It was, in part, generosity.

But it had also been fear — that if I stepped forward under my own name and failed, I’d have no one’s success to hide behind.

Warner’s ambition had been a very comfortable place to bury my own.

It asked nothing of my courage; it let me be brilliant in private and safe in public, and the price of that safety, which I never let myself total up, was that no one — including me — ever found out what I could do if I stopped ghostwriting someone else’s life.

The betrayal didn’t hand me my career.

It took away the comfortable place to hide and left me no choice but to walk out under my own sky and learn that I could stand there.