Page 152 of Wreckage and Rain

"I'm methodical."

"Open them. I'll start signing."

I open the first one. He has paper-clipped a small note inside the cover of each one. Names. He has labeled the recipients in his small careful handwriting. I read the first one. Dom. I sign it. For Dom, who carried me to the kitchen sink and never let me lie to myself. With every gratitude, S.

I hand it back. He sets it down. Opens the next.

Sam.

I look up at him.

"You sure."

"I'm sure."

I bend over the book. Sign carefully. For Sam, who built a room for me to be honest in, when no one else had built one. With love, S.

I hand it back. He reads what I wrote. He nods. The faintest pressure at the corner of his eye. Sam, across the room, is looking at us from the back, and he can't see what I wrote. He's going to read it tonight in our apartment, alone. I don't know what it'll do to him, and I don't need to know.

I sign the rest. Mama and Daddy. Lucia, with a second shnake and a heart, because Lucia gets two. Autumn, who I cover with a love note that takes up a third of the title page. Bex. Patricia. Marisol. Jake. Then the office library copy, which I sign generically. Then the unread copy.

The unread copy is the one I'm supposed to sign for the future child we haven't had yet.

I open it. I look at Colt across the table.

He nods.

I write: For the next reader in this family. Whoever you are. Your father saved this book for you before you existed. Your motherwrote it before she knew she'd write it for you. Read it when you're ready, not before. We love you already. Mama.

I close the book. Hand it to him.

He reads it. Reads it again. He sets the stack down on the table. He puts his hand flat on top of the books. He doesn't say anything. He looks at me. The crooked smile. The wet eyes he isn't trying to hide.

"Move along," Autumn says, deadpan, beside me. "The line is going to start booing."

Colt laughs. Stacks the signed books back in the cart and wheels it to a stop beside Patricia's chair.

The line keeps moving. I sign sixty more books. By four o'clock the bookstore is empty of customers and full of my people, the small loud collection of human beings who've decided to be mine. Patricia is on the phone with the bookstore's events coordinator. The bookstore owner is opening a bottle of something sparkling. Mama is taking a photograph of me at the signing table, both hands wrapped around an iPhone she isn't entirely sure how to operate.

Daddy comes up to the table. Pulls out the chair next to me. Sits.

"Baby girl."

"Daddy."

"You did it."

"I did it."

"You wrote a book and you put it in the world and you did it after the worst year of your life and you did it on your own clock and I'm not going to say a sentence with the word brave in it because I know your mother-in-law ruined that word for you. I'm going to say a different sentence."

"Tell me."

"You're the strongest person I've ever raised."

"Daddy."

"Hush. Take it."