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

it has potential.”
    I pasted a supportive smile on my face and toured the new office. The Flor tiles were stained and the filing cabinets might have been salvaged from the set of 9 to 5 , but the light was good and the skyline view couldn’t be beat, even if it did look incredibly far away.
    •  •  •
    I was still surprised to find myself living on this side of the Hudson. For me, growing up in New Jersey, New York was true north on the compass, the place you looked for from the highest point in town. For a Clevelander like Nicholas, it might as well have been Oz. The first time he rode the subway, he bought an extra token to send home to his mom.
    I didn’t miss the city, exactly, but I got whiplash when I reflected on my own transformation from post-college East Villager hanging out at Veselka to downtown mom with Gourmet Garage bags hanging from the handles of my stroller to Filament commuter navigating the hordes in midtown. Now, no matter how authoritatively I strode toward my office building in Times Square, I always found myself on the receiving end of a sales pitch from a representative of Big Apple Bus Tours. “Buy the all-day pass! Including the Cloisters, the Statue of Liberty—”
    “I live here,” I said, brushing by imperiously in my best approximation of Anna Wintour, if Anna Wintour wore a raincoat from Strawberry.
    One night, a year after we got married, I met Nicholas after work at his summer associate event at the New York Public Library. There were speeches from the heads of the different practice groups and signaturecocktails with names like Expert Witness and Blind Justice. The ice luge was bigger than our whole apartment.
    While Nicholas was shouldering his way up to the bar, I approached three Nehru-jacket-wearing men who looked friendly enough. “Hi, I’m Alice Pearse, Nicholas Bauer’s wife!”
    The men looked surprised, as Sutherland, Courtfielders often did when confronted with a wife who had not taken her husband’s name. One of them said, “Hi. Do you need a cocktail napkin?”
    “No, thanks, I’m all set. So . . . are you guys with the bankruptcy group?”
    “We’re the caterers, actually.”
    “Oh. Well, I love your jackets.”
    Suddenly, I felt a very strong hand on my shoulder. I spun around to see Win Makepeace, the head of the bankruptcy group, towering over me with a self-satisfied expression on his face. “Alice, is that you? Let’s let these fine gentlemen get back to their canapés. Come meet my wife, Lucinda—she just went on the South Beach diet, so I’m sure you’ll have a lot to discuss.”
    As Win steered me in the direction of a frail blonde with unnaturally smooth skin and bubble hair, I waggled my fingers at the caterers, who smiled sympathetically. They were probably as baffled by the legal life as I was.
    Nicholas and I were the last ones to leave and my feet were killing me, so we sat down on the front steps of the library between the marble lions, Patience and Fortitude. Nicholas was still chuckling over my gaffe.
    “How was I supposed to know? Those guys were the friendliest people there!”
    “Exactly, which should have been a dead giveaway that they weren’t Sutherland, Courtfield material !”
    We leaned comfortably into each other’s shoulders, enjoying the warm breeze and unexpected pocket of peace on Fifth Avenue. I felt the cool stone of the stairs through the thin fabric of my skirt. I watched the street vendors quietly shouldering their closed-down carts in thedirection of Tenth Avenue, then looked up at the elegant arcs flying atop the Chrysler Building.
    “Nicholas, you know I adore you, right?”
    He looked surprised, then tickled. “Alice, I adore you, too.”
    “Good. Now that we have that ironed out, I have something to tell you.”
    “You do ?” As he glanced over at me, his expression leapt from relaxed and content to alert and ecstatic. He didn’t give me a chance to answer; I didn’t need to. “No. Way. You