Chapter 18: On His Palm

I had only a moment to decide whether to hide.

I chose to stand up on the porch rail, in the lamplight, where he would see me.

The door of the secret room opened onto a closet-sized floor of steel shelves, with my little world built on the middle one.

There was a farmhouse the size of a bread loaf with a blue curtain in one window.

There was a square of green fields, a coop, a pond, and two rows of grow lights humming softly.

Finnegan stepped inside and stopped.

He stared at the shelf for a long moment.

"Maeve?" he whispered.

"I'm here."

My voice came out of the small speaker clipped to the porch post, thin and bright.

His head turned.

He went down on one knee beside the shelf, slowly.

I saw his face fill the whole sky.

His eyes were enormous and dark, and the gray in his hair was a silver cloud.

"There," I called, and waved both arms. "On the porch."

He leaned closer, so close that his breath ruffled my hair.

"You're..." he said.

"One centimeter," I said. "Give or take."

He pressed one hand to his mouth.

I braced for the question.

How, or why, or what did I want from him now that he knew.

It did not come.

He laid his other hand flat on the shelf beside the porch with the palm turned up.

"May I?" he asked.

I looked at his palm.

It was as wide as my whole house.

I had spent four years believing that anyone who learned what I was would use it.

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