Page 37

"Ben."

"Right side," I say. "Hands are a little off. Count's holding."

She nods, satisfied, as if I'd given her a weather report. She needs the plain answer. I'm better at giving it than I ever believed.

She reaches up and straightens the tricorn, tugging it a quarter inch left. Her fingers brush my temple and linger there, warm, with the faint smell of turpentine and honey.

"Do you know what I thought when I saw you in this hat?" she murmurs.

"That it's ridiculous."

"That between three and five o'clock this afternoon, every soul in Bloomfield is going to be standing in line for pie."

I look at her. She isn't smiling. She has her chin tipped up and her glasses a little crooked. Her eyes are a clear hazel-green, the eyes of someone who has worked out a plan and priced it. Heat goes down my spine like a lit fuse.

"I'm on cleanup," I say.

"Cleanup takes twenty minutes."

"You've timed it."

"I've timed it three times." Her voice is perfectly level. "You're efficient."

Behind me, Mr. Alfred coughs into his sleeve. Hollis turns, all sweetness, and says, "Good afternoon, Mr. Alfred," and he says "Mrs. Mercer" to the worm without looking up. I take a drink of coffee so I won't do anything with my face.

"Hollis."

"There are children all over this lawn," she says gravely. "I know. I run the face-painting table. I'm aware."

"Then you should—"

"And you're in charge of the explosives." She leans in until her breath touches my good ear. Her voice drops to the register that I've heard exactly twice in the dark. "It's the most attractive thing about you. Don't tell anybody I said so."

"I'm going to need a minute before the salute."

"Take two," she says, and flattens her palm against my chest, right over my heart, where it's slamming, and holds it there until it slows.

I put my hand over hers and press it flat. That's the sentence. She hears it. Her eyes go soft behind the glasses.

Bunny's voice booms from the bandstand. The microphone squeals and settles. She announces the Founders' Day Salute in a tone that would shatter a window. The crowd stirs and thickens, turning toward us. Toward the iron barrel on its stone plinth and the three men in felt hats and the man in the fourth hat standing straight beside them.

A hush runs through the green. It's the one time of year Bloomfield goes quiet on purpose.

The animal part of me stands up in my chest. I know its shape now. I've had time to learn it, and what it wants, and what it'll settle for. I take the ear defenders off their hook and fit them over the hat. The world drops to a thick, muffled hush.

Charge, tamp, vent, primer, lanyard. Alfred rams the first charge home with a steady arm and gives me a short nod.

Hollis steps back to the rope line. Five feet away, to my right, exactly where I can see her without turning my head. A woman in a red dress with an entire town at her back and her chin up, her hands at her sides.

She lifts one, makes a loose fist, and taps it three times against her breastbone. Soft, patient, spaced like a woman with all day.

I'm here.

I nod once. I take the lanyard.

The first shot goes through the ground and up the soles of my boots. It isn't less. It has never once been less. The crack comes through the defenders anyway, through bone and breath. My chest locks and the white light flares at the edge of everything. For one half second the Common is gone and I'm somewhere dry and bright and far from here.

I count. One. I find a number and I hold it. Fourteen steps from a garage to a kitchen door. A cracked fourth step. A dent in the seventh.