From National Book Award finalist Adele Griffin, an insightful and warmhearted story of two very different women who make an unexpected connection when one decides to hold a baby for the opposite.

Intrigued? Well read on to find the synopsis and an excerpt from Adele Griffin’s The Favor, which is out now!

At I’ll Have Seconds, a high-end fairytale vintage dress shop in Manhattan, Nora Hammond loves nothing higher than pairing a rare find with the right client.

At home, Nora grapples with the bleaker reality of enormous debt, a tiny apartment, and ever-dwindling hope that she and her husband Jacob can have a family of their very own.

When socialite Evelyn Elliot charges into Nora’s life, the ladies spark an instantaneous connection, and Nora is jettisoned into the heady whirl of Recent York’s moneyed elite. As Evelyn’s stylist and confidante, Nora must learn all latest rules of engagement for the uber-wealthy. But it surely isn’t until Evelyn decides her next cause is to hold a baby for Nora, that these rules― and this unlikely friendship―are tested.

A recent story that celebrates alternative routes to family, The Favor is an incisive examination of what it means to long for a baby and what relationships cost us―and what they’re value.

1.

The lady appears just as I’m about to lock up. She’s a sudden force, pushing so hard on the opposite side of the door that I haven’t any alternative but to open it.

“I’m in!” she says as she swooshes past me. She’s younger and more glamorous than our usual customers, with coppery curls that offset the drape of her pale cashmere coat. I note her diamond studs and the irreverence of a slip dress, which is paired with chunky biker boots she wears as easily as her astonishing beauty.

I check my watch. “Can I provide help to with something?”

“Yes! I’m here to your Ferretti dress. I saw it in your website.” She plants her bumblebee-yellow Birkin—not a fake—on the counter. Her voice holds the sweet and smoky flavor of the South.

“We keep our greatest things upstairs,” I say. “Our boss lives over the shop.” But Barb is upstate, at her home in Rhinebeck, and I tend to not enter her apartment without asking.

“Ah, I figured it was your shop! You’ve got that whole retro, classic thing.” She waves a hand to encompass me.

“I’m about to lock up, but when you desire to stop by tomorrow, I’ll have the dress ready for you.”

“My flight’s in three hours. I’ll be quick—promise!”

I’ve been on my feet all day, and I actually need to get home to Jacob, but I can’t determine easy methods to say no to her expensive-looking teeth. I check my watch again. “It’s late…”

“Sigh!”

Did she just say the word sigh? But she doesn’t move. I don’t move, either, and now we’re locked in a sudden game of upscale-retail-chicken.

“Nora, I can hang around,” says Frankie, coming in from the storage room, where he’s been unboxing padded hangers. He drops into the club chair outside the dressing area. I give him the side-eye—it’s so late—but he ignores it. “Should you get me Barb’s key, I’ll take over.” Frankie and I work most shifts together, so he knows all about my plans to swing by Whole Foods and pick up ingredients for chickpea meat loaf. I read him the recipe during our lunch break, despite his yawns. Dinner with my husband is my favorite a part of the day, and I’m not about to blow it for Kentucky Elle Woods.

“Let’s get at it, then!” The lady tosses her coat onto the hook of our hat tree, then spins in a circle, taking within the fusty charms of our thin-skinned salmon silk carpet and cranberry velvet curtains. “I’ve lived six years within the East Village and passed right by this shop, oh, have to be a thousand times—till now!’” She beams at me. As if I’m the important thing to her fate as an alternative of an try to escape it. “Such a sweet name for a vintage shop, too. I’ll Have Seconds—how do you say no? I’m Evelyn.”

“Nora,” I say.

“Frankie,” says Frankie. “Take your time.” Seth is traveling for work, and Frankie doesn’t prefer to be alone. I could leave without delay if I desired to, but I scrabble for the important thing within the register drawer. My mind is scrabbling, too. If we’re each on the ground, Frankie and I split the ten percent commission—and minus our hourly, we’ve made not more than 100 dollars today, combined.

The Ferretti costs almost two thousand dollars.

I could double my time off this sale alone.

“Herringbone, am I right?” Evelyn reaches across the counter and offers the tip of my braid a teasing yank. “Nicely done, too. Spelling bee chic. Who taught you?”

I’m surprised by the query. I want a second. “My mom.”

“So sweet. I am keen on tradition—and a braid is the most effective. It’s like a puzzle that solves a foul hair day. Thanks, Mama.” She says this so gently, like she knows my mother. “And is that beaded Valentino upstairs? Let’s bring that one down for a spin, too.”

The Valentino is three thousand dollars.

I find the important thing and fish it out.

It’s not like anyone was begging for chickpea meat loaf.

