Amelia A SHORT ROPE

WHEN GREER CAME TO MY apartment in Palm Beach that day, almost five years ago, face ashen, my first instinct was to worry about the mess in my living room. Piles of magazines on the coffee table, bills strewn about, a bed pillow on the couch, the couch pillows on the floor, two Diet Dr Pepper cans, half-drunk, on the end table.

“I’m sorry,” I said as she walked in, my mind rushing with excuses, beyond that I had been really lazy the past couple of days.

But as she sat down on top of a copy of the Wall Street Journal, I realized that Greer wasn’t worried about what my apartment looked like. She was… somewhere else. I’m pretty sure I went white, too, then.

“Greer,” I said softly, sitting down beside her. “It’s too late. It has gone to press. There’s no way I can get the story back now.”

But then she looked up at me, eyes big and round and tear-filled. “It isn’t about the story,” she whispered. She looked down at her hands. “I can’t do it,” she said.

My heart started to race, but I wasn’t sure why. “Do what?”

“I have to ask you for a favor.”

Why was she whispering? We were all alone. My eyes locked on hers.

Getting that story back from the printer, making 350,000 copies of one of the country’s premier magazines disappear, felt simpler than what she said next.

Now, years later, I lay awake all night at Dogwood in my childhood twin bed with its monogrammed duvet cover and tiny canopy, thinking about Greer, about the bond we shared after that night. Was that bond holding me back from Parker? Did it feel like a betrayal to Greer? Or was her coming to me that night somehow a way of giving me permission?

For me, one worry always begets another. That night with Greer had come back to me after I realized that this could be one of the last times I ever slept in my bed, in my house, in the place that signified security and happiness and everything simple and good in life.

In my drunken state postdinner, I had come home to find my mother dozing in the chaise lounge beside my bed. In the dim, uneven lamplight, she told me the news about Dogwood, that it would be sold. She felt confident she could squeeze out a little more time. But it was going to be sold.

The blanket of the alcohol made the news seem manageable, palatable even. It was sensible. It was right. I found myself consoling my mother, regaling her with details of our new traditions of Christmas in Paris and Easter at the Breakers. I think I made her feel better. I also think I was overestimating how far the amount of money they would get for the property would stretch, but it soothed both of us in the moment.