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Cadence

1942

I waved goodbye to Winnie and her friends as they walked off, just as Margaret and Bess pulled into the yacht-club parking lot to pick me up.

Margaret laid on the car horn and waved from the driver’s side window. “Cadence! Over here!” she shouted.

I hurried over to them and ducked into the back seat, hoping Winnie wouldn’t rescind her offer after seeing my friends in Margaret’s car with the falling-off bumper.

“You won’t even believe how it went,” I said. “They told me I should work in New York City and it’s like a litter of kittens and I told them about our book for the armed services and they know a former librarian—”

“Wait.” Bess turned to me. “Slow down. Breathe.”

I exhaled and gathered myself. “I met Winnie’s friends, and they want me to come to New York City.”

Bess leaned in. “What?”

“Celia St. Germain was there.”

Margaret looked at me in the rearview mirror. “From Putnam? You met her?”

“Dolores Reinhart, too.”

“Teddy Roosevelt published with Putnam,” Margaret said.

“They promised to try to get the books for the troops made. Said they’d be bigger than pinups. And it turns out that social drinking is important to a girl’s career. Cigarettes, too. You’ll never get anywhere professionally unless you smoke.”

“So, are you going to New York?” Bess asked.

“They want me to pitch to a former Navy librarian friend of theirs. Can you believe it? On the Putnam yacht.”

“Putnam has a yacht?” Bess asked. “Business must be good.”

Bess was not at all impressed by the yacht, since she’d been on so many, courtesy of her boarding school friends. But her parents had never owned one, since they were that rare breed of Boston Brahmin and notoriously avoided the crass shows of wealth flaunted in places like Newport and Palm Beach.

“It’s for entertaining authors and clients,” I said. “It’s called the Never Moor. ”

“From ‘The Raven,’?” Margaret said. “They published Edgar Allan Poe.”

“They’re leaving tomorrow.”

“ Tomorrow? ” Bess asked. “How long will you stay?”

“No idea. But they have a chef on board and will put me up in a hotel.”

On the way home Margaret stopped to deliver a prescription, and when we arrived at the cottage we found Gram sitting in the living room, listening to the radio.

“You won’t believe it, Gram,” I said. “I’m going to New York on the Putnam yacht.”

“That’s wonderful, dear,” Gram said, and returned her attention to the radio.

“What do you wear to a literary meeting?” Bess asked. “A dress, I would imagine, though perhaps they all wear suits.”

We hurried to my bedroom, and Bess watched me heave three suitcases from the closet. “For a person who barely leaves Chilmark, you have a lot of luggage.”

I clicked open the suitcase lid. “I’ve been waiting for this day.” Will I have time to see Rockefeller Center? The Statue of Liberty?

The front screen door banged, and I heard Briar talking to Gram.

“Cadence?” Briar called out.

“In here!” I replied.

Briar came to the bedroom door, and I turned from the closet. “What, Briar? Is it Gram?”

“You need to come down to the boathouse,” she said, her face ashen. “I found something.”