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I stayed beneath the sheet for several minutes, listening to a boat motor out on the lake, while my thoughts moved back and forth between the man I’d kissed the night before and my children, whom I could no longer see clearly.

I breathed through the fear until it let go enough for me to move, then got out of bed and dressed for my shift at the record store, because lying around all day would only make me dwell on things I wasn’t sure I wanted to face.

I chose white jeans and a pale yellow T-shirt, tied my hair back with a floral scarf, and spent too long looking in the mirror above the kitchenette sink, trying to decide whether I looked any different.

My mother noticed before I made it through the kitchen door. She stood beside the counter in linen slacks and a navy blouse, looking over her grocery list while my father ate bacon and eggs. Her eyes narrowed, then settled on my face with the accuracy of a woman who had detected cigarette smoke on my sister from across a room when she was a teenager, and once identified my secret boyfriend by the cologne he’d left on my sweater.

“What?” I asked, reaching for the coffee.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re thinking loudly.”

My father lowered the newspaper. “About what?”

“Nothing,” my mother and I said together.

He looked between us, made the wise decision to return to the Brewers, and disappeared behind the sports page.

Bitsy took a sip of coffee and continued watching me over the rim of her cup. “You’re going to work?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve worked there all summer. Don’t you want to have fun?”

“Getting paid to listen to music all day is fun.”

My father chuckled behind the paper as my mother frowned at me. Twenty minutes later, I was in the Rabbit with the top down, while Wham! came through the radio.

I felt twenty-three, full of energy, and hadn’t slept this well in almost fifteen years. When I was sixteen, there was a fire in our garage, and my parents had to wake me up. I’d slept through the fire alarm. What I wouldn’t give to sleep this well at fifty.

By the time I reached Side A, the door was propped open with the brass duck and Otis was lying directly in the entrance, all four paws in the air.

I stepped over him. “Good morning to you too.”

Dean looked up from behind the counter. For a second, neither of us said anything as I felt heat rise into my face before he smiled.

“Morning.”

Brian emerged from the back carrying a box of cassettes, stopped dead, looked from Dean to me and back again, and sighed.

Dean picked up a pricing gun. “Get to work.”

“I’m working.” Brian shifted the box higher against his chest. “This is my working face.”

Dean waited until Brian’s back was turned, then brushed his fingers lightly against mine where my hand rested beside the register.

“You sleep okay?” he asked.

“Eventually.”

He studied my face, then nodded.

The morning passed quickly and when a delivery arrived, Dean and I opened the boxes while Brian campaigned to move the cassette display closer to the register.

“It will block the window,” I said, looking at the display, then at the narrow front space.

“Maybe half the window,” Brian said.