“I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

Liar. “Yes, we’ll talk. But I have to go now; tell the kids I love them and I’ll call them later this afternoon.”

“Okay. Hang in there. I love you, Eileen.”

“Goodbye,” she said, and hung up.

Chapter 24

Clare

Sixteen years before her death

“I’m sweating,” Donna said, fanning her face with her limp page. “I think I am, no shit, going to pass out. Clare, I’m serious. I can’t do this.”

Clare pulled Donna’s paper from her hand and grasped her shoulders. “Donna, look at me.” Only when Donna’s eyes stopped spiraling around the packed room beyond the stage and zeroed in on her own did Clare continue. “You can do this, and you will do it. Do you hear me? You’re going to be fine, better than fine; you’re going to be great. He obviously is interested in you, your work…otherwise he wouldn’t have agreed to come.”

Donna stared at Clare and nodded, but her terror was still apparent. “I wish I hadn’t ever mentioned the open mic. What was I thinking? I just wanted to keep the conversation going, and I didn’t know what to say. I was just babbling. Why did I have to babble about this place?”

Last week in Donna’s writing class, her professor had invited a literary agent to come and speak with them all about all things publishing. Afterward, the guy had hung around to chat with the students and even invited a few of them to submit work to him. It was then that Donna, for whatever reason, had mentioned that she regularly read at an open mic on Wednesday nights in Brooklyn.

“Really!” the agent had said. “I live in Brooklyn. Where is it?”

And so, Donna had told him, and he’d said, “I really enjoyed what you shared in class today. Maybe I’ll stop by. What was it? The Blue Spruce? Next Wednesday?”

So now, today, the Blue Spruce was packed beyond capacity because Donna told Clare that this lit agent might be coming, and Clare might have mentioned it to Liz, who told Dave, who told everyone, and now Brian, the owner, was pissing himself over the extra money he was pulling in off his standard door cover alone.

“Do you think I should have raised the price?” he’d asked Clare earlier in the evening when he saw the line of hopeful writers forming outside his door. “Damn, I should raise the cover.”

So now, the bar was packed, Donna was freaking out, and Clare seriously wondered if this agent guy had any idea how much chaos and panic and outright racketeering his “stopping by” was the genesis of.

“Wait.” Clare turned to Donna, who looked like she might now be holding her breath. “Is this guy even here? Do you see him in the crowd?”