She grinned. “Will said no girls allowed.”
“True, girls have cooties,” Daniel said, cringing at her.
She poked him. “Oops, now you do too.”
RILEY, DANNY, AND THE girls lived in a Park Slope brownstone. It was just big enough for the four of them if Cecilia and Jo shared a room. Riley had talked about upgrading, but that would mean moving to the suburbs, and they were city dwellers through and through. At least that’s how Hannah always imagined them. Though even household meetings in Westchester would be preferable to making the trek to Brooklyn.
She pulled a note off the door of the brownstone. If you ring the doorbell and wake the baby, I will kill you.
Hopefully, this was intended for Hannah and not some poor, unsuspecting deliveryman. The knob turned easily. She taped the note back to the door and peeked around the block. There was no sign of a delivery truck of any type. Hannah did not want to be in the house if someone rang that bell, especially if she was the one who took the note down. She’d experienced Riley during the newborn phase, and now she had a toddler as well. The click of the door was barely audible, but Riley stuck her head out of her office, which was right off the front hall and far away from Jo’s room.
“Sorry for the death threat,” Riley said. “We’ve got those damn cable salesmen wandering around. Yesterday, they rang the bell three times.”
“That’s persistent.” Hannah fell back onto the couch and tucked her feet up under her.
“So, is surgery in your future?” Riley asked, glancing from Hannah’s knee to her face.
“Definitely not in the next three months,” Hannah said, still not quite believing it. She knew her expression must match all the grinning emojis in her texts from Will, Kate, and Madison. “After everything, my knee has started to heal.”
“That’s amazing. And how’s married life?”
Hannah narrowed her eyes at her boss. “We’re great, but please tell me you didn’t make me come all the way to Brooklyn so we could talk guys.”
“All that banter and no time for chitchat.” Riley shook her head. “I have some news.”
Hannah tried to mentally calculate if it was even possible for Riley to be pregnant again, but she knew little to nothing of Irish twins except that they existed.
“Stop trying to do math you don’t understand,” Riley said with a laugh. Hannah really needed a better poker face. It was seriously amazing no one important had figured out about the pact. “It’s magazine news.”
“Magazine news you couldn’t tell me about over FaceTime?”
Riley swiveled her chair until she was facing Hannah. The chair gave her a bit of extra height, and Hannah sat straighter to try and match it. Whatever this news was, it was big. And for Riley to have to bring her here, it was a game changer.
“We’ve received funding for the Boston edition,” Riley said without further preamble. “It’ll start with just a few city-specific pieces as an inset and be fluffed with our bigger features from the other issues, much like how New York started.”
“That’s huge!” The higher-ups had been working on Boston for so long, and it was finally here. “Where did they find the money?”
“The magazine received an anonymous donation last month specifically designated to expansion,” she said, flipping through some paperwork. “It’s going to be threadbare—just an editor and one or two interns. The idea is to cover as much as possible so we have enough material for a few issues while we’re staffing up.”
“Are they sending Nate out?” Hannah asked, thinking of the managing editor of the Los Angeles edition, who oversaw all expansion efforts with Riley. Riley would never leave her girls for an extended period of time.
“No,” she said plainly. “Nate and I discussed it, and we’d like for you to head up the effort.”
“What?” She hadn’t meant to say it—not like that. But there it was. This was the opportunity she’d been waiting for, wanting, and needing. The chance to make a real change, to shape her career and the direction of Deafening Silence, and to become her own version of, well, Riley.
“You heard me.”
Several iterations of the word “yes” ricocheted her around her mind, but slowly, her brain recovered from the shock of the offer. How could she move to Boston? It wasn’t her and Binx against the world anymore. There was Will, who she had committed to for at least a year, who needed her as she needed him and who loved her. Could she ask this of him?
“How long is the assignment?”
“A little under two months to start,” Riley said, her eyes searching Hannah’s. “Just long enough to get everything set up and running while we find a managing editor.”
Two months in Boston. It was the chance of a lifetime. Will would do this for her.
“We’ll pay to relocate you, Will, and Binx for that period.” She scanned the notes in front of her. “Nate’s working on finalizing a sublet.”
“When would I have to leave?” Hannah asked, thinking of the long weekend in the Hamptons, the Wilderness concert next week, and the zillion wedding tasks Madison had added to her calendar.
“If Nate had his way, you’d leave tonight,” she said. “But I know you’re not going to miss the Wilderness show, and I’m sure there are things to figure out. So, first thing Wednesday morning?”
It was Thursday. How could she move her whole life in six days? A promotion hadn’t even been on her radar, especially not one that included moving out of the state.
“Hannah?” Riley stared down at her with a pained expression. She knew the gravity of this news and the damage it could do—to both Deafening and Hannah’s marriage—if not handled properly.
“I don’t know, Riley.” Hannah clasped her hands together. “I have to talk to Will, and I just don’t know.”
Riley placed her hand on top of Hannah’s. “That’s a perfectly acceptable answer.”
Chapter 37Will
Will glared at the stack of reports littering the coffee table. He promised to be home for dinner, but he couldn’t drop everything either. He could’ve pawned all this off on the junior staff—that was literally why they existed. But after his misstep with his last big case, he needed to do his own work. That meant reading the reports and not just the note summaries.
He had a whole plan—champagne, chocolate-covered strawberries, and a brand new pair of sneakers—but there’d been no time to find the perfect running shoes. He’d take her to the store another day and let her pick them out. It would be an experience that way, something she might remember longer than the life of the shoes. At least that was what Eddie was always telling him—make moments.
