Novels by Molly

I know what really happened. Call me when you’re ready to hear it.I stared at that message until Romilly leaned over and looked at my screen too. Neither of us said anything for a second. Just the two of us in that office, city lights coming on outside the window, both of us reading the same six words over and over like they might rearrange themselves into something less unsettling.Then she reached for a pen and wrote the number down on her legal pad, underlined it twice, hard enough that the pen almost tore through the paper.“We’re not calling it yet,” she said. “Not until we know who’s on the other end.”She was right. I didn’t call it. I put my phone away, finished the conversation with her, gathered my coat, and went home to a night of staring at my ceiling instead of sleeping. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the message glowing there in the dark. I know what really happened. Not I think. Not I heard. Known, stated plain, like a fact somebody had been sitting on for a while,

“Gerald,” she said. “A word.”He didn’t argue. He just stood there, a coffee cup abandoned on the desk, watching Margaret the way a man watches weather he can’t do anything about. I gathered the manuscript pages, said something polite I don’t even remember saying, and left before I could hear whatever conversation was about to happen behind that closed door.I went straight to Romilly’s office.She took one look at my face and set down her pen like she already knew whatever I was about to say was going to ruin her evening.“Sit,” she said. “Talk.”I told her everything in a rush — the bouquet, the standing order, the eight months, Gerald’s shaking hands, Margaret cutting him off mid-sentence like she’d been listening at the door the whole time. Romilly’s jaw got tighter with every sentence, until by the time I finished she looked like she was chewing glass.Then she stood up so fast her chair rolled back and hit the wall.“That’s it.” She was already moving, already pulling a legal pa

“Ma’am? Ma’am, are you still there?”“I’m here,” I said, and hung up before she could ask me anything else.Eight months. I sat with that number a long time, the flowers going soft and forgotten on my counter, until the shaking in my hands finally slowed enough to think straight. There was only one person left who might tell me the truth without a script sitting in front of him first.Gerald.I called ahead. He said come by, too fast, the way people do when they’ve been waiting for a call and dreading it at the same time.His hands were shaking before I said a single word, and I hadn’t even sat down yet.I found him in his study, surrounded by the usual mess — half-read books stacked wrong, a manuscript spread across the desk I’d spent three years helping him shape into something he could put his name on. He stood too fast when I walked in, knocking his knee against the drawer.“Elena.” He said my name like it cost him something. “Come in, sit — can I get you tea, coffee—”“I’m fine,

The flowers arrived before I did, which should have told me something about how this day was going to go.I hadn’t slept much after Margaret’s parting shot. Whatever you think you know about the timeline — you don’t. That sentence had chased me through the night, circling back every time I nearly drifted off, and I came home from the luncheon still half-caught inside it.Then I found the box propped against my apartment door.An enormous bouquet, cellophane crinkling in the hallway draft, ribbon curled at the top like somebody had wrapped it with care. My name wasn’t anywhere on it. Only my address, printed clean on a shipping label stuck to the side.I carried it inside. Set it on the counter next to the coffee I hadn’t finished that morning, still lukewarm, still bitter.I pulled the small card free from its plastic fork.Congratulations on the good news!! So happy for you both — can’t wait to meet the baby!!Signed by a name I didn’t know. Underneath, a florist’s sticker, small pri

I don’t have a wife listed on this file.That sentence followed me out of my own kitchen and into a room full of women wearing my old life like it was theirs to borrow.I shouldn’t have come. I knew that walking in. But I’d sat on this committee for three years, picked the linens for this exact room more than once, and some stubborn habit in me still expected an invitation even now.Nobody had un-invited me. Nobody had to. The second I stepped through the door, I felt it — conversations dipping low, heads turning just enough, eyes sliding away a half second too fast to be an accident.They knew.Whatever happened four days ago in some lawyer’s office, this room knew about it long before I did.I found her near the dessert table. Margaret Cole, standing over a tiered display of petit fours nobody was touching, dressed the way she always dressed for these things — expensive, understated, armor disguised as good taste.“Margaret.”She turned, and her face did the thing it always does whe

I signed it before I let myself read it, because some part of me already knew that reading it first would mean never signing it at all.The line went dead before I could ask him what he meant. No goodbye. Just silence where his voice used to be, that particular kind of silence a phone makes when a call has actually ended, flat and final, nothing left breathing on the other side.I set the phone down on the counter, hard enough to rattle the fruit bowl. One of the bananas rolled off the top and landed by the sink. I didn’t pick it up.My hands shook tearing the seal open. Not careful. I ripped it, the way you rip a bandage off fast so you don’t have time to think better of it, so your body does the thing before your mind can talk you out of it.Pages spilled out across the counter, sliding a little on the granite. Heavy cream paper, dense legal print packed tight line after line, a small yellow tab stuck to the third page with an arrow pointing at a blank line under my typed name.I si