Page 150 of Wreckage and Rain

There it is. The question we've both been circling for a while. I keep a dozen easy answers within reach for exactly this kind of question.

"I'm not sure yet," I say. "But you intrigue me in a way I'm not used to. And I think about you way more than I should."

She tips her head back and looks at me. There are about four feelings on her face fighting for the front, and I can't tell which is winning, and I find I want very badly to know.

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only honest one I've got. I don't do this. I haven't in a long time, and the last time I did, it cost me everything I'd built." I make myself say the rest, because she came all this way for the truth and she's earned it. "But you're not imagining it. Whatever this is. You're not imagining it."

She breathes out. Some of the fear goes with it. Not all. She's too smart to let all of it go.

"Okay," she says.

"Okay."

She steps back into the thin light under the door. Straightens her coat. Looks at me one more time, and there's a bigger question still sitting in her eyes, the one neither of us is ready to ask out loud.

"I should go."

Neither of us moves.

Outside the storeroom the club is dark and quiet and mine. In here it's dark and quiet and, for the first time in three years, not only mine.

I don't know how this ends. I know it won't be simple, and I'm standing here anyway with the warmth of her wrist still on my hand, deciding to want it.

A beginning, and not a clean one. We're going to have to fight for it.

Epilogue 2: Summer Rain

Summer

The bookstore in Wrigleyville is independent, mid-block, with a green awning that says WORDS in gold cursive and an interior that smells like old paper and the candle the owner burns at the register. Patricia picked it. She's been making these calls for me long enough that I've stopped questioning them.

The book launched at midnight. It's one o'clock in the afternoon on launch day. The line for the signing wraps three times around the inside of the store, out the front door, and down half a block. Patricia was right about the breakout. The Times reviewed it on Sunday, and the trade press called it the most uncomfortable thriller of the year and a knife in a silk sleeve and a writer at the height of her powers, and Patricia framed all three quotes and FedExed them to my apartment last week with a note that said DO NOT GET COCKY.

I'm in the chair at the table at the front of the store. Sharpie in my right hand. A glass of water and a small bowl of M&Ms Patricia set out before I sat down. The faces come up to the table one at a time. Each one tells me a small piece of their life. I read this on the train and I missed my stop. I read this in three days. I'm supposed to be on bedrest. I read this and I called my sister for the first time in two years. This made me leave my marriage and I'm not asking for advice, I'm just telling you.

I sign every book. I look up at every person. I say thank you for reading every time and I mean it every time.

Three rows back in the line is my husband.

Colt has been in the bookstore for hours. He came in with the rest of the family and got in line at the back because he refused to skip it, because I want the full experience, Summer, don't deny me. He's been moving forward at the rate of a paying customer.He's been pretending to read a magazine. The twelve copies of the book ride in a little folding cart he wheels forward each time the line moves.

I told him this morning he didn't need twelve copies. He told me that he had calculated. One for him. One for Dom. One for Sam. One for Marisol. One for Bex. One for Mama and Daddy. One for Autumn. One for Jake. One for Patricia. One for the firm's office library. One for Lucia, for when she's old enough. One for a shelf in our apartment, saved unread for our own future child, the one we haven't talked about yet but have started, in the evenings, to circle.

Twelve copies. They're stacked in the cart like a small unstable tower.

The line crawls forward. Lucia, ahead of him in the line, is on Marisol's hip and is, at three years old, of an age now where she can read her own name. Marisol has been teaching her since September. She knows the L, the U, the C, the I, and the A. The order is occasionally optional.

She comes up to the table.

"Auntie."

"Lucia."

"Can you write a special word for me on my book."

"What word would you like."