Harriet made Jane deputy editor on a Thursday morning, between a conversation about the upcoming autumn issue and a phone call Harriet had to take at eleven. She said it the way Harriet said most things — without preamble, without fanfare, as though she were relaying a logistical fact that had been settled some time ago and was only now being communicated.
"I'm making you deputy editor," she said. "I want you in the role from September."
Jane looked at her across the desk, at the squared papers and the single diagonal pen and the sharp-eyed face that gave nothing away.
"That's—" she started.
"I know you're going to say you don't want it," Harriet said, before Jane could speak.
"I was going to say I'm surprised," Jane said.
"That's not a no."
It was not a no. Jane sat with that for a moment, in the chair across from Harriet's desk that she had now sat in many times, for many conversations that had turned out to be about more than she'd expected. She had the particular feeling she occasionally got in this room — that Harriet had been several steps ahead for longer than Jane knew, had been watching the shape of something forming and had simply waited until the moment to name it was correct.
"Why?" Jane asked.
Harriet considered this. Not as though the answer wasn't clear to her, but as though she was selecting the version of it most useful to deliver. "Because you understand what the magazine is for," she said. "Not all writers do. Most writers understand their own work and have a limited and defensive relationship with the work of others. You read differently. You have opinions about what should exist in the world, not just what you want to write." She looked at Jane levelly. "That's an editorial sensibility. It's rarer than talent."
Jane sat with this too.
"The column continues," she said. It was not a question.
"Entirely your own. No interference."
"And I'm finishing the book. Harriet will have to manage around the book schedule through spring."
Harriet's expression shifted slightly, which for Harriet was the equivalent of a smile. "I'll manage," she said. "I've been managing since October. I believe I can continue."
Jane nodded slowly. "I need to think about it."
"Of course," Harriet said, and picked up her phone, which meant the conversation was over.
This was not what Jane had expected. This was not, if she was honest with herself on the train home that afternoon, what she had been building toward — not consciously, not as a named goal. She thought of herself as a writer. She had always thought of herself as a writer, had oriented her entire professional life around the production of her own sentences, her own thinking, her own column-sized space in which to do what she did.
Deputy editor was a different shape of thing. It was rooms and decisions and the work of other people running through you, their sentences requiring your judgment, your sense of what the magazine should be exerting itself on everything that appeared in it. It was influence at a scale she had not had before and had not, until Harriet named it, known she wanted.
The wanting, once named, was immediate and unmistakable.
She thought about it on the train and kept thinking about it as she walked home, turning it over, testing the weight of it from different angles the way you test a piece of furniture to see if it will hold. What it would cost. What it would require. Whether the timing was wrong, with the book in its final stretch and the column ongoing, or whether the timing was precisely what Harriet had calculated it to be — a moment when Jane was sufficiently established that she could absorb the new responsibility without losing the work that had gotten her here.
She asked Dimitri that evening. Not for permission — never that, and he had never offered it, which was part of what made asking him useful. For the view from outside. He was good at outside views. He was good at seeing the shape of a thing she was too close to.
She told him the facts of it, plainly. The role, the timeline, what Harriet had said.
He listened.
"What does it cost you?" he asked, when she'd finished.
"Time. Two days a week minimum in the office, probably more during issues. Some flexibility on the book schedule — it would push the delivery."
"By how much?"
"A month. Maybe six weeks."
He nodded once. Processing. "What does it give you?"
She thought about how Harriet had said it. What should exist in the world. "Voice," she said. "More voice. Not just my own column — influence over what the magazine publishes. What gets space. Whose work reaches that readership." She paused. "The column has been mine. This would be — broader than mine."
He was quiet for a moment. Then: "Take it," he said, immediately, with the particular decisiveness he used when he was certain. Not impulsive — she had learned the difference. Impulsive was fast without foundation. This was fast because the foundation was already there and the conclusion was clear. "You've been wanting influence at that scale for a year. You've been building toward it without calling it that. Take it."
Jane looked at him. "You sound very certain."
"I am certain." He held her gaze, steady. "You're good at this. You understand what you're doing and why you're doing it and what it's for. You're going to be better." A pause, brief, the kind that meant he'd considered whether to add the next thing and had decided yes. "Take it, Jane."
She looked at him for a moment longer — this person who had watched her work for three years and had never once suggested she wanted less than she did, had never defaulted to caution on her behalf, had always and without apparent effort treated her ambitions as straightforward facts that simply required addressing.
"All right," she said.
She called Harriet the next morning, early, before the day accumulated around it.
"Yes," she said. "On the condition that the column remains entirely my own, without editorial interference from anyone, including you."
"Agreed," Harriet said immediately, which confirmed what Jane had suspected — the terms had been anticipated, the conditions already accepted before Jane had named them. Harriet had known she would say yes. Had probably known since before the Thursday morning conversation. Had been waiting, as she waited for things, with the patience of someone who understood the right moment and could tell when it had arrived.
"And I need Fridays for the book," Jane said. "Through to delivery. Non-negotiable."
"Done."
"Then yes," Jane said. "I'll do it."
She put the phone down. The morning was ordinary around her — the flat, the light through the kitchen window, the chipped mug, the open laptop with the book's final chapter still waiting in it.
Everything the same. Everything slightly different.
She opened the laptop and got back to work.