Read A Window Opens: A Novel for Free Online Page A

hoped to be part of. When I waited in line in the basement of Coliseum Books to have my copy of Bridget Jones’s Diary signed by Helen Fielding, it was not the hilarious author I had my eye on but the young cardigan-wearing woman to her left: the editor. What was it like to be the person who chose books readers would fall in love with, buy for their mothers, and remember forever after, the way you never forget a delicious meal?
    •  •  •
    Nicholas was thrilled by the e-mail from Genevieve—and tickled by the way she found me. “Maybe Twitter isn’t so pointless after all,” he said, begrudgingly. “And Scroll! They’re supposed to be a great company.
    “You’re just biased because of the Cleveland connection.”
    The Rockwell brothers are natives, too. In every profile for Fortune or Businessweek , they wax poetic about eating Notso fries at Yours Truly in Shaker Square (you don’t want to know) and their annual viewing of A Christmas Story , which was filmed in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland, even though the family in the movie is supposed to live in northern Indiana. The brothers deliver this line interchangeably: “When we decided to start our retail business, there was only one place to go: Cleveland. For us, that’s where MainStreet starts.”
    “Do you think I’ll getan employee discount at all the MainStreet stores, or just Scroll?” We were driving up the gradual slope of Bloomfield Avenue, on our way to a neighboring town to look at office space for Nicholas. He wanted to sign a lease immediately; I thought he should set up an office in the basement until he was established.
    “Alice! Pace yourself. You’re meeting this woman for coffee ; I mean, I’m sure she’ll want to hire you, but it’s hardly a done deal.”
    “I know. I wonder what Genevieve is thinking I’ll do there?”
    “I guess you’ll find out soon enough. Which reminds me: I hope you won’t mind, but I told your dad about your interview with Scroll.” Nicholas angled his Accord into a parking lot behind a bagel store and a Mexican restaurant. “And here we are.”
    I glanced at the stucco facade of his new building, a far cry from the mirrored skyscraper he was leaving, and put a hand on his arm. “Wait, what ? You’re the one who just pointed out, it’s coffee , not an interview. Why would you bring it up with my dad?”
    Nicholas grimaced. “Sorry, he was trying to give me advice and I couldn’t understand what he was saying, so I just . . . blurted it out, I guess.” He paused to fish Glen’s key off a carabiner attached to his belt loop, a look which reminded me depressingly of the dozens of keychains dangling from the zippers of each of our kids’ backpacks. “Anyway, your dad was excited, Al! Really excited. It was a nice way to sidestep a weird heart-to-heart with him about my future.”
    “My dad isn’t a heart-to-heart kind of guy—you know that. He just wants to be in the loop.”
    “That’s the thing, though. I don’t really want him in the loop right now, okay?” Nicholas squinted through his windshield into the window of the Mexican restaurant, where two men were removing pits from a mountain of avocados. “I don’t want to get into the specifics of why I’m leaving Sutherland, Courtfield. You get that, right?”
    “Of course. Fine. Let’s go check out the new digs.”
    Actually, I did mind that Nicholas had taken it upon himself to spill news of my interview. But at least I knew why the morning’s deluge oftexts from my dad had contained two articles about MainStreet— one from Forbes , one from Wealth . Those Rockwell brothers were outrageously young! In their Warby Parker glasses and Hugo Boss shirts, they looked like boys dressing up as businessmen.
    We walked by a Dumpster overflowing with cardboard boxes and slipped inside a door propped open by a brick wrapped in duct tape. “You have to use your imagination,” Nicholas explained. “The place is bare bones but