The Pen Pal Who Turned Out to Be My New Boss novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Sentence
At the staff meeting the new editor-in-chief reads a sentence from Hallie's private letter aloud, and Hallie realizes her boss is Lark.
Dear Lark,
I told my mother I was fine again today.
She believed me, and that is the part that bothers me.
I would rather be honestly lonely than comfortably pretending.
I just wanted somebody to know that.
Late Shift
I sent that letter at 11:48 on Sunday night, and by Monday morning I had forgotten how much of me was in it.
The staff meeting was at nine thirty in the big conference room on the fourth floor.
All thirty-one of us at The Lantern were packed in, holding coffee and not talking.
I stood by the radiator in the back, because that is where I stand.
Robin pushed in next to me with a muffin and whispered, "Ten bucks says she's from New York and hates us."
"Nobody hates us," I whispered. "We're a regional magazine."
"That's what they hate."
Gordon Rainsford came in first.
He owns sixty percent of The Lantern, and he walks like a man who has been told he is charming.
"Everyone, this is the person who is going to save us," he said, and laughed at his own joke.
The woman behind him did not laugh.
She was tall, taller than Gordon, in a long gray wool coat she didn't take off.
Her hair was cut close to her head and silver at the temples, and she wore gold hoops and dark plum lipstick.
She looked like someone who had read every word of the magazine and found the typos.
"Marguerite Lundin," Gordon said. "Your new editor-in-chief."
Somebody near the door clapped once and stopped.
Marguerite stepped to the head of the table and set down a single sheet of paper.
"I'm not going to give a speech," she said.
Her voice was low and even, and the room went quiet in a way it never did for Gordon.
"I'd like to read you one sentence instead."
I took a sip of my coffee.
"Somebody wrote this to me recently, and it's the most honest thing I've read all year."
She picked up the page.
She did not look at the page, though.
She looked at the window.
"I would rather be honestly lonely than comfortably pretending."
My coffee went down the wrong way.
I coughed into my elbow, and Robin thumped my back and said, "Easy."
I could not hear her properly.
I was hearing my own sentence in a stranger's mouth, in the exact order I had typed it.
Nobody had read that sentence.
I had written it on Sunday night, alone in my kitchen in Fremont, in a letter that had gone to one inbox.
The inbox belonged to Lark.
Lark was the advice columnist whose page everyone at The Lantern read first, and whose name nobody had ever known.
I had written to her every two weeks for two years.
I had told her about my mother and my exes and the job I was afraid to lose.
I had told her I was lonely in rooms full of people.
I had told her I liked women, and that I had never said so to anyone out loud.
I had told her things I had not told Robin.
"That's the standard," Marguerite said, still looking at the window.
"Honest copy, plain sentences, nothing sold to anyone. That is what this magazine will sound like while I'm running it."
Gordon smiled with his teeth.
Thirty people nodded.
Robin whispered, "Okay, I take it back. I like her."
I didn't answer.
Marguerite folded the sheet in half, then in half again, and walked to the door.
She passed within an arm's length of me and her eyes did not move.
Her coat smelled like cedar and cold air.
I told myself it was a coincidence.
I told myself readers write to Lark all the time, and some of them must say things like that.
Then Marguerite stopped at the door with her back to the room.
"Ms. Park," she said.
Every head turned toward me.
"A minute in my office, please. Bring your feature."
"Yes," I said, and my voice came out small.
Robin squeezed my arm, and the crowd parted to let me through, and I walked the length of the room with my face burning.
Marguerite's new office was the glass one at the end of the hall that used to belong to a man who retired in June.
There was nothing on the desk but one empty folder.
She stood behind it with her hands flat on the wood.
She did not tell me to sit down.
"Close the door," she said.
I closed it.
Then she looked at me, properly, for the first time, and her voice dropped to something I had only ever read.
"Thank you, Late Shift."
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