Page 225 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

I took off my jacket, loosened my cuffs, and sat in the blue chair with the book I had left here two nights ago. The chair creaked under me in a way I still distrusted. I had asked before repairing it. Quinn had told me I could tighten the screws but not “replace its soul.”

So the soul remained. Loudly.

I opened the book, but for a while I simply watched Quinn sleep.

My life was nothing like I had imagined it would be. It was less orderly. Less insulated. Less mine alone.

There were dog beds in rooms that had never had them. A scarf on my entry table. Soup containers in Quinn’s refrigerator that my staff now labeled for her because she had once complimented the broth. My mother asked after the sunshine girl. My father smiled more when I said her name. Avery Teddington had my phone number and used it without qualm.

Quinn slept in the bed across from me, trusting me to stay. I loved all of it.

Not despite the disruption.

Because of the shape it had given my days.

Because love, I was learning, didn’t make life smaller or less serious. It gave seriousness somewhere to go. It gave responsibility a face, a name, a dog snoring on an expensive bed in a tiny apartment.

It gave me this.

A quiet room.

A sleeping woman.

A book in my hand.

And no desire whatsoever to be anywhere else.

EPILOGUE

QUINN

Job Night. Focus.

I was late to the most important professional event of my life because Max refused to leave a puppy.

In his defense, the puppy was a five-month-old Czechoslovakian wolfdog with enormous paws, tragic ears, and the emotional stability of a shopping cart with one bad wheel. He had been seized from an illegal breeding operation, placed in Avery’s rehab program, and had apparently decided that Max was his spiritual advisor.

Max accepted the job immediately, mostly by sitting very still while Gustav leaned on him like furniture.

“Max,” I said from Avery’s front hall, one heel on, one heel in my hand, my legal pad wedged under my arm, and my locket bouncing against my sternum because I had bent over too fast. “We have to go.”

Max looked at me.

The puppy, whose name was Gustav because Avery believed problem dogs deserved “names with opera energy,” leaned into Max’s shoulder and sighed.

“Oh, do not make that face,” I told him. “You have known him for forty-seven minutes.”

Avery came out of the back room wearing black trousers, a silk shirt, and the exhausted calm of someone who had already said “drop it” more times than any adult should before dinner.

“You’re going to be late,” she said.

“I’m aware.”

“Helena Wallace is going to begin without you.”

“Helena Wallace would begin a wedding without the bride if the bride ignored her calendar reminders.”

“She respects punctuality.”