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“No. But you’re judging me and my family.”

I leaned against the counter.

“I’m sorry.”

She looked away first, toward the Purple Rain display near the front window. We’d sold through half of it again.

“I know you are.”

I reached for her hand, not sure she’d let me take it. She did. Her fingers were cool, her bracelet warm against my thumb.

“I don’t know how to do this,” I said.

“Neither do I.”

“But I want to.”

Her eyes came back to mine.

That part was true. I wanted Minneapolis and Side A, and the terrifying possibility that my life was about to get bigger. I wanted Lorrie and a future I couldn’t afford and had no idea how to ask for.

“I want to believe we can work it out,” she said.

“So do I.”

She squeezed my hand once, then let go.

A customer came in asking for Genesis, and Lorrie stepped away from me and turned toward the bins before I could stop her.

I watched her and realized that loving Lorrie meant loving the Hale part of her too.

20

Lorrie

Wednesday — August 22, 1984

By the time I drove home, the sky had gone the color of old pewter above the lake, and the first fat drops of rain had begun striking the Rabbit’s windshield.

The wipers dragged across the glass with a rubbery squeak, leaving half-moons of water behind. The top was up, and the inside smelled like damp vinyl, White Shoulders perfume, and the Hawaiian Tropic suntan oil I’d spilled the other day.

I drove slower than usual because going home meant asking my parents the question I should have asked the moment Martin Vale said the word trust.

The rain picked up as I turned into the driveway. My father’s Volvo was parked in front of the garage, the kitchen windows glowing through the wet leaves, and for one second I wanted to stay in the car with the radio on and pretend I was only twenty-three and irritated with my parents over something ordinary.

Through the windshield, I saw my father pass the living-room window.

Alive. Solid. Silver hair, blue shirt, the same slightly careful walk he’d had when his knee bothered him when it rained.

My anger faltered.

In my own time, he was gone. My mother was too.

I’d spent years wishing I could hear Bitsy call me Laura Catherine again, or sit with my father over coffee while he asked whether I’d taken my car in for an oil change and whether Paul was treating me well.

Now they were here, and I was furious with them.

I grabbed my purse, ran through the rain, and came in through the kitchen door kicking off my sandals.