“I’ll get the dresses,” I call to Frankie, and before he can say anything, I duck through the back door that leads as much as Barb’s apartment.

Given where this sale appears to be heading, she’ll surely forgive the trespassing.

2.

Upstairs, I text Jacob. He writes back, You bought this, plus a chef and a heart emoji, and I send back an xoxo.

My breath is quick as I pull each pieces. I’ll Have Seconds is usually high-end evening-wear consignment, but an actual couture sale is a rare coup—let alone two. Frankie and I’ll have to upgrade our celebration from the same old overpriced cocktails at Death & Co. or Pastis.

On my way out of Barb’s with the gowns—that are so heavy I actually have to sling them over my shoulder like a few slumbering prom queens—I catch a dim view of myself within the hall mirror. My spearpoint collar and knife-pleat pants. My walnut-brown eyes, the identical shade as my hair. A braid is the most effective. My mom died after I was a senior in highschool, twenty years ago this spring. But at any time when my fingers plait a fishtail or a waterfall, I can feel the bite of her plastic Goody comb dividing my part. Her singsongy “Sit still, sit still.”

I’m singsonging it under my breath to an imaginary daughter, binding the tip of her imaginary pigtail, as I head downstairs.

On the ground, Evelyn has peeled herself to her lacy bra and underwear. She’s got our Balenciaga pencil skirt crimped up round her waist and is studying herself within the mirror.

Frankie is on his feet, releasing our mannequin from a couture ’93 Versace coatdress with gold Medusa buttons as big as quarters down its front.

“I’m trying on a large number of other things,” says Evelyn when she sees me. “Forgive me, but I’m taking up your shop!”

“Okay.” I’m mostly speechless, taking a look at her.

Evelyn’s body is as inked as a treasure map. There’s a band of Gaelic encircling her left biceps, a butterfly spans the small of her back, and a trellis of untamed ivy climbs daringly up her inner right thigh. Tiny scripted words whisper messages across her wrists, arms, and hips. She’s a living canvas. And so spectacular. Voluptuous and warmly suntanned, with curves like old-timey porn. The tattoos are a surprise, though—like cayenne pepper on a sweet potato pie.

“It goes on easier from the underside.” I gesture, mimicking easy methods to get into the skirt. “And there’s a shirt.”

“Aha. Thanks, Spelling Bee! Did you win all of the spelling bees at college?”

“I won just a few,” I admit, smiling. It’s an apt nickname; I’d been that student—a bookworm, a chaser of ribbons, stickers, and stars.

“You look smart like that,” says Evelyn. “I wasn’t an excessive amount of for college, but I’ve all the time loved the smart girls. They make me brainy by association.” With a final yank on the skirt, she starts prowling, an apex predator in her luxury-boutique habitat. I pull the shirt and stand there holding it while Evelyn picks up cigarette boxes and opera glasses and sniffs into the perfume bottles lined up along our bookshelf. “I used to be within the fragrance business,” she says. “Highly unprofitable—don’t recommend. And what’s up with these books?”

“Rare books,” says Frankie, who has plugged in our upright clothes steamer to provide the Versace a fast once-over. “Nora finds them.”

“So sweet,” says Evelyn. “And this Morano glass lamp…and your funky Biedermeier cabinet.”

“Yep, that’s all Nora,” says Frankie. “Before Nora fixed it up, Barb had it looking like a brothel.”

“See? You’re the boss.” Evelyn’s laugh is low and wealthy with mischief. She slides a book out from the shelf. “Frieda Bergessen was a friend of my great-grandmother’s.”

“Seriously? She’s my favorite,” I say. I’d nearly had a heart attack after I found that first edition in Charleston a few years ago. It was some unexpected enchantment, that trip. Jacob and I got one deal on JetBlue (two center seats, not together) and one other deal on the Riverview Inn (free breakfast, no Wi-Fi, no river view). We spent the weekend walking the harbor and eating our weight in deep-fried pickles on the Swig & Swine. I discovered Option to Find Me: Poems by Frieda Bergessen in a juice crate at a porch sale off King Street.

The copy is shabby. Its corners are foxed, the pages brittle, though Bergessen’s observations on love and friendship proceed to stay around, recrafted for the virtual world in quotes and hashtags.

“Back home, my family’s got Frieda treasures unfolded like a chilly supper,” drawls Evelyn as she flips through the book. “I even have a night cloak created for her specially by Christian Dior.”

“Dior himself? That’s incredible,” I say.

“I assume so. She wore it to her last public appearance at Carnegie Hall.”

“Why’ve you bought it in any respect?” asks Frankie.

“Because she left plenty of her things to my great-grandmother when she died. Great-Gran liked sponsoring the humanities and arty types and such.”

