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“Yeah.” She gave a short laugh. “She’s always mattered more to you than is normal, even for a close friend. When she moved away, you were lost without her. You blamed your stress on being a new husband and a new dad, but there was more to it than that. You missed her. It didn’t matter what I did or how far away Grace went, nothing could change it.” Her expression turned wry. “I probably wasted more time than I should have holding onto the hope that eventually you and I would connect like that. I refused to see the writing on the wall.”
“But I didn’t…. I never….”
She patted my shoulder. Her expression wasn’t angry, but I could sense a hint of bitterness lingering beneath her smile, and I couldn’t blame her. What woman would want to be married to a man who—even unknowingly—didn’t value her the way he should have? A man who’d put another woman on a pedestal?
“Shit, I’m sorry, Maddy. I never meant to make you feel that way.”
“Yeah, well, it happened.” She smiled tightly. “It’s the past now. I’ve come to terms with the fact that whether you were conscious of it or not, your heart was already taken. No one else had a chance, including me.”
“Why didn’t you ever say something?”
She shrugged. “Why bother? If it came down to a choice between Grace and me, I was never going to win. Anyway.” She shifted from one foot to the other, obviously uncomfortable with the direction the conversation had taken. “Can you get Tess?”
“Sure.” I left her reluctantly, wanting to ask more about her thoughts on the matter of Grace and me but knowing that we’d exhausted her willingness to talk about it. I didn’t blame her. In her shoes, I wouldn’t either. But I had to wonder, if she’d seen it, and my siblings seemed to have seen enough not to be surprised by my interest in Grace now, then how blind must I have been for all these years? Weren’t cops supposed to be observant? If I’d been this stupid in police school, they’d never have let me head up a small station on my own.
How had I gotten myself into this mess? And how could I get out of it?
32
GRACE
I wokeup buzzing with excitement. It was book release day. I didn’t even manage to wait until I’d gotten out of bed before checking the reviews. A few had already come in from my review team prior to release, and they were all positive, but I’d no doubt spend the entire day obsessively checking and rechecking. I opened a search browser on my phone and typed in the book’s title. As soon as I clicked on the first retailer link, I knew something was wrong. Yes, the early positive reviews were there, but many of the new reviews were one and two stars, dragging the average down in a way that made my stomach drop. How could the difference between the early reviews and these ones possibly be so different?
I scrolled down the page and skimmed through the reviews. The most recent ones cited poor editing, spelling and grammatical errors, and frequent typos. I shook my head in disbelief.
No.
It wasn’t possible. I’d done a last check through the manuscript myself before it had been uploaded. Everything was fine then, and none of my early readers had flagged problems. The book had been through two editors, a proofreader, and several dozen early readers. It simply wasn’t possible that so many errors would have slipped through unnoticed. Something must have gone wrong in the back end of the retailers.
My phone rang. Alice.
I answered.
“Have you seen?” Her tone was panicky. “I’ve been going through everything, but I followed your instructions to the letter. All I can think of is that there was a glitch in the system, and they accidentally sent out an older, unedited version of the story to readers.”
“Damn.” I didn’t usually swear, but times like this called for it. “Have you contacted anyone about it?”
“I’ve typed an email to go to the distributor, but I wanted to check with you before sending it. It should be arriving in your inbox any second now.”
“Thanks.” I switched the phone onto speaker and checked my inbox. A new email from Alice popped up, and I read it quickly. “Yes, send it. The sooner we can get this fixed, the better. Thousands of people preordered that book.”
“I know.” She sounded miserable. “I’m so sorry this happened. We’ll have to contact your readers and let them know we’re dealing with the problem, then we’ll need to arrange to send everyone who ordered the book a free replacement copy and figure out if we can somehow get the negative reviews removed once it’s fixed. Ugh, this is a nightmare.”
“Tell me about it.” This was my third book release since I’d hired Alice as an assistant, and the first two had gone off seamlessly. Waking up to this must have shocked her nearly as much as it did me. “Don’t worry, we’ll get it sorted. Nothing is unfixable.”
She exhaled loudly. “Yeah. I keep telling myself that. I’ll be there as soon as I can. It’ll be easier to work from the computer in the office.”
“Get coffee on the way. I have a feeling we’ll both need it.”
“Will do, boss. See you soon.”
Two hours later, Alice and I were hard at work on damage control. I’d contacted my readers and been on the phone with a representative from the distributing company, who’d assured me they were doing all they could to remedy the situation. Alice had barely raised her eyes from the computer since she’d arrived other than to give me a brief hug and pass me a coffee.
A faint knock sounded. I paused what I was doing and listened. Another knock. Someone must be here.
“Ignore it,” Alice growled.
I thought about doing just that, but it might be something important. “I’ll be back in a second.”
