Page 9

She looks at me. The robe has slipped a little off one shoulder. There are freckles there, a soft scatter of them. I keep my eyes on her face.

"Don't rehearse," I say. "Go in. Bring someone."

"Who? Carmen's working the café stall all day, and I'm not asking my grandmother to play my—"

She stops. Her eyes narrow. I watch her put it together. "Are you volunteering?"

"I'm saying you shouldn't walk in there alone."

"You hate crowds."

"I do."

"You've known me for nine hours."

"Nine and a quarter. I counted." I shrug. "I heard you through a wall for three hours before that. You told your ficus it was doing 'honestly so well, an inspiration to us all.' You hum Ella Fitzgerald in tune. You laughed at something on the radio so hard you had to put a brush down. I'd rather watch you walk into that room as that person."

Something sparks behind the crooked glasses. "You're challenging me."

"Yes."

"To walk in as myself."

"With me beside you. If you want."

She puts her mug down on the hall table, slowly. She straightens up in the doorway. I watch her pull herself to her full height with her chin lifted. Her own particular heat comes up in her face, a spark that wasn't there in the basement.

"Fine," she says. "Then I'm challenging you right back. If you're so sure about the wall and the voice and being yourself in public, then you walk onto that Common, in front of Bunny and the rotary club and all of Bloomfield, and you hold my hand like you mean it. You, with your no-crowds. All day. Not one flinch."

"I can hold a hand," I say. "It's not high on the list of hard things I've done."

"Don't be smug."

"Wasn't."

"You were a little."

"A little."

She gets a pen from the table in the hall and tears the corner off a flyer. "Rules," she says, businesslike. "One. We don't lie to each other, ever. Only to everyone else."

"Agreed."

"Two. Either of us can call it off, any time, for any reason. No questions. Two knocks on the wall."

"Two knocks," I say. "Done."

"Two." She stops with the pen in the air. "How long does this go? Founders' Day is just today, but it could—people will talk. They'll want a Sunday brunch. They'll want to come by with pie."

I've known this question was coming since the porch. I still feel it land.

"I leave Monday morning. Seven AM."

She goes still. "Leave."

"I took a job two states away. Clearing old ordnance off a decommissioned range. It's a long rotation. I signed in August."

"Ordnance," she says. "Like—"