I trade a meaningful look with Frankie. Money. We watch Evelyn put down the book and finish her loop of the shop. Then she yanks off the skirt—“Ready!”—and unhooks her bra. Her large breasts plop out like a few beached jellyfish. I try to not look surprised, but casual topless isn’t a thing here. Our shoppers are well-heeled, discerning women—Frankie refers to them because the Discount Dowagers—who don’t need to spend the utmost for luxury labels but aren’t afraid to pay for quality.

I move to shut the storefront curtains as Evelyn slides into the coatdress.

“That appears absolutely dreamy on you,” pronounces Frankie, who tends to be excessive with client compliments.

“It may be a bit snug,” I add since it is.

“Formfitting matches me tremendous,” says Evelyn. “I’ll take it.”

“I’ll put it up front,” says Frankie. He’s attempting to remain calm, but I can hear the fun in his voice. Our Versace, at seventy-five hundred dollars, is our prized floor piece.

“‘Option to Find Me’ is my favorite poem ever,” says Evelyn as I reshelve the book.

“Mine, too,” I say.

“‘Of sweeter moments, far and few.’” She quotes the second verse. Is that this a test?

“‘There won’t ever be one other you,’” I finish.

Evelyn’s observing me with surprised pleasure, as if I’m something she’s discovered which may bring her good luck. It’s a startling feeling, no less strange than if she’s kissed me. “My favorite,” she repeats.

“Who is that this schmaltz ball we keep talking about?” asks Frankie, whose reading leans more toward fashion and design magazines, along together with his subscription to Variety in order that he can “stay within the loop.”

“Frieda Bergessen,” I tell him, “was the daughter of—I believe they were Scandinavian immigrants who settled somewhere in Recent England after the First World War. She was a prodigy—only seventeen when she wrote ‘Option to Find Me.’ That’s the poem she’s most known for, its’s so passionate and personable—and if Frieda gets hold of you young, she keeps you eternally.”

“I scratched the road ‘My strategy to you was not a lie’ on Alex Jaffe’s locker after he cheated on me with Liz Knoll,” Evelyn says. “Frieda had good words for a wronged heart.”

“For me, that was Amy Winehouse,” says Frankie.

“There’s little question Amy was up on her Frieda,” I say.

“Clock is ticking. Let me try my Ferretti.” Evelyn is shrugging out of the coatdress.

I delay the robe like a shield to guard myself from her soft-core Bettie Page breasts. Once she climbs in, Frankie darts around to lock the hook and eye.

“Now this auntie is a win,” says Frankie, meaning it.

“You’re like some sort of a rock star–Viking goddess,” I blurt out. Really, I can’t stop taking a look at her.

Pleased, Evelyn stares at herself within the mirror. “Who’s Auntie?”

When Frankie explains that our greatest pieces belonged to Barb’s long-dead aunt, Evelyn claps her hands. “Rustle me up the remainder of the aunties!”

This time, Frankie makes the dash upstairs and returns with a haul, and Evelyn’s game to try all of them. Something about these campy diva Las Vegas style gowns, with their plunging necklines and glittery batwing sleeves, matches along with her burlesque beauty.

She’s the right client—the lady who turns a dress right into a story.

“Let’s take a break,” Evelyn declares as we release her from a heavily structured Scassi, “while I determine what I would like to purchase.” She must see some flicker of concern in my eyes, because she dips into her Birkin for her wallet, then hands over her thick, battle-ready Amex Platinum. “For real.”

I smile, relieved. “There’s Taittinger in our mini fridge.”

“Will Barb care?” asks Frankie.

“Only when she wants it and sees that it’s gone.” I find the champagne and pop the cork while Frankie gets plastic cups from the stockroom.

After I take the love seat, Evelyn jumps next to me, sloshing our drinks. “Do you have got Sonos? I’m putting on my playlist!” Her knees bump compatibly against mine. Like we’ve done this 100 times before. It’s strange but not unpleasant.

Frankie gives Evelyn the Wi-Fi and the password, and now Lana del Rey intros soulfully through the speakers. Evelyn nudges in closer. I let it occur.

“To Ferretti? Versace?” Frankie raises his cup as our eyes trade one other woo boy. Even when Evelyn purchases a fraction of what she likes, we’ve made our entire week.

“To me, in fact!” sings Evelyn. “Your rock star–Viking goddess!”

