Seconds ticked by. The sadness never eased.
“She knows, Miss Emily. I know she does.”
“I know, Yi Ling. Thank you.” Emily hung up,
the memory of Pam’s voice undiminished after a decade.
Fifteen minutes later she was headed to the
office, a sense of relief driving out the lingering sorrow. Strange, how work
had become her safe place. She let herself in on the ground floor with her key
and took the stairs to the top floor, looking forward to a free hour or so to
review the month’s calendar and organize her agenda. No one should be in until
at least seven thirty.
Vonnie’s desk was empty, but a light shone
behind Henrietta’s partially open office door. Vonnie must have come in early,
like her. She pushed the door open and stopped abruptly.
“Oh!”
A woman she didn’t know sat behind
Henrietta’s desk. Midfifties, short jet-black hair cut in a sharp edge at jaw
level, attractive in a thin, knifelike kind of way. Dark suit, white shirt,
unsmiling eyes.
“Can I help you?” Emily said when the woman
stared at her as if she were the one intruding.
“I don’t think so.”
“Might I ask what you’re doing in Ms.
Winfield’s office?”
The woman smiled thinly. “I am Donatella Agnelli.
I’ll be in charge from now on.”
Chapter Eleven
Emily sat behind her desk, a cup of tea she
couldn’t remember making cooling in front of her, an untouched pile of
manuscripts on one side and her laptop open and waiting for her by her right
hand. She didn’t drink the tea, scan her emails, make a list of the manuscripts
she intended to review that afternoon, or schedule the author calls she wanted
to make before lunch. She didn’t pull up the latest marketing plans for the
fall release schedule from their biggest publishing clients. She didn’t get to
the proposals from the rights department on what titles to present at the
International Rights Conference.
She didn’t do anything at all except gather
her scattered wits and struggle for some kind of perspective. The panic
ballooning in her chest, making her breath short and her head light, was
totally unwarranted. The last twenty-four hours had shaken her world, but she
could fix that—she’d been through far worse. She just needed to be rational and
ignore the fear clutching at her throat. She’d survived the phone call that had
destroyed life as she’d known it when she was eighteen years old. Of course she
could handle a passing disruption now. She had to.
Emily sipped her cooling tea, pleased that
her hand was not shaking. There. Better. The constriction in her chest eased
and she mentally ticked off what she knew, and what she needed to know. First
and most importantly, Donatella Agnelli’s reign would only be temporary.
Henrietta would be back soon and everything would return to normal. Even as she
thought it, wished it, she knew it wouldn’t be true. Henrietta would be fine,
everyone knew that, but she wouldn’t be able to run the agency as she always
had, with a finger in everything, working fifteen-, sometimes eighteen-hour
days, regularly outpacing many of the younger staff. She’d want to, Emily
didn’t doubt that, and any changes in her schedule would have to be subtle
ones. Emily and Vonnie would have to wage a stealth campaign to shift some of
Henrietta’s workload to senior people without her knowing it, but as long as
Henrietta was at the helm, behind that enormous desk that could probably float
Manhattan if a second flood of biblical proportions suddenly arrived, business
would return to normal.