING SUN IS SNEAKINGinto the room from around the edges of the curtains. She opens her eyes and lets her gaze drift easily around the bedroom.Today’s going to be good, she tells herself. There are blueberries in the fridge for her morning smoothie, work should be busy but not insane, she’s having a drink at six with a new friend, and Tom will be home from Chicago later tonight.
Tom, whom she’s missing so much after only two days apart.
Of course, there aren’t anyguaranteesabout how the day will turn out. She forecasts the future for a living, but as she’s learned all too well, sometimes predictions, even the ones you’re very certain of, can be dead wrong.
She idles between the sheets for a few extra minutes, unable to get enough of this room, with its pretty, pistachio-colored walls and the soft breeze wafting through the openwindow, and the knowledge that it belongs to her. This is her life now, it really is, and there isn’t a day she isn’t grateful for it.
By the time she’s downstairs, showered and dressed, Emma’s running slightly behind and briefly considers skipping the smoothie, but then fires up the blender. These past months have been about embracing pleasures both small and big, accepting that she has a right to them, and not letting her own desires be sidelined or denied.
Besides, Brittany’s already left for work, and it’s a relief to have the kitchen to herself.
With smoothie in hand, she exits the house through the back door and strides along the path to the restored studio on their property, which sits about fifty yards from the rear of the house. Her walk to work is only two minutes, but Emma savors the experience this morning. It’s a perfect mid-June day, warm but not humid and with only a few clouds scuttling across the bright blue sky.
Emma runs a tiny boutique research business, Hawke and Company. They’ve received acclaim for their trend forecasting—and that’s the reason Emma occasionally ends up as a talking head on networks like MSNBC and Bloomberg—but their revenue mainly comes from doing generational research for clients, most of whom are in the restaurant and hotel business. They help them understand why, for instance, millennials are often game for off-the-beaten-track destinations and try to act like locals when they travel, whereas Gen Xers want to simply kick off their shoes for ten days, drinking Bahama Mamas and relishing the chance to stare at the ocean instead of endless spreadsheets.
At the moment, Hawke and Company is just Emma, asenior strategist named Eric Schneider, and her twenty-four-year-old assistant, Dario. They’re both already on-site when she arrives and greet her warmly. The space, with its open seating plan, still has the feel of an artist’s studio, and the rough-cut-pine walls give off a pleasant woodsy scent.
After she’s settled at her desk, the perennially sunny Dario rolls his chair next to hers so they can review the day’s to-do list, and then Eric wanders over and they set a time to rehearse the research presentation they’ll be doing next week for a new client, a small hotel chain.
Eric’s been with Emma for more than four years. He’s smart, funny, incredibly dependable, and a whiz at analyzing research. Today he’s wearing a midnight-blue long-sleeved shirt, open at the collar, paired with dark slacks, a look that not only flatters his tall, slim shape and but also manages to telegraph “professional” and “creative” at the same time.
“After we rehearse, why don’t we go through the influencer surveys that came in this week,” she tells him. “I’d love to get an early read.”
“Sure. I actually snuck a peek yesterday and there’s some interesting stuff popping up.”
“Great. And then,” Emma adds on the spur of the moment, “why don’t the three of us finish at two today? It’s so gorgeous out and this way we can all get a jump start on the weekend.”
“Fantastic,” he tells her. “But only if you swear you’re going to call it quits then, too.”
“I swear. I’ve got a new novel I’m dying to read, and I actually have plans later. Remember Addison Stark, the sociology professor I was on that panel with?”
“That really outspoken blonde who teaches at Fairfield?”
“That’s the one. I thought it’d be nice to get to know her a little, so I asked her over for a drink.”
A thought suddenly occurs to Emma. Though Eric hides it well, she knows he’s still down in the dumps about a recent breakup with his boyfriend of close to a year.
“Hey, want to join us? She’s coming by at six. You could swing back later.”
“Thanks, Em, but I think I’ll use the time to shop. Summer’s upon us and the elastic’s shot on every bathing suit I own. I don’t want any scandalous mishaps on Compo Beach this summer.”
Smiling, she tells him she understands, and though Eric’s always a great addition, she doesn’t mind having Addison to herself. Emma suspects the professor’s outspokenness reflects a bold, unflinching interior, and she appreciates that. Plus, she’s sensed some potential for friendship with Addison, and she could use a friend here in Westport, Connecticut, a town that’s part well-heeled suburb, part old New England village. How nice it would be to have someone in her life who isn’t simply a friend of Tom’s or an employee of hers—or a person whose view of her isn’t colored by all the baggage of the past.
The workday morning flies by until it’s time for her and Eric to review the completed influencer questionnaires, highlights of which will be incorporated into the nextHawke Report, their quarterly bulletin on emerging trends that’s sent to paying subscribers.
When she started college, Emma would never have beenable to imagine herself in this field. She was a communications major who hoped to work one day at a website or TV network, but after doing a research project for an elective sociology class, she was shocked to discover that research actually lit something in her. She loved digging for information, sorting through data, and experiencing the aha moment that occurred when you teased out a pattern that had been unseen until now or discovered the amazing “why” of something. She stuck with communications but after graduation, she talked her way into the research department of a Manhattan-based ad agency and moved up the ladder there before leaving seven years ago to start her own small company.
At two o’clock Emma shoos Eric and Dario out of the studio and waves goodbye as they stroll to their cars, which are parked in a small driveway separate from the house. Locking the studio door behind her, she heads home and sets her tote bag on the kitchen counter, where she spots a note from Brittany that she must have missed earlier.
Just FYI, I’m going to have dinner with a new friend from work and spend the night at her place. It’s just easier that way.
The news makes Emma slightly giddy, which triggers a twinge of guilt. Brittany is Tom’s twenty-year-old stepdaughter from his first marriage. He was only married to her mother, Diana, for four years before she passed away far too young from cancer, and though Tom never felt particularly close to Brittany during the time the three of them lived in nearby Weston, he cares about her and always tries to besupportive. He not only has stayed in touch with her, but he’s also visited her intermittently at her father’s home in Maine.
Late last year, Brittany caught him off guard by asking to be a summer intern at his company here in Westport, as well as to stay with Tom and Emma for the seven-week stint. A huge request, but Tom told Emma he didn’t see how he could possibly say no, and a week and a half ago, her father dropped her off at the house with two enormous suitcases. Brittany’s mostly kept to herself since she’s been staying with them, and yet her presence in their home in the early phase of their marriage has felt intrusive—exactly as Emma feared it would.