Chapter 10: Tuesday

I looked down at the pickle wrapper in my hands.

I had practiced a dozen answers on the walk over. A rumor. A dream. A feeling.

He'd told me he didn't lie.

"I've already lived it," I said.

He didn't move.

"I chose Bryant, the last time. On my birthday, in my father's study. We married that September. I was his wife for seven years."

A group of freshmen went laughing past us down the steps.

I waited until they were gone.

"He moved everything into Brazos Harbor. The patents, the buildings. One piece at a time. Shelby's name on all of it."

"And then?"

"On my twenty-seventh birthday my parents took me to dinner in Montauk. Driving home, the brakes went on the curve above the water."

I made myself look at him.

"I remember the guardrail. I remember my mother saying my name. Then I was in my father's study with the files on my lap, and I was twenty again."

The sun was warm on the stone.

Somebody's radio was playing on the lawn.

I waited for him to stand up and walk away.

He didn't.

He took the pickle wrapper out of my hand and folded it into a neat square.

"What did the report say?" he asked quietly.

"You know what it said."

He closed his eyes for a second.

"The same words."

He sat with that for a while.

I watched people move across the quad below us, small and ordinary.

"You don't believe me," I said.

"I'm a scientist. I don't believe or not believe. I test."

"So test."

"You already gave me one."

He opened his eyes.

"The fire. May fifth."

"Tuesday night. Around ten. In the old records cage at the back. It took the whole building."

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