The Pen Pal Who Turned Out to Be My New Boss novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Two Years of Mail

In the office Marguerite admits she is Lark, and Hallie learns a letter was waiting in her inbox before the meeting.

Dear Late Shift's Cousin in Ohio,

Your sister is not asking you for money. She is asking you to notice she is tired.

Go to her house, wash her dishes, and say nothing about the budget.

Then ask her what she would do if she had one free Sunday.

Lark

That was a column from last spring, and I had cut it out and kept it in my desk drawer.

Now Lark was standing in front of me in a gray coat, and she had just said my name in the voice I had imagined for two years.

It was not the voice I had imagined.

I had pictured someone round and gray and kind, with a cat.

Marguerite Lundin stood straight as a coat rack and looked at me as if I were a sentence she wasn't sure how to edit.

"You're Lark," I said.

"Yes."

"You're the new boss."

"Yes. It's been a bad twelve hours for both of us."

I laughed, and it came out.

"You read my letter out loud," I said. "To the whole staff."

"I read one sentence. I didn't say your name."

"Every person in that room could have turned around and looked at me."

"None of them did."

"Robin did."

"Robin looked at you because you were choking," Marguerite said.

I opened my mouth and found I had nothing to say to that.

My knees felt strange, so I sat down in the visitor's chair, and she stayed standing.

"I told you things," I said. "Two years of things."

"I know."

"Then you know things I haven't told my mother. Did you ever laugh at one?"

"Never. I read them at my kitchen table, and some of them twice."

"I told you I'd never kissed anyone I wasn't afraid of."

Her face stayed still, but her hand moved on the desk, a quarter inch toward the empty folder.

"I remember that too," she said. "I was careful with it."

My eyes stung, and I hated that.

"Did you know I worked here?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"You write about the freight elevator that smells like pennies," she said. "You wrote about the third-floor radiator that bangs. I'm not a fool."

I pressed my fingers against my glasses and breathed.

"So you've known."

"For a while."

"And you let me keep telling you things."

"I wanted you to."

She said it plainly.

I looked up.

"Why would you do it like that, then? With a room full of people?"

"Because I start Monday as your boss," she said. "You were going to find out one of three ways, and the other two were worse."

"There was a way where you just asked me for coffee."

"There was," she said. "I'm not good at that one."

I stared at her, and she stared back, and neither of us blinked.

Under the glass walls, the whole floor was pretending not to watch us.

"Here are the rules, if you want them," she said.

She was holding her voice very even.

"Nobody on staff knows I'm Lark. Gordon does, because he signs the checks. Nobody else does."

"I wouldn't tell."

"I know you wouldn't. That's why I asked you first."

"Why is Gordon making you editor now?"

"He has a plan. I'll tell you when I understand it."

I waited.

"Your job doesn't change today," she said. "Your feature is still due Friday. You don't have to write to me again. If you want to stop, you stop, and I will never mention it."

"Do you want me to stop?"

"No."

The answer came so fast that she looked startled by it.

I stood up, because suddenly the room was very small.

"I need to think," I said.

"Take your time."

"I'm going to go back to my desk and edit a paragraph about a ferry terminal."

"That sounds correct."

I got to the door and had my hand on the handle when she added, quietly, "I'm sorry about the room. I mean that."

I nodded without turning around.

At my desk I sat for a full minute with my screen dark.

Robin rolled her chair over, saw my face, and rolled it back half a foot.

"Do you want me to say something funny or something nice?"

"Neither."

"Great, I'll do a silent one."

She patted my knee and went back to her photos.

I woke my screen up and opened my email to make myself look busy.

There was one new message at the top of my inbox, sent from the Lark address.

It had arrived at 8:02 that morning, an hour and a half before the meeting.

I had not opened my mail before work, because I'd been late.

The subject line said, "In case I do this badly."

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