Page 148 of Wreckage and Rain

I think about it.

"A man wakes up in a hotel room he doesn't remember checking into. There's a woman next to him he didn't consent to be next to. He has six hours of his life missing. He has a wife who is in another city and doesn't know yet. The book is about what he has to find out about himself in the next year to be a person his wife could choose again. The wreckage and the rebuild. Married to a thriller plot at the front and a redemption plot at the middle and a romance at the back. I'm going to call it something with rain in the title."

He has gone very still next to me.

"Summer."

"Yeah."

"That is."

"I know."

"That is."

"I know what it is, Colt."

"You're going to write it."

"I'm going to write it."

"All of it."

"All of it. Including the part where the husband is the villain in chapters one through fifteen and stops being the villain in chapter sixteen and becomes a person in chapters seventeen through thirty. Including the part where the wife sleeps with the bartender and isn't ashamed of it. Including the part where the husband goes to his mother in a garden. Including the part where the bartender ends up at coffee with the wife's best friend. All of it."

He's looking at me. The cold has put color in his face. His eyes are wet.

"That's the bravest book anyone has ever written."

"Don't use that word with me."

"That's the boldest book anyone has ever written."

"Better."

"You're sure."

"I'm sure. I've been sure for a month. I've been waiting to be sure I could write it without burning anything down."

"And now?"

"Now I can write it without burning anything down. There's nothing left to be afraid of. The only thing left is to make it true."

He puts his arm around my shoulders. Pulls me against him. The mittens make it awkward and we work around the mittens. The cocoa goes on the parapet.

"I'm proud of you."

"Say it again in a year when the book is out and the reviews are bad."

"I'm going to read every draft."

"You read the last one four times and gave me a single note and the note was a comma."

"It was a load-bearing comma."

"I'm going to give you notes you don't want."

"Patricia gives me notes I don't want and I survive."