Chapter 11: Nobody Blames You

In the morning she was still there.

I woke to gray light under the roof and her back against my chest, and I didn't move for fear of finding out what she remembered.

She turned over and looked at me.

"I'm still angry," she said.

"All right."

"I want that on the record."

"It's on the record."

She kissed my collarbone, briefly and hard, and got up to make coffee.

I lay there and understood that she had not woken as the woman from the funeral.

She had woken as herself, with all thirty-six days in her.

That was the first time in nine cycles I had seen it.

Saturday was the nursery's spring sale.

By ten the gravel lot was full of trucks, and the tables outside held flats of marigolds and kale and little pots of lavender.

June had come out to man the till, a bag of peppermints at her elbow.

I carried trays one-handed.

Greer wore her mother's old straw hat and handed out receipts, and she smiled at everyone, and I saw June catch her eye over the register and grin.

At noon the black sedan turned in at the gate.

Darren got out first.

A second man in a gray jacket got out of the passenger side, carrying a leather folder.

"Don't," June said from the till, very low. "Don't let her go anywhere with that one."

Greer set down her stack of receipts and walked out across the gravel to meet them.

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