Excerpted from THE BOOKKEEPER by Mary McGarry Morris:
Jerome drank regular coffee now. He needed the caffeine, he said, taking it black. Her blouse stuck to her back. Sweat trickled between her breasts. Awkwardness framed these long pauses, neither knowing what to say. He cleared his throat, took another sip.
“What is it? What do you want?” she’d blurted, startled to find him at her door.
“I just want to make sure you’re all right.” He’d looked scared.
Still did, blinking, picking at his thumbnail. Thinner than she remembered. Gaunt-faced. In his dark eyes a flatness now. Head held back, as if expecting a blow. She was doing very well, she’d already assured him. Stiffly. Even though her heart had been racing—still was. Why am I so nervous? she wondered, trying to calm herself. He’d asked, so she was telling him about the mill. The conflict between herself and Trevor. The truth in a way, without complicating details.
“I figured something like that had happened,” he said. “I just knew.”
His certainty was irritating. As if she in any way needed his vindication. Always so sure of everything. She’d forgotten that about him. An uneasy stretch of silence. Then throat-clearing. So much more quicksand than safe ground here. They’d already talked about his father’s death. Her father’s stroke. Dawn’s going away to college. He seemed amazed she was old enough. She’d said her mother and Millie were fine, with Peter unmentioned, his boorishness once a joke between them, but not now. Pride, loyalty filled the void of intimacy now. All connections severed, only bar-ren islands left, his, hers. She was sorry that his daughter had been so sick. His daughter. Did it sound as awkward as saying it felt?
“It’s a terrible thing, seeing your child go through something like this and not being able to help them.”
Them—she was confused. Of course he meant the child, not the mother. “What’s her name?” Though she knew.
“Kami.” His hand reached back. To get his wallet, to show her a picture, she realized, then had changed his mind. “It’s a sacred being that’s worshipped in Shintoism.”
“Are there any special treatments? There must be something, with all the new discoveries now.” The last thing on earth she wanted to hear was the significance of the name, chosen when her own wounds had been so raw.
Unfortunately, no. Not only untreatable, Kami’s cancer was deadly in its ravenous aggression, he told her. The entire family had been tested, even the little guy, Lee, hoping someone’s bone marrow might be a match. No one’s was. And it would only weaken her more, according to the doctors.
Lee, the spoiled one, distracting everyone in church.
“That’s too bad,” she said, coloring with her petty thoughts and the weakness of her words. “Such a terrible thing for a child to have to go through. It doesn’t seem fair.” Hadn’t he just said that? Clichés, all she could manage.
He shook his head, took a deep breath. “No, it doesn’t, does it?” And then looked at her, his eyes stricken, fearful. “She’s never done anything wrong. Never. In her whole life.”
Except be born. Grace stared back. Was that what he was thinking, but couldn’t say? Was that his reason for coming? He wanted something; she knew by his tilted head, his wringing, tapping, picking fingers. The wormy vein in his temple pulsed in and out. Always angling, needing more. There was a time when his ambition had thrilled her, when they’d been a team, saving for their house, clipping coupons from the Sunday papers, washing their one car together in the driveway. After so many years alone, companionship had been difficult at first, awkward for both of them. But in the end, an achievement, especially for her, who had so nervously avoided intimacy. “You’re so much easier to be around,” Walter had told her after she was married; then, seeing the look on her face, apologized and tried to explain what he’d meant. But she’d forgiven him. Because it was true. Life had gotten easier. Interesting.
Comforting to finally be part of something. Something larger and wonderfully ordinary.
“Can I get you more coffee?” she asked, standing suddenly with a surge of old bitterness. Remembering all that had been lost.
“No, no, I’m fine. But thank you. I’d best be going. And I apologize for just washing up on your doorstep like this.” He laughed uneasily. “Like a piece of old driftwood or something.”
Or a bad penny, she thought. After he left she sat in the low afternoon shadows, wondering why he’d come. Or was it simply what he’d told her, to make sure she was all right? And if so, why now? Did he think her leaving the mill hurt more than the end of her marriage had?
Dear Ana,
Remembering how much I used to love him makes me hate him all the more.
Excerpted from THE BOOKKEEPER © 2026 by Mary McGarry Morris. Reprinted with permission from Union Square & Co.. All rights reserved.
THE BOOKKEEPER by Mary McGarry Morris
An engrossing and twisty workplace novel that follows one woman’s descent from devotion into obsession, from a New York Times bestselling author.
Grace Cathcart Crowley is a proud woman, a fastidious bookkeeper at Penniman Mill, and a fiercely loyal employee. After the public collapse of her marriage, triggered by her husband’s relationship with his underage student, Grace finds herself living only for and through the mill. And she will stop at nothing to ensure the success of the mill’s careless and undeserving owner, Walter Penniman.
But now, Grace’s rigidly ordered existence is coming undone. Walter takes up with his new HR hire, and a management shakeup at the mill exposes years of rigged finances that begin to resemble embezzlement. Faced with losing her grip on both the mill and Walter, Grace hatches a desperate plan to regain control. The psychological thrillers of Patricia Highsmith reverberate through Morris’s novel, as Grace is soon drawn into an obsessive downward spiral that will leave her life and livelihood in pieces.
Thriller Psychological [ Union Square & Co., On Sale: November 17, 2026, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781454967279 / ]
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About Mary McGarry Morris
Mary McGarry Morris was born in Meriden, Connecticut in l943 and raised in Rutland, Vermont with three younger brothers. She was educated at Mount Saint Joseph Academy in Rutland, the University of Vermont, and the University of Massachusetts. She is married to Michael W. Morris, an attorney, and the mother of five children, and grandmother of twelve. She lives on the North Shore in Massachusetts.
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