by Megan Angelo
Honey, one day, will come into the restaurant, seeing instantly past Marlow’s makeover. She will sputter. She will ask how Marlow has been. Marlow will say “fine, thanks” and segue fast into morels and pesto. Honey will tip her enormously, and say that they should grab lunch. But the voice in Marlow’s head, the one she always hears first now, will recommend moving on. So she will, to the table that needs her.
She will never go back on Hysteryl.
She will make the city her own. She will buy a new couch to replace the sun-bleached one. She will discover the building’s roof, with its rotted fencing and rusted bench, and she will convince the building’s management to let her fill it with the grasses and wildflowers that live atop the homes in Constellation. She will learn that the mailboxes still work, downstairs—a postman comes twice a week—and she will find a store on Christopher Street to sell her white sheets with blue-lined envelopes. (She has settled on her favorite color: the sky in New York, in the autumn especially, makes it an easy contest.) She will write to her mothers, both of them, mailing the notes through one of Orla’s sales reps in the UK, and they will write back. The letters from Orla are always longer, and not just because they have catching up to do. Orla is better at telling the stories; Floss is better at being in them.
She will learn to fall asleep in 6D, though not before the Empire State Building’s lights go off at midnight—she will never find a way to close her eyes against those beams. She will drag her bed to the front of her apartment, because she likes that window better and she can do what she wants—she’s alone. She is gloriously alone, except for when Linus and his wife go away once a year and the kids come to stay with her, dragging their sleeping bags. One time, Linus’s daughter will bring a lipstick, too, and offer it to Marlow, saying, “Try it. You could be hot, Auntie M!” Her mother will swat at her, but Marlow will be touched by the girl’s way of seeing her: there is potential. There is still time. She will take the lipstick and wear it and never lose it once.
But none of them—not Marlow, not Orla, not Floss—know any of this yet. They stand on the balcony in Atlantis and lean into the breeze. Orla says she agreed to the place because she loves the view. Marlow nods politely, but doesn’t understand why. The ocean is miles away, out of sight. Orla’s home faces the land she left behind.
The three women gaze at the windmills, at the cars escaping the marsh. They watch a flock of illumidrones find the wall and bounce back toward America. It’s the kind of night when no one misses their man-made glow. The moon stands high and silver white above the little sovereignty. Floss and Orla are thinking the same thing, though neither of them knows it. The light is right on their girl.
* * *
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’ve had the benefit of enormous privilege in my life. That might be a weird way to start this off, but if you don’t acknowledge it in something literally called “acknowledgments,” when are you gonna do it? I’ve gotten breaks that not everyone gets because I am on the lucky end of an entrenched system. And I’m trying to keep my eyes open now, for ways I can call these things out and make up the differences.
I didn’t know if I could write a book. I didn’t know if I could write this book. Without Stefanie Lieberman and Molly Steinblatt, who tenaciously saw Followers through a thousand lives, I would still be wondering. I can never thank the two of them enough.
A million thanks to Brittany Lavery, my editor at Graydon House, for listening, for knowing what I was trying to say and for helping me say it—both in this book and in the process of publishing it.
Thank you to Rufi Thorpe and Catapult for the course “The Novel: Chapter 1,” which is where Followers took root. Thank you to the writers I met in that class, who gave me notes on the first versions of this book: Katie Runde, Andrea Arnold, Meg Duell, Norah Brzyski, and Veronica Gorodetskaya.
For thoughtful early reads and help with details, thank you to: Lauren Smith Brody, Caitlin Brody, Emma Caruso, Adam Hellegers, Suzannah Bentley, Mindy Steinblatt, Jennifer Close, Jessica Liebman, Hugh King, Scott Curry, Jen Curry. Thank you to Brian Marcus, Rachel Debuque, and Justin Plakas for design feedback.
Jovanna Tosello’s cover art has inspired more delighted gasps than I can count, but none have been as giddy as mine was when I first saw it. Thank you, Jovanna.
To the team at Graydon House/Harlequin—Susan Swinwood, Dianne Moggy, Linette Kim, Heather Connor, Lisa Wray, Laura Gianino, Erin Craig, Pamela Osti, Ana Luxton, Amy Jones—thank you for being so welcoming and steering this book into the world.
Thank you to Kathleen Carter for making magical mentions happen.
For vouching for this story, thank you to Abbi Jacobson, whose endorsement I am so grateful for, as well as Christina Dalcher, Jennifer Close, and Rufi Thorpe. And thank you to Tarryn Fisher, whose mind-blowing social-media support I am slowly paying back, in my low-tech way, by recommending The Wives to people, one at a time, at the grocery store and in barre class.
Thank you to Charlotte Mursell at Harlequin UK for ferrying this book safely across the pond.
And for general support of me and of Followers (sorry for the bland categorizing—it doesn’t make you any less indispensable!), thank you to Emily Rose, Doug Johnson, Olivia Blaustein, Michelle Kroes, Adam Hobbins, Zoe Nelson, Claire Dippel, Dawn Prestwich, Nicole Yorkin, Kenya Barris, Jamila Hunter, Anni Weisband, and Erynn Sampson.
Thank you to the teachers who helped me become and stay a writer: the faculty at St. Isidore School, at Quakertown Community Senior High School (especially Tracy Houston), and at Villanova University (especially Jeff Silverman and Mary Beth Simmons).
This is the paragraph for all the people in my life who always say, “It IS a big deal!” when I start a sentence by saying, “It’s not a big deal, but...” Thank you to my friends from Quakertown, Villanova, and New York, and to my whole family, especially Mark and Ashley Angelo, Greg and Tessa Angelo, Tom and Peggy Castronova, and Janie Calvo.
Thank you to my parents, Ed and Mary Ann Angelo, to whom this book is dedicated, for getting me a typewriter when I was little, for watching my kids when I got big, and for every step in between that got me here.
Thank you to my children for being patient while I wrote this. I mean, I know you didn’t look, act, or sound patient, but somehow this got done. So I think, deep down, you were.
And thank you to Parker, who always said he’d let me sleep on his couch, and still does.
ISBN-13: 9781488051296
Followers
Copyright © 2020 by Megan Angelo
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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