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I didn’t know I was headed here until I stop to catch my breath and find myself in the center of the Gapstow Bridge. I put my hands on the stone railing and let it center me. I take in the big, beautiful city in the dusk.

Pink clouds stretch across the sky like spun sugar. There’s still snow on the north side of the Pond. In the distance, windows glitter gold as the sun sets, a shining fence around the park.

Used the city up. I roll my eyes, recalling Noah’s words. It isn’t possible. I don’t believe him. Something else is going on with Noah, something I can’t see. Whatever it is, I’m not going to let it wreck my life. I’m going to pull one more book out of him. Then I’ll figure out what to do about his pseudonym.

I’m glowering into the distance, contemplating how I’ll do this, when two approaching figures sharpen in my view. It’s getting dark, but I can still see them. Something about the way they move is familiar.

Of course. It’s Saturday night, Edward and Elizabeth’spicnic hour. And here they are—not gone like I’d feared. My heart lifts.

She is slight with cropped, silvery hair and a smart trench coat. He is scarcely taller than her, in professorial glasses and thick-soled orthopedic shoes. When he smiles, he’s a dashingly handsome older man.

They’re older. But it’s them.

Elizabeth has her arm threaded through the same picnic basket, but she’s added a cane since I last saw her. Edward, as usual, bears a tiny folding table and two chairs. I watch as he helps her step up onto the grass. It’s damp from the morning’s rain, but as usual, they have come prepared. As Edward unfolds the table and chairs, Elizabeth lays out a white tablecloth, carefully smoothing it down. He lights candles. She produces a box of fried chicken, a jar of pickles, and a bottle of wine. The whole scene is impossibly charming, but the best part is when they sit down and take each other’s hands across the table. For a while, they just talk, and though I long to, I’ve never drawn near enough to eavesdrop.

I’m so glad to see them. It feels like a sign from the universe that not everything has gone to hell.

I take out my phone and snap a quick picture of the couple in profile, of their glowing candlelit picnic. I’m about to send it to Ryan, because this will be us one day.

But then I imagine him at his senator’s birthday dinner in D.C., the one I was supposed to attend. How he might not be pleased to get this photo.

I put my phone away. I blow a kiss to Edward and Elizabeth, then jog toward home in the New York night.

“I’m about to tell you something,” I say to BD the next morning over brunch at an Ethiopian restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen. “But first I need to swear you to secrecy.”

BD puts down her menu and smiles. “Thisis why I need to come to New York more often. Do you know the last time your father or your brother started off a conversation half so well? I think Hillary’s husband was in office.”

BD’s in town for just a few hours, passing through the city on a road trip with a group of friends she calls the League of Widows. This afternoon, they’re on their way to Niagara Falls.

I was up all night debating whether I should say what I’m about to say. But if I hadn’t canceled my D.C. weekend with Ryan to meet with Noa Callaway, then I wouldn’t have gotten to see BD at all. So in a way, it feels like it was meant to be that my grandmother is here when I need her most.

“You joke, but—” I say.

“I joke, but I’m dead serious. In the way only an octogenarian can be. You can trust me with your confidence, Elaine.”

“Thank you.” My eyes fill with tears.

BD scoots her chair around the table to be nearer to me. She holds my hands. Hers are always cold and smooth, and she wears about eighteen thousand very nice rings.

“Honey. Is it Ryan?”

“What? No. Everything’s fine with Ryan,” I say. “It’s... Noa Callaway. I met Noa Callaway.”

I swallow and meet my grandmother’s wide eyes. BD hasbeen a fan of Noa’s almost as long as I have, ever since I bought herNinety-Nine Thingsa decade ago in large print.

“She’s a he,” I say and hang my head. “A man. And not the good kind.”

“Well, that’s a third-degree doozy.” BD tosses her napkin on the table, as if she’s just lost her appetite.

I, on the other hand, have started stress-eating. I grab a huge wedge of injera and sweep up a mound of spicy chicken doro wat.

“Okay, where do we begin?” she says.

“We could begin with the fact that the whole reason I got into publishing is because of Noa Callaway, and it turns out she’s a lie,” I say with my mouth full. “Now I’m an accomplice, and Peony is profiting off the misconception that our biggest author is a woman.”

“Go back, go back.” BD waves her hand. “Let’s work our way up to moral depravity—”

“But morally, I am violating the trust of millions of readers! Can I even call myself a feminist?”