Page 158 of On His Mind

I wait to feel the pride in my chest. It’s the sentence I’ve wanted from a professor since I was seventeen, since I sat at mymother’s dining table and told her I wasn’t going to do what she wanted. But nothing comes.

I thank him again and I go to work.

At the firm, I clear the Halvorsen backlog in a week and start on a set nobody assigned me. Renata comes by my desk on a Thursday, looks at the sheets, and says, “You’re ahead.”

“Yes.” I grin. “I hope that’s okay.”

“Slow down or I’ll have nothing to give you in January.”

“I’ll find something.”

She stands there a second longer than she needs to, and then she goes.

I’m up at five. I run and do Pilates. I make coffee and drink all of it. I eat at seven and one and seven right on the dot. I’m sleeping about five hours a night, and it’s fine — I get up and work instead. There’s a great deal of work. Twice this week I’ve come back into myself at the drafting table and not known how long I’ve been sitting there. Once with a line half-drawn under my hand. I don’t know what happened in the gap. I put the pencil down and go make coffee, and when I come back it doesn’t happen again.

My hair looks better than it has in a year. I’ve been doing it properly every morning. It takes eleven minutes, and the routine is simple. My makeup routine is simple, too.

My mother calls on a Sunday.

“You sound well,” she says, which is the most praise I’ve gotten from her in a while.

“I am well. Busy. The project’s in early.”

“Early.” A pause of genuine interest. “That’s very good, Penelope. And the firm?”

“Renata’s giving me client work now.”

“Well.” I can hear her recalibrating. “I’ll admit the little office has done more for you than I expected.”

“It has.”

We talk for six minutes. She tells me about the Whitmores’ holiday party, about the caterer, about my father’s back. I say the right things in the right places and ask the two questions that keep her going, and she doesn’t ask me one thing about my life that isn’t a credential.

“You’ll come for Christmas,” she says. Not quite a question.

“I’ll let you know.”

“Penelope.”

“I’ll let you know, Mom.”

I sit with the phone in my hand after the call at my drafting table with the lamp on and the apartment quiet around me. I go back to the sheet I was working on.

The girls planned a study night twice this week, and the moment I walk into Gianna and Lucy’s apartment, the girls go quiet.

Mara picks up a new subject with a little too much energy. Gianna’s smile is running about fifteen percent hot. She hugs me twice, once at the door and once for no reason twenty minutes later.

“How was your week?” she asks.

“Busy. I turned in the project.”

“That’s amazing! That’s — you’re amazing.” She squeezes my arm. “You look amazing, too.”

“Thank you.”

Lucy hasn’t said much. Lucy doesn’t say much generally, but this is a different quiet — she keeps looking at me and then looking at her drink. Mara asks what I’m doing for Christmas break, then asks how long the break is, then asks what day exactly we finish, which is three questions about a calendar from a woman who has never once known what day it is.

“Why?” I ask.