“My goodness.” Mrs. Liu touches a hand to her mouth. “Oh my goodness, I can’t believe—”
“Of course it’s up to you,” I say hastily. “It’s entirely your right to do as you like with them. I just thought, as a friend, I feel obligated to tell you. I don’t think that’s what Athena would have wanted.”
“I see.” Mrs. Liu’s eyes are red, watery with tears. “Thank you, June. I never even considered . . .” She’s silent for a moment, staring at her teacup. She blinks hard, then glances up at me. “Do you want them, then?”
I flinch back. “Me?”
“It hurts to have them around.” Her shoulders sag; the whole of her seems to wilt. “And since you knew her so well . . .” She shakes her head. “Oh, what am I saying? It’s such an imposition. No, forget about it.”
“No, no, it’s just that . . .” Should I say yes? I would have complete control over Athena’s notes for The Last Front, and who knows what else. Ideas for future novels? Full drafts, even?
No, best not to get greedy. I have what I want. Any more, and I risk leaving a trail. Mrs. Liu might be discreet, but what might happen if the Yale Daily News reports, however innocuously, that I now own all those notebooks?
And it’s not like I’m trying to build an entire career on repurposing Athena’s work. The Last Front was a special, happy accident—a melding of two modes of genius. Whatever work I produce from here on out will be my own. I don’t need the temptation.
“I couldn’t,” I say gently. “I wouldn’t feel right. Perhaps you could leave them in the family?”
What I would like is for her to burn them, to scatter the ashes along with Athena’s so that no one, no curious relative decades from now, can go poking through them to dredge up what should be left alone. But I have to make her think she came up with the idea herself.
“There’s no one else.” Mrs. Liu shakes her head again. “No, after her father went back to China, it was me and Athena, just the two of us.” She sniffles. “That’s why I said yes to the Marlin people, you see—they would at least take it off my hands.”
“I just wouldn’t trust a public archive,” I say. “You don’t know what they’ll uncover.”
Mrs. Liu’s eyes widen. Suddenly she seems greatly disturbed, and I wonder what she’s thinking about, but I know it’s best not to pry. I’ve already gotten what I came for. I’ll let her imagination do the rest.
“Oh my goodness,” she says again. “I can’t believe . . .”
My stomach twists. She looks so distressed. Jesus Christ. What am I doing? Suddenly all I want is to be out of there, notebooks be damned. This is so fucked up. I can’t believe I had the nerve to come here. “Mrs. Liu, I don’t mean to pressure you—”
“No.” She sets down her teacup with a thud. “No. You’re right. I will not put my daughter’s soul on display.”
I exhale, watching her cautiously. Have I won? Could it have been that easy? “If that’s what you—”
“That is what I have decided.” She glares at me, as if I’m about to try to talk her out of it. “No one will see those notebooks. No one.”
I stay for another half an hour before I go, making small talk and telling Mrs. Liu about how I’ve been doing since the funeral. I tell her about The Last Front, about how much Athena inspired my work and that I hope she’d be proud of what I’ve written. But she’s not interested; she’s distracted, asking me thrice if I want some more tea although I’ve already said no, and it’s obvious she wants to be left alone but is too polite to ask me to leave.
When I finally get up to go, she’s staring at the boxes, clearly terrified of what lies within.
I KEEP TABS ON THE MARLIN ARCHIVE WEB PAGE FOR THE NEXT FEW weeks, scanning for any updates about the Athena Liu collection. But there’s nothing. January thirtieth comes and goes, which is the date the notebooks would have been made available to the public. One day I search the Yale Daily News website to find that the original announcement has simply been taken down without acknowledgment, its URL broken, as if the story had never existed.
Five
THAT WEDNESDAY I HAVE MY FIRST VIDEOCONFERENCE MEETING with my new publicity and marketing teams.
I’m so nervous I could puke. My last experience working with a publicist was awful. She was a pinched-face blonde woman named Kimberly who only ever sent me interview requests from bloggers that had, maybe, five followers. When I asked for anything more, like maybe coverage at a website that people had actually heard of, she’d say, “We’ll look into that, but it depends on interest.” Kimberly, like everyone else, had known early on that my debut was dead in the water. She just didn’t have the heart to say it to my face. Half the time, she misspelled my name as “Jane.” When I left my old publisher, she sent me a curt little email that read only, It’s been such a pleasure to work with you.
But this time around, I’m struck by everyone’s enthusiasm. Emily, who does publicity, and Jessica, who does digital marketing, kick things off by telling me how much they adore the manuscript. “It just exudes the gravitas of a much older writer,” Jessica gushes. “And I think we’ll be able to position it really well between historical fiction, which women really enjoy, and military fiction, which suits a male audience.”
I’m shocked. Jessica seems to have actually read my book. That’s a first—Kimberly always seemed confused as to whether I’d written a novel or a memoir.
Next, they walk me through their marketing strategy. I’m overwhelmed by how comprehensive it is. They’re talking Facebook ads, Goodreads ads, maybe even metro station ads, although it’s not clear if anyone pays attention to those anymore. They’re also investing big in bookstore placement, which means that from the day that it’s out, my book will be the first thing people see when they walk into any Barnes & Noble across the country.
“This will, for sure, be the book of the season,” Jessica assures me. “At least, we’re doing everything we can to make it so.”
I’m speechless. Is this what it was like to be Athena? To be told, from the beginning, that your book will be a success?
Jessica wraps up the marketing plan with some dates and deadlines for when they’ll need promotional materials from me. There’s a short pause. Emily clicks and double-clicks her pen. “So then the other thing we wanted to ask you is, uh, positioning.”
I realize I’m supposed to answer. “Right—sorry, what do you mean?”
She and Jessica exchange a glance.
“Well, the thing is, this novel is set in large part in China,” says Jessica. “And given the recent conversations about, you know—”
“Cultural authenticity,” Emily jumps in. “I don’t know if you follow some of the conversations online. Book bloggers and book Twitter accounts can be pretty . . . picky about things these days . . .”
“We just want to get ahead of any potential blowups,” says Jessica. “Or pile-ons, as it were.”
“I did hours and hours of research,” I say. “It’s not like I, you know, wrote from stereotypes; this isn’t that kind of book—”
“Of course,” Emily says smoothly. “But you’re . . . that is, you are not . . .”
I see what she’s getting at. “I am not Chinese,” I say curtly. “If that’s what you’re asking. It’s not ‘own voices,’ or whatever you want to call it. Is that a problem?”
“No, no, not at all, we’re just covering our bases. And you’re not . . . anything else?” Emily winces the moment those words leave her mouth, like she knows she shouldn’t have said that.
“I am white,” I clarify. “Are you saying we’ll get in trouble because I wrote this story and I’m white?”
I immediately regret phrasing it like that. I’m being too blunt, too defensive; wearing my insecurities on my sleeve. Both Emily and Jessica begin blinking very quickly, glancing at each other as if hoping the other will speak first.