We laugh and tap cups, and over the subsequent hour, Frankie and I are a captive audience to whatever Evelyn desires to discuss next; it’s her money, in fact, that provides her permission to have probably the most to say. We learn that she’s thirty-five years old, an only child who grew up throughout, but mostly at her family home in Tennessee, before attending boarding school in Recent Hampshire—“for some spit and polish”—followed by a single semester at UC Santa Cruz, where she met Jurgen, a Swiss DJ who soon became the daddy of her son, Xander. She has her scuba diving license, she’s been to Base Camp One and Timbuktu, and she or he would have been a part of the U.S. National Equestrian team if she hadn’t taken a fall that fractured her collarbone; certainly one of her most heartfelt cause célèbres, she tells us somberly, is the care and rehabilitation of retired racehorses. She cochairs the annual Frick Young Fellows Gala in the autumn and the Watermill Center’s Summer Profit. She’s six years married to an artist named Henry, and so they live downtown.

She shows us photos of Xander, whose sprinkling disruption of eighth-grade pimples can’t hide that he is gorgeous like his mom.

“You were twenty-one whenever you had a baby?” I ask rigorously.

“A latest twenty-two. Xander was the final thing I believed I wanted.” Evelyn puts away her phone. “And prepare to be shocked, however it seems DJs don’t make probably the most exemplary parents. Thank goodness I’ve got Henry, he’s such a fantastic big hug of a stepdaddy.”

“That’s so lovely,” is what I intend to say, but what comes out is “That’s so lucky.”

“We’re,” says Evelyn. “We’re an actual cozy little family.”

“I used to be asked to be in a threesome at my friend’s bachelorette party,” says Frankie, with a fast glance at me, as he deftly shifts us to sex anecdotes for the reward of Evelyn’s laughter. We’re all getting tipsy, which might be why Frankie and Evelyn now determine to recreate some TikTok dances. On Evelyn’s urging, I recite just a few stanzas of “Option to Find Me” before she’s suddenly on her feet in a bounce. She pulls her phone from where it fell into the velvet cushions. “My bottom buzzed me! It’s my driver. My flight’s leaving—quick, pack all of it up. I would like the whole lot.”

“All the pieces, what?” I laugh. “You’re kidding.”

“Aw, Spelling Bee, I’m undecided that’s a winning sales strategy,” says Evelyn. “Yes, every final thing.”

“Will you come back for alterations?” Frankie looks stunned.

“I actually have my very own tailor. My driver’s almost here. Point me to the women?”

We are able to barely keep our cool, and as soon as Evelyn vanishes to the toilet downstairs, Frankie and I grab one another’s hands and begin spinning.

“When did we ever do a sales number like this?”

“The woman with the Q-tip hair? Who bought all of the dragonfly stickpins?”

“Nora, I’m pretty sure this is greater than our whole June!”

It’s such a rush, all this money. I’m already imagining how I’ll tell the story to Jacob.

“And the books,” says Evelyn as she reappears. “Are they value rather a lot?”

“The books?” I shake my head. “The books aren’t on the market.”

“Why not?”

“Because they…” Because they’re mementos from Jacob’s and my road trips. Crackerjack prizes pried from flea markets and swap meets. I pick up The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook. “This copy is water damaged, see? I got it for her hash fudge recipe.”

Evelyn’s breath is on my cheek. “How much?”

“They’re not—”

“Two K for all of them,” calls out Frankie, but he doesn’t even sound serious; we each know the books couldn’t be value greater than fifty dollars.

“The thing is,” I say, “simply because I picked these books doesn’t mean—”

“Nora worked at Lineage Holdings,” says Frankie grandly. “A boutique auction house,” he adds. “Very prestigious.”

I try to think about something so as to add. “But they aren’t invaluable, I wasn’t—”

“Two thousand, done,” says Evelyn.

“Except I’m not—”

“Oh, no!” Frankie presses a finger to his chin. His eyes twinkle. “Nore, have you ever already placed these books with one other client?”

“No,” I answer. “Not…right now.”

“Then finders keepers,” says Evelyn.

It feels too easy. Money—my evergreen worry—is just falling into my lap.

“Poor you,” says Evelyn when, books packed, I meet her up front.

“Poor me, why?”

“I’m adopting all of your book babies.”

“They’re going to family.” I attempt to match her breezy tone. I feel dazed by my windfall. But she’s right—I’m sorry to provide up my books.

“Promise I’ll make it as much as you.” She takes certainly one of my hands, binding our fingers so tight that it looks like she’s stitched them together. “I owe you.”

Here’s when I believe I should assure this almost-stranger she doesn’t should promise me anything. At the identical time, I can’t shake my sense that whatever she believes she owes me, it’s real to her. Possibly it’s the champagne talking. Or the way in which Evelyn is observing me, like I’m her long-lost family. But now I’ve got an ache in my throat, and so I keep silent. Holding her grip. Allowing the moment, whatever she needs, until she lets me go.