“Well.”Because you hate medid not seem like a good response. I struggled. “It’s different.”
“Indeed.”
I’d ended the story with the little girls on the train platform, waiting to be claimed. Maybe the sisters didn’t