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He gives me a funny look. “No.”
“You have access to the RFP?” Request for proposal. I nod at his phone.
“What? And let you bid against us if you weren’t even invited?”
I nudge his phone toward him. “Forward me the RFP.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Vicky
London
It’s a rare sunny day in London. I step out from the funky share space where I have an office onto the street with Smuckers trailing behind.
We skirt around puddles like pale mirrors on the pavement, reflecting gray skies and the gray buildings all around, and the colorful lights of signs. There’s a scent of diesel in the air, mixed with the sweetness of hops from a nearby microbrewery.
We head up the street toward a bright-red phone box. A woman named Hanna converted it into a coffee booth—I was relieved there isn’t just tea here.
“Hi, Veronica!” Hanna says.
I tell her hi. I buy a muffin and coffee and hang around and talk to her, like I do every day. She always has a nice treat for Smuckers.
I love the colorful, international bustle of London. I love my fun, fashionable neighbors at the office shared space, but I miss New York.
The Vonda story broke after Christmas. My mom, of all things, found it in herself to confess and produce evidence that shows what the Woodruffs did to me. There’s speculation she was paid.
It was a big TV news-hour-style story that got picked up all over—it even made the front page of the Washington Post.
I cried when I watched it. And then I watched it again and again and again. And I just felt so clear. Like something painful inside me got washed clean in tears and rain.
But, strangely, I didn’t want to go back.
That thing that got washed and cleared is perfectly preserved, fragile in a nice ribbon. Going in front of the cameras as vindicated Vonda doesn’t appeal to me much more than going as hated Vonda.
Maybe I’m tired.
Carly is attending a great school, and she’s got a part in a musical on the West End that will be amazing on her résumé when she goes back to New York. I don’t want her to go, but she’ll be eighteen and done with school soon. I want her to be free to chase her dreams.
I’m using the money I got from Locke as seed money to build my dream co-op studio in the ruins of an old warehouse. I’ve got a few investors lined up, and I’m in the process of quietly soliciting bids, blending elements of the Southfield studio with Henry’s vision and some ideas of my own.
I try not to think of him too hard these days or about the way things ended with us. And how I loved to be with him.
How he helped me remember who I was. I sometimes wonder if he had a hand in my mother’s one-eighty.
I still don’t think he meant it when he said he wasn’t pretending. Or, at least, most of me doesn’t think he meant it. A tiny sliver of me thinks he did.
But I still won’t reach out to him. Does that sound screwed up?
It’s just that the memory of him saying he wasn’t faking his feelings for me is like a lottery ticket where you never go and check if you won. So you can never be disappointed that you lost. And when you look at it, you can think maybe it’s something good.
The balsawood griffin sits up on my dresser like that, faithful and loyal and full of possibilities, as if there is still some magic in the world. Like a lottery ticket I never followed up on.
I look at it when I wash dishes. When I make food. When I feel happy. When I feel unhappy.
The studio keeps me busy. There will be subsidized spaces for artisans from all over the world. It’s exciting.
I say goodbye to Hanna and head back to the share office with its hip interior of brick walls and green corrugated metal partitions between desk after desk. I make my way down to my area, saying hi here and there.
