Page 66 of The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year
At first, she thought she hadn’t heard him. The question was so out of the blue that she had to blink through the pale glow of the flashlight and she forgot all about the low ceiling and narrow walls. She stopped telling herself to breathe.
“Maggie? Pen names. Talk.”
“Oh. Well. I felt like diversifying. You know, the new e-bookalgorithms really—”
Ethan leaned against the filthy wall. He was going to get his shirt all dirty. “Come on, Margaret Elizabeth, I showed you mine...”
“I got divorced.” It was the dumbest thing she could have said, because he already knew that.Everybodyknew that. But there was more to the story, and Ethan must have known that, too, because the silence stretched out like the darkness.
“I was twenty-one when I got married. My parents were dead and I didn’t have two cents to my name, and Colin’s family was Old Money—or so everybody thought, but...Fun fact: even generational wealth can dry up if the later generations are morons. At the time, though...” She gave a sad smile and a sadder laugh. “They said I was the luckiest girl in the world when they didn’t make me sign a prenup.”
Maggie hadn’t minded the whispers because, in her mind, they were shouts. Surely Colin deserved a wife who had more power? Shouldn’t Emily want a best friend who had more poise?
But what no one—least of all twenty-one-year-old Maggie—had realized at the time was that Colin and Emily liked her exactly where she was: somewhere between charity case and mascot. Someone who had no other options. Who was equal parts needy and independent, who could go anywhere anytime but who could only do it with them.Becauseof them. She was the ultimate foil—only there to reflect their light.
But now the light was gone and, if possible, the passageway got even darker.
The filthy wall pressed against her back as a big hand cupped her cheek and a deep voice whispered, “Breathe.” It was an order and she did it. And then it felt so good she did it again.
Her hands were on his hips, fingers hooked through his belt loops and desperate to hang on. “We would have split everything in half, but it turns out, he didn’t have anything, and that just made him madder.”
Ethan gave a low groan and closed hiseyes and then pressed his forehead against hers. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. That asshole didn’t deserve half your money.”
“No.” The word was so jagged it could have sliced her throat to shreds. “He got fifty percent of mycopyrights.”
Ethan pulled back. “What?”
Maggie nodded slowly. “By law, he owned half of every word I’d ever written. Every book. Every character. He was going to get half of every royalty check I earned for the rest of my life.”
“Oh, Maggie...”
“Even if he’d had money of his own at that point...” This was the hardest part in some ways. Maggie’s secret shame. “He’d helped me brainstorm book one a million years ago. I didn’t use any of his suggestions, but the more successful I got, the moremy little hobbybecameour books. He told himself they werehisideas. To hear him tell it, I only got published in the first place because of his contacts. They could both live on Emily’s trust fund for the rest of their lives. He doesn’t need money. But this way, even after we divorced, he could still own half of...”
She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t...
“Half ofyou.” Ethan’s voice was low, more growl than whisper, and just like that she was glad they were locked in a glorified hole in the ground, glad they were snowed in with no phones, no internet, and no way out. Because she was terrified of what Ethan might have done next. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t use a gun anymore. In that moment, he wouldn’t have needed one.
“Maggie—”
“The only way I could get free was to buy back his half of my copyrights. But even once I let him have the house and the car and my savings... it wasn’t enough. Even once he had everything, the copyrights were still worth more. Which meant I needed cash. And I needed it to have absolutely no connection to him.”
She knew instantly the moment when he got it. “So you wrote under pseudonyms.”
She nodded slowly. “I wrote under four new names untilI could buy him out—which I did.” She was proud of that part. She’d worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week, for nine months straight, but she’d done it. “In the end, he got my house and my savings and my best friend—did I mention that part?” Maggie laughed to keep from crying. “But I got to keep... myself.”
“You got the best part,” Ethan said without missing a beat. “You got the only thing that matters. Tell me you know that.”
She nodded yes and swallowed hard, and his hand kept rubbing against the back of her neck and she wanted to lean into the pressure. She wanted to make herself forget. But there was a subtledrip-drip-dripof melting snow, too loud in the stillness, a steady reminder that the world was still out there.Eleanorwas still out there. And, without a word, his hand slid down her arm and into hers.
They were twenty feet farther down the tunnel when he realized— “Wait. You saidfourpen names?” And Maggie froze.
“Oh.”Oh no.“Imeantthree.”
“Nooooo.There’s a fourth one! Wait. Is the fourth one dirty?” She felt her face go scarlet and even in the shadows, Ethan must have seen it. “Oh, the fourth one isreallydirty!” Maggie bit her lip and tried to make him move, but he was a load-bearing wall—solid and sure and, without him, the whole tunnel would cave in. “Come on. Give me a hint.”
“No.”
“I’m going to find it. You know I’m going to—”
