“Thank you, sir,” I said. “Glad to be here.”
I was taken to my office. I had a window, albeit small, and Manhattan lay before me, as if it was there for conquering. Unlike my office in Los Angeles, this one had no antiques, no priceless drawings or desks that had belonged to studio heads. Instead, the only personalized touch was the most stunning bouquet of cabbage roses, in eighteen shades of pink. I smiled, thinking of Lily. She’d probably cut them in her garden and had had them shipped in water from the West Coast.
The day was a hectic one, full of introductions and meetings. I’d had not one but two second chances, and I wasn’t going to let this one pass me by. I worked late into the night, compiling research for an article on the opening of a new Broadway show and briefing one of my reporters on a digital-music conference in San Francisco.
The cabbage roses sat on my desk, a flourish of color in a business that was still black-and-white. It was around nine when I was ready to turn out the lights and go home that I opened the note that accompanied the flowers. It was dated the day before.
Dearest Thomas,
I spoke with my dad this morning, who told me you had come to find me, but he had kept you away.
Oh, Thomas, I have thought of you every moment for all these months, too, and I kept hoping you would come to me, because isn’t that what men in the movies do? I play tennis late at night, and I look up at the oak tree, hoping you will be there watching. Nothing has been the same without you here.
I know you are in Manhattan now, which seems so far away from me. I thought you might want some flowers from the estate to get you through your first week at your new job. I cut them from the sculpture garden, beside your favorite John McCracken sculpture, so you know exactly where they came from.
By the way, I couldn’t believe it when I learned about this thing called Federal Express. It seems nothing short of a miracle. I wish I could Federal Express you back here because I miss you, and Hawaii, and those days on the estate, and absolutely all of it.
There’s no need for fifty kisses if you know the first one is the right one.
Let me know if you want more flowers, because Daddy says they don’t have flowers in Manhattan. Why would you want to live in a place with no flowers?
Miss you to infinity,
Matilda
I read and reread the note so many times the words blurred together.
Matilda had once told me that she could imagine things so vividly that she could believe she was in another place. This, she had said, was her way of escaping those years of lonely confinement on the estate. I closed my eyes and I was once again beside Matilda in the old-fashioned bowling alley. She was whole, and complete, of green eyes and crooked smile. She was the high scorer and I was the low, and we were drinking tins of pineapple juice, eating pretzels and listening to Air Supply. I put my hand on hers, and she laughed her idiosyncratic laugh. I pulled her closer, and I whispered something in her ear, something that only she could hear.
When I opened my eyes all was quiet at the Times. Reporters had gone home to families or to business engagements and I closed my office door. I stood before the window, taking in the vibrant city before me, miles of sky that glistened bright and never went dark. I set my gaze beyond Manhattan—west, toward Bel-Air, where the nights were black and mountainous and starry, where palm trees swayed in the wind, where dreams were never too big to come true and where Matilda Duplaine waited for me to someday come home.
* * * * *
Acknowledgments
Not so long ago, when this book was in pieces on my floor, locked in a drawer or almost forgotten about, there was one person who believed in it absolutely. Andrea Walker, thank you for your patience, your kindness and your friendship. Working with you was a true gift, and it changed my life.
Andrea delivered me to the fabulous Michelle Brower at Folio Literary Management. Michelle, you are the most incredible agent and friend. Sometimes you have to have enough belief for both of us, and you are always up to the task.
Erika Imranyi, my superheroic editor: Thank you. Thank you for acquiring the book and for slaving over it so many times, sentence by sentence, word by word. You never dialed it in. You always pushed me to be a better writer, and you sprinkled fairy dust on the world of Matilda and Thomas and made it glow in the dark.
To Leonore Waldrip, Emer Flounders, the marketing, art and sales departments and everyone at Harlequin/MIRA: I appreciate your belief in the book and in me. Publishing is a collaborative effort, and the book is only the beginning. It is the people who deliver it to the world who change its fate.
There are so many people who make my real life gilded, and a few deserve particular mention. Blair Rich, Mark Cohen, Christina Bing and Margaret Swetman, thank you for years of friendship. Thank you, Kelly Schwartz, for your ear and your invaluable editing help, and Weston Armstrong for my gorgeous artwork. Layne Dicker and Rob Mandel, you have been so supportive of me in my business life, and that support has made my personal life infinitely better. And a very special thank-you goes out to John Chernin. You inspired me to write again.
Thank you, Family—the Brunkhorst part of it and the Novack part of it. Thank you Mom, Dad, Vanessa and Austin for too much to mention here. Debbie Novack, Martin and Cheryl Novack, Helen Novack and all the Novack kids—you are as much my family as my own. And, finally, Brian Novack, my best friend: you have never once put a ceiling on what I can do, so it is because of you that I keep reaching higher.
READ ON
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ISBN-13: 9781460389812
The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine
Copyright © 2015 by Alex Brunkhorst
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
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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The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine Page 30