Excerpt from The Three Lives of Cate Kay by Kate Fagan, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Excerpt
The Three Lives of Cate Kay

February 27, 2014
Charleston, SC

About a year ago, a FedEx package landed on the porch of my home in Charleston, South Carolina. I don't get much personal mail, a consequence of multiple name changes, I guess.

A saga, actually—my name. I've had too many. I was born Anne Marie Callahan, but growing up, my best friend called me Annie. A few years later, I legally changed it to Cass Ford. Then, I published under the pseudonym Cate Kay. I wish it was simpler. Trust me, I do. Creating a new life (or lives) takes a devastating amount of energy, of imagination. And I've missed hearing my real name.

So, this FedEx box was an anomaly in my world. I glanced at the return address: Mason, Cowell & Collins, the law firm of Sidney Collins. Not only was Sidney the architect of my literary empire—manager of all things Cate Kay—she was also my ex-girlfriend.

I carefully opened the box. Inside was a stack of blue binders and sitting atop was a handwritten note from Sidney. She explained that by sending over all this paperwork, she was relinquishing control of my Cate Kay business dealings and righting past wrongs. (One of them, anyway.) What she couldn't have known was that this package, and her letter, set in motion a series of events that would forever alter the trajectory of my life.

She signed it: I'll think of you—fondly. xo, Sidney. I was glad her tone was conciliatory. Sidney is not someone I want as an enemy. Or, really, as a friend. No relationship at all was my preference. We hadn't spoken in seven years—not since the long-ago night when I'd frantically taken a red-eye from Los Angeles to the apartment the two of us shared in Harlem.

But let's not get started down that path; let's stick with the binders. 

Before I closed the last one, I caught sight of a second handwritten note on crisp stationery. The letterhead belonged to my literary agent, Melody Huber. The note was addressed to me, dated four years prior. I read Melody's words with great curiosity. She gently invited me to come out of hiding. Her idea: a memoir. She'd suggested this previously, no doubt, but the message never reached me. The success was mine, she wrote, even if the name was not.

I looked at her words. A memoir? I liked the thought of it—of freeing myself. But I knew it couldn't happen. A book would requiremme to confront my past, which I was committed to not doing. Maybe someday I would feel differently, but not anytime soon.

Then, a week later, everything changed. And Melody's words had stayed with me:

You could tell everyone the full story, every little detail.

My mind kept catching on that last clause: every little detail. I remembered so many. They flooded my mind, a kaleidoscope—of sunbeams, of brown hair tossed, us blowing into our hands for warmth. Maybe Melody was right? Maybe it was time. I called her office and for the first time ever, heard the voice of the woman who had plucked my manuscript from the slush pile all those years ago.

I told Melody on that first phone call that I couldn't be the only one to tell this story. I'd lived inside it for far too long. Better to throw open the windows and tell it from every angle, for better or worse. Within these pages, you will read about what happened from my perspective, as well as from those whose stories collided with my own.

And that is how we got here, to this book you now hold in your hands. My memoir, but more than that—it is a monument. Carved from a mass of bad decisions and selfishness and, it pains me to admit, cruelty. And yet, I want you to love me anyway. No use pretending otherwise. I'm done hiding who I am. My mind's long been divided on the question of my goodness—and now here you are, the deciding vote.

Excerpted from The Three Lives of Cate Kay, Copyright © 2025 by Kate Fagan published by Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.