ornin

because accepting small things was easier than explaining why you didn't want them. She told herself it was the noise of t

ll herself it

ut onto the garden her mother had redesigned three times but never actually spent time in and stared at the ceiling and thought about absolutely nothing rel

like tha

ne said

she always read too fast, and then had nothing left and the next book in the series wasn't out until March. The hero had just t

d the li

one face down

ked it

rtment with almost no direct sunlight

er phone

she told

g useful to offer but

she had m

until they became manageable rather than enormous. It was a skill her family had never appreciated and several of her ex-boyfriends had found unromanti

had two

ne watch me. This is my life not a business transaction. Then Madison. The way he looked at me like he was reading somethin

itled Reasons To Say Ye

was: the d

my family will

she wrote it, and then she wrote it in smaller letters than every

assessment, not mine. And some

romance novel on the shelf, the one with the broken spine and the dog-eared pages and t

e kitchen when sh

licker of something behind her eyes that was gone before Nora could name it. Then the smile came, warm and seamless an

," Madis

rni

ister, and listened to the particular quality of the silence behind her

feeling?" M

in

last

o fi

se. "

dis

e cabinet, and got the teabag and did all the small mechanical things that filled

to do this," Mad

urned

softness of someone saying something hard because they love you. It was a masterpiece. It really was. Twen

ways lookin

right,"

of this isn't what you want, you don'

" Nora said careful

blinked.

avier Holt. What ha

er way. There's

knew before any of us, I could see it at that table last n

mall and very fast. "Dad told me some thi

talk to," Nora said.

es to me, Nora

w," No

d have long since stopped surprising you. Her father came to Madison. Her mother cal

mply the fact

d back to

she said. "I'm going to tell him I have more c

he silence c

aying yes,"

g information," Nora sai

ter where she'd left it last night the one with the list folded insid

her sister o

That smile, the warm

t's best for you

w," No

airs to make

e thought about the ending of her favorite novel with the specific ache of someone who kn

er in the card he'd left on

it for exactly

ca

up on the

ions," she said, wi

Then: "I expec

oing to like

t almost-smile, the ghost of one, the one she had absolutely no

romance novel to

told