The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo Summary & ending explained

Monique

Frankie waves me into her office before I've even put my bag down, and at Vivant that is never a good sign.

She doesn't let me sit. "Evelyn Hugo wants to give an interview."

Evelyn Hugo. Seventy-nine years old, seven husbands, one of the last real stars of old Hollywood. She hasn't spoken to the press in decades. She's auctioning her most famous gowns for a breast cancer charity, in memory of her daughter, and she wants a magazine piece to go with it.

"That's huge," I say. "Who's writing it?"

Frankie looks at me as if I've said something stupid. "She asked for you. By name."

I'm thirty-five. My husband has just moved to San Francisco without me, I write the pieces nobody fights for, and I have never met Evelyn Hugo in my life. Frankie wanted a senior writer. Evelyn's people said Monique Grant or no one.

So two days later I'm in an apartment on the Upper East Side, being settled onto a cream sofa by an assistant named Grace, and then Evelyn walks in. She's in black trousers and a simple sweater, her famous blonde hair cut short now. She is still the most beautiful person I've ever been in a room with, and she knows it, and she isn't interested in it at all.

I start on the gowns. She waves the question away.

"There isn't going to be an article," she says. "I asked you here to write my life. All of it. A book."

"A biography."

"The truth. Every husband, every lie, every person I hurt. You'll write it and you'll sell it, and you'll keep the money."

I wait for the catch. It comes calmly, as if she were ordering lunch.

"It can't come out until I'm dead. And I promise you, that won't be long."

I ask the obvious question: why me? She smiles like a woman holding a better hand.

"You'll find out. When I've told you everything, you can ask me anything you like."

I should call Frankie. I don't. I take out my recorder and set it on the glass table between us.

Evelyn folds her hands. "Let's start at the beginning," she says. "With my first husband, Ernie."