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I was confused. A splinter?A splinter?“Can’t Jen take it out? She’s a doctor, for pity’s sake.”

“That’s just it. She tried. But this is no ordinary splinter. It’s huge—maybe an inch long—and it entered vertically, way too deep to reach with tweezers. Jen’s had to take Sophie to the ER.”

I bit my lip. It wasn’t at all funny.

But it was exactly the sort of thing thatwouldhappen to Sophie.

“Sophie’s going to be all right, isn’t she?”

“Yes, of course she’s going to be all right. It’s asplinter. Only they’re surgically removing it in exactly fifteen minutes. And Sophie wants me to be there with her via FaceTime while they do it. Jen swears Sophie can’t feel a thing—they’ve numbed the area thoroughly. But she’s already screaming bloody murder for me. I can’t not be there for her, Jo.”

“Of course you have to be there for her.” I took a deep breath. I knew what I had to do. “I can do our panel on my own. Don’t even worry about it.”

“Are you sure?” Bernadette looked as if she might break into tears. “I so hate to ask!”

I hadn’t even had a chance to break the news to her yet about Will being our moderator.

But I certainly couldn’t do it now. She was frazzled enough already.

Being a writer could be hard sometimes.

But being a parent, I knew, was the hardest job in the world. I was grateful sometimes for my easy—if sometimes slightly lonely—life with only the responsibilities of my sweet elderly Miss Kitty and accident-prone dad to worry about.

“Of course,” I said. “Go be with your daughter.”

Bernadette looked relieved. “I knew you’d understand,” she said, giving me a quick hug even as her cell phone chimed. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Of course you will.”

There was no way she would. An inch-long splinter, buried deep in her six-year-old daughter’s knee? I’d be lucky to see Bernadette again before lunch.

But I plastered Fake Jo’s smile across my face and turned back toward the auditorium doors, opening them just in time to hear Will Price say, “So please join me in giving a warm Little Bridge welcome toNew York TimesandUSA Todaybestselling authors Bernadette Zhang and Jo Wright!”

The audience applauded with—I liked to think—more than mere politeness as I trotted up the stairs along the side of the stage and over to the three chairs where we were to have our chat. Will was standing in front of the middle chair, still clutching his microphone. He smiled as he saw me approach, looking as ridiculously handsome as ever... but that smile wavered as he saw no one following me up the steps to the stage.

Yep,I tried to tell him with my eyes.I’m on my own. But everything is going to be fine.

I kept Fake Jo plastered across my face and, waving to the applauding audience, willed the jitters I felt to calm down. Then I reached for the microphone on the seat of the chair to the right of Will and sat down as gracefully as I could.

But not, of course, before I noticed that on the screen behind me, the graphic had changed. Now instead of welcoming everyone to the Little Bridge Book Festival, it showed two gigantic headshots: one of Bernadette, and one of me—our glossy back-of-the-book author photos.

But mine was as I’d looked years earlier, when I’d first started out in publishing, with a hopeful, radiant smile, sparklingblue eyes, and loose curling waves of blond hair, way before Will had ever publicly trashed my writing.

Great. This was not helping at all.

I had no choice but to address it, and the fact that I was alone.

“Wow, would you look at that,” I said into the mic, gazing up at myself. “This is what one night of partying on your island does to people. It killed the author Bernadette Zhang and it turned me from that sweet young thing intothis.” I gestured at my black hair and the sunglasses I had forgotten up until that moment that I was still wearing. No wonder Will hadn’t been reassured by my gaze.

For a second or two the audience sat in stunned silence, as if uncertain what it had heard. But I knew the mic was on, because I’d heard my own voice reverberate quite clearly from the back of the auditorium. The acoustics were dynamite.

Then a wave of appreciative laughter came pouring toward me: they got the joke.

And right then the butterflies fled, and I felt fine. Everything was going to be all right... so long as I could Kitty Katz my way through it and keep up the furr-endly banter.

“I’m so sorry that you orderedthis,” I said, gesturing toward the photo and then myself again, “but gotthisinstead. But I assure you, IamJo Wright. It’s just been a while since I updated my author photo. And I’m loving my stay here on your lovely island. Thank you so much for having me.” I gave Will a slice of my smile to show that my thanks extended to him, as well, but he was only staring at me with a sort of stunned expression on his face, so I turned back to addressthe audience. “Bernadette Zhang’s been called away for a family emergency—all of you parents out there know how hard it is to balance work and family life. But she’ll try to join us as soon as she can. In the meantime, Will and I are going to have a great conversation about female empowerment in children’s fiction today, aren’t we, Will?”

Come on, buddy,I urged him with my eyes.Get it together.