Chapter 1
At the award ceremony for the sixth novel I had written, my husband thanked another woman for giving him his voice.
Ethan held the award beneath the lights. Inside my bag waited the joint-author speech he had requested, promising the seventh Black Harbor cover would carry both our names.
“My wife, Claire, made this possible,” Ethan said, then turned to his editor. “But Lena Vale gave me my voice when I was afraid I had lost it.”
The screen behind him changed to a cover I had never seen: ETHAN ROWAN with LENA VALE.
I photographed it before shock could make me wait for someone else to correct it. Lena rose from Northstar House’s table in a silver dress and joined him beneath the applause while cameras flashed around them.
Only three nights earlier, Ethan had read my proposed joint-author announcement in our kitchen and kissed the top of my head. *This time, I promise*, he had said. The folded speech against my lipstick and keys was proof that I had not invented the promise because I needed it now.
Lena joined him at the microphone. “When we found the ending, Ethan wrote something that stayed with me,” she said, then recited a line about the harbor keeping every name the city tried to drown.
I had written that sentence at two fourteen on Wednesday morning. It existed only in the unfinished seventh manuscript, buried twelve pages before the final section.
The applause around me flattened into a hard, distant sound. Lena knowing one unpublished sentence did not prove an affair, but it proved Ethan had given her access to pages he still called ours when we were alone.
A photographer waved me toward the stage. For one foolish second, I thought Ethan had realized what he had done.
“Mrs. Rowan, could you stand at the end?” the photographer asked. “Then we’ll get the author and his new creative partner in the center.”
I climbed the two steps and stopped beside Ethan. His fingers settled briefly against my back, applying the familiar pressure he used when he wanted me to smile through an interview.
“Not here,” he murmured without moving his mouth.
Lena took the place beside him that his email had promised me. When the photographer asked for one shot of “the writing team,” I stepped down before anyone could remove me twice.
Near the curtains, I opened my bag. The cream envelope had bent beneath my phone, and the words *OUR SEVENTH BOOK* showed through the paper where my thumb had dampened it.
I saved the photograph, the video of Lena quoting my line, and Ethan’s last email promising our announcement. Then I walked through the service door toward the backstage corridor.
Ethan caught up beside the stacked banquet chairs, still carrying his award. “Claire, whatever you think happened, we are not doing this tonight.”
“When did you put her name on my manuscript?”
His jaw tightened, but he did not answer. Instead, he slipped the hotel key card into his pocket and lowered his voice.
“Do not destroy eight years over a cover,” he said. “The last eighty pages are still due Monday.”