Page 3

MARGO

Define snacks.

Food.

MARGO

That tells me nothing.

You sound like a hostage negotiator.

WREN

Answer the question.

Traitors. Both of them.

I shove the phone away and go back to shelving.

The front door opens again. A blast of late-August air drifts inside — warm and green, cut grass and something dusty underneath it, the smell of the last week before the weather turns. Then a guy walks through carrying a hockey stick, because apparently there is no escaping the species.

Automatically, my mood drops three points.

Maybe four.

He heads for the sports section. I go back to the shelf. A minute later Margaret materializes beside me with the soundlessness she has somehow maintained into her eighties, which I have always found faintly alarming.

“You’re frowning.”

“I’m not.”

“You absolutely are.”

“I don’t like hockey players.”

Her eyes twinkle in a way that means she is about to be reasonable at me, which is her most effective weapon. “That’s a broad generalization.”

“It’s an accurate one.”

“You’re twenty years old, sweetheart.”

“Almost twenty-one.”

“You haven’t met enough hockey players to determine that.”

“One athlete was plenty.”

She doesn’t argue. She knows about Evan — not everything, just enough. Enough to know why the sight of any athlete in her store makes me recalibrate my entire afternoon. Enough to know why I spent most of June and July taking the long way home from work so I didn’t pass his apartment building.

She studies me for a moment with the calm, patient attention she gives to things she has decided to be worried about. Then she smiles, just slightly, and says, “You know, my grandson plays hockey.”

There it is. Every time.

“Margaret.”

“What?”

“You bring him up every time.”