I waved his words away. I couldn’t confide in my friend without falling apart. “There’s nothing we can do about that now. What’s going on here?”

“Where have you been?”

I raised my eyebrow. “In North Carolina.”

“Well, I know where you were physically. But where have you been in the world? Clematis was sold to McCann Media.”

My eyes widened in shock. Clematis had been independently owned forever—that was one of the best things about it. I loved the family feel, how I actually knew the powers that be, how we had the space to make our own decisions because we weren’t owned by the big guys. Everything was changing. Everything had changed. The one stable thing I had left was suddenly unstable.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He looked mystified. “Well… you’re my boss. I assumed you knew.”

I took a deep breath and stood up straighter. And I realized that, across the way, one of my writers was crying. “Heather, what is going on?”

But I didn’t need her to answer. When your friend is putting the contents of her desk in a box that previously held printer paper, the dots are fairly easy to connect.

When Philip said, “Nanette needs to see you in her office,” it honestly didn’t even occur to me to be nervous. I mean, I was the managing editor, for heaven’s sake. She was the ideas; I was the execution. She was the big picture; I was the details. We had been a seamless team for three years, working so well together that it was hard to know where I ended and she began.

I tipped a fake hat to Philip, walked into Nanette’s corner office with the killer view, and closed the door behind me. My office one day… now was not the time. She was visibly shaken. But this was Nanette. She was shaken; I was steady. “Look,” I said. “Whatever McCann throws at us, we’ve got this, sister. We are an unstoppable team, and we will keep Clematis a preeminent magazine no matter who owns us.”

I sat down in the white slipper chair across from her desk and noticed she and the chair were precisely the same color. Wow. Nanette was easily ruffled, but I had never seen her like this. “Amelia, you are my best friend,” she began. I thought that was a little sad. I mean, I loved Nanette. But she was my work wife. We never socialized outside of the office. I had sacrificed a lot for this job, but not as much as Nanette had.

I smiled wanly at her. “It’s all going to be—”

“Please stop,” she said. That was when I started to feel sick. “I’m the new managing editor,” she whispered.

For a half second, I had the ridiculous thought that I was going to be the new editor in chief. But when I saw the tears in her eyes, I realized I was most certainly not getting promoted. I sucked in my breath. “And me?”