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"Like things that haven't gone off yet."

"Is it safe?"

"No."

She nods slowly. Something passes behind her face and goes out again like a light switched off in a far room. She tucks her hair behind her ear.

"Monday," she says. "That's perfect. That's actually perfect. No complications. A clean edge." She's very bright. "Monday I get my life back, and you get your range, and everybody gets to have a nice weekend."

"Right," I say.

Something in my chest tightens, a screw turned one quarter-turn. I don't examine it.

She writes the third rule on the flyer. Ends Monday, 7 AM. Then she holds out her hand.

It's warm. It's rough at the fingertips and soft in the palm, with a faint smear of cobalt along one knuckle. My hand closes around it, the scarred one, the numb one. Her thumb brushes across the ridge at the back of my wrist and finds the live nerve. A shiver goes through me. I feel it travel up through her fingers into her arm. I see her breathe in.

Neither of us lets go.

A second goes by. Then another. A car passes on the street. A crow lands on the porch rail and decides we aren't interesting.

"Noon," she says. Her voice is barely there. "The Common. By the bandstand."

"Noon."

"And tonight, I'm wearing red." She says it as though she's been holding it behind her teeth for years. "You should know that, for planning purposes."

"Noted," I say.

She lets go. I let go. She closes the door gently, and I stand on the mat with my hand still curved around the shape of hers.

Through the wood, I hear her whisper, "Oh my God," in the voice of a woman who has stepped off a roof. A few seconds later, I hear her start to hum.

I stand there until I'm sure it's in tune.

Chapter 3 — Hollis

Everyone on Bloomfield Common is facing the pie tent except one man.

He's standing at the foot of the bandstand with his back against the biggest oak, a paper cup in each fist. Looking out over three hundred of my neighbors like weather coming in off a lake. Cataloguing.

A kid in a cow costume bolts between his boots, and he shifts aside without looking down. A girl from the Regional marching band swings past with a tuba bigger than her torso, close enough to graze his shoulder. I watch the muscle in his jaw lock, then let go. Like a hand being opened one finger at a time.

I'm eleven minutes late. It takes a while to put a mustard cardigan over a forest-green knit dress, take it off, put it back on, and then stand in the hall mirror saying "It's a dress" out loud until my face stops arguing.

The dress holds everything it's meant to hold. The swell of my belly, the full roll of my hips, the place where my thighs meet in their wool tights. For five years I'd have called this too much.

I walked out the door anyway.

The Common is doing its best October. The maples are flame, the flags snap along the bandstand rail. The air smells of cider donuts, woodsmoke, and wet leaves. At the far end, the Old Granary stands in all its white clapboard dignity with fourteen feet of my orchard hanging over its doors. I tell myself I'm not checking whether it hangs straight.

Ben finds me at forty feet. I know because his shoulders drop half an inch. His eyes reach me and stay. He pushes off the oak and comes across the grass with those two cups, steady, a man who has decided something.

"You came," I say when he's close enough that I have to tip my head back.

"You doubted me."

"I doubted me. You're early."