Noah looks up from his computer to me. “What does she wish for? When she stands on the Gapstow Bridge and lets herself dream big?”

I close my eyes. What did my mother want? I used to think it was to set the bar high for everyone she loved, to give us something to reach for. Recently, I see it differently. I don’t think her final words to me were a gauntlet, but an expression of her faith. I think my mom already believed that I could really, really love someone—because she’d shown me how, by loving me that way in the ten years we had together. I think her words were a parachute, tucked away but always there, ready to catch me when I’m ready to leap.

“More,” is what I tell Noah. “She wants more time. More memories. More laughter. More little moments you don’t think you’ll remember but you do. She doesn’t want it to end. She wants more of what she already has.”

Noah’s typing like Rachmaninoff. He types for several minutes without pause. “This is what I needed.” When he looks up at me, his eyes are bright and excited. “I don’t know how you did it, Lanie, but you got me writing again.”

“Duh,” I say. “It was my Fifty Ways list.”

“That must be it.” He gives me a look I can’t quite decode.

I take a second egg roll. “These are phenomenal, by the way.”

He smiles, and takes one, too, and we chew happily for a moment. The mood seems right to mention sales conference that morning.

“So . . . I floated a title to the team today. . . .”

Noah’s brow furrows in alarm, a look I haven’t seen on him since our early days.

“I’m sorry,” I say, “I should have checked with you first, but I was in the hot seat at a meeting and, honestly, the room loved it. I think it’s pretty good.”

He shakes his head. “I already have a title.”

I brace myself. It’s been well established that Noa Callaway sucks at coming up with titles.

“It’s Two Thousand Picnics in Central Park,” he says.

I exhale, laugh, then make a mind-blown motion with my hands. Noah grins.

“Yours, too?” he asks. I nod. “Well, that’s a first! With Alix, it was always war.”

“I remember. One of my first acts as her assistant was to book her a weekend at some New Mexico retreat so should could eat peyote and come down after the Fifty Ways title showdown.”

“That’s where she went?” Noah laughs.

“Around that time, I started picturing you looking like a young Anjelica Huston,” I say. “You had your gorgeous side. And your witchy side.”

I expect him to laugh, but Noah looks down at his hands.

“Not an Anjelica Huston fan?” I ask.