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"Maren."

I don't yell. That's the part that surprises us both. Twenty minutes ago I'd have felt better throwing the whole jewelry case at him. Now there's nothing left but a low, flat cold, and it's worse than the anger. I watch it hit him. He'd know what to do with a slammed door. He has no idea what to do with this.

I pull my hand out of his and turn my back on him.

The orange bulbs stutter over my head. All of them at once, a shiver of light down every string in the shop. I didn't touch a switch, and I don't pretend otherwise anymore, and I don't turn around to see if he caught it.

"Maren, please." Softer now.

I straighten a stack of price tags that don't need straightening and say nothing.

Behind me the floor creaks, then goes quiet. Holding still costs more than shouting would, and I do it anyway while every stupid cell in me wants to turn around.

"I'm sorry," he says.

I don't give him anything back.

The floor creaks the other way. Cold pours in through the door he tore off its frame, his boots hit the sidewalk, and then it's just me and the guttering lights and the quiet.

I stand alone in the middle of my shop, throat aching, hands still shaking, surrounded by dead women's dresses and grinning ceramic ghosts.

Sid jumps onto the counter and looks at me.

"Don't," I tell him. "Don't you dare say I told you so."

A word drops into my head, crisp and dry and not mine at all.

Idiot.

I turn slowly toward the cat. "Was that about me?"

He starts washing one paw.

"You little..."

In the corner, the antique mirror crashes down off its stand.

We both jump. The blanket slithers off the frame and puddles on the floor, and the glass is already clouding, gray mist crawling in from the edges the way breath fogs a cold window.

Letters push up through the fog. One slow stroke at a time.

TEN DAYS.

I don't move. I've learned that much. It's never finished when it stops.

A second line begins beneath the first, dragged out letter by letter by a fingertip on the wrong side of the glass.

ASK HIM WHAT YOU ARE TO HIM.

11

GAGE

NINE DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN

I've spent six months fixing what she throws at me. Loose railings. Bad locks. Every sharp thing she says but doesn't mean.

But yesterday she just went quiet. Turned her back. Said I'm sorry in a voice with nothing left in it, and let me walk out of her own shop like she didn’t care.