Free Goodnight Nobody by Jennifer Weiner

exhale and cracked open another can of soda. "We sold our manuscript three weeks ago," Laura Lynn said. "At auction. Six houses were bidding." She held her soda can like a microphone. "A collection of essays about the contested nature of motherhood in modern-day America. We got a seven-figure advance."
    "Did you have a title? I'd like to mention it at the memorial service."
    She blinked at me as I congratulated myself on my quick thinking. " The Good Mother. Of course."
    Of course.
    "And we were both going to have bylines!" Laura Lynn concluded, as if that fact alone put her halfway toward sainthood. "Make sure you mention that. Well, you know. It would say, 'By Laura Lynn Baird with Kitty Cavanaugh.' "
    I nodding, remembering a line I'd read in a hundred different detective stories: follow the money. A seven-figure advance meant that there was plenty of money to follow. "I don't want to get too personal, but would you mind telling me how you planned to split the advance, and the royalties?"
    "Well..." Laura Lynn set down her soda can and fiddled with her pearls. "We hadn't quite finalized it." She gave me a wide-eyed look. "But it was going to be fair. You can be assured of that. See, I believe in treating women fairly, and in paying them fairly."
    I nodded and wrote that down too, then kept nodding as Laura Lynn expounded on her views of motherhood (pro), feminism (con), and a woman's impact on the world (significant and favorable, provided she attended to her children first, thus effecting change on a micro level, but from little acorns spring great oaks, and there would be no need for gun control, campaign finance reform, or government regulation of the Internet, if only the mothers of the world would do their job).
    "Jane Segal said you found the body," Laura Lynn said. "Was it...was she..." She tilted her soda can back and forth, then raised her hands to her necklace. "Did she suffer?" she finally asked. Her pearls chattered between her fingers.
    "I don't know," I said.
    We sat in silence for about ten seconds before Laura Lynn chugged down the remnants of her soda and set down the can. "Gotta go," she said, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. "I'm taking the train to D.C."
    I knew my cue. "Did Kitty ever mention someone named Evan McKenna to you?" His name seemed to hang in the air like a mobile. If I looked up, I'd see it dangling over my head.
    "No," said Laura. "Why? Who's he?"
    "Nobody," I said. "He's nobody." As always, his name twisted through my heart. Nobody. How I wished that it were true.
    She got to her feet. "So, listen, I'm sorry for your loss. Was Kitty a good friend of yours?"
    I shook my head. "I didn't really know her that well. Just from the playground, or the supermarket, or soccer games."
    That admission seemed to relax Laura Lynn. "That's a shame. She was nice," she said. "Very reliable. Very thorough." She paused, perhaps realizing that what she'd said sounded more like a reference for a cleaning service than a eulogy for a departed colleague. "You know what Kitty was? She was a good mother. Just like the column said."

    I got home at five past eleven, which gave me fifteen minutes to debrief with Janie, fifteen minutes for research, and ten minutes to get myself to the Red Wheel Barrow for the eleven forty-five pickup.
    Typing "Laura Lynn Baird" and "Good Mother" and "book deal" into my favorite search engine caused it to spit out a dozen stories. Laura Lynn had, indeed, landed a deal "said to be well into the seven figures" for a collection of essays on motherhood previously published in Content, plus "additional original material." All the articles got all three of her names right, and a few of them even resurrected the scandal of her father's death, but I couldn't find any mention of Kitty Cavanaugh or any cowriter, ghostwriter, or other assistance, anywhere. I jotted down the name of the agent and the editor, Googled their phone numbers, and glanced at the clock: 11:28. My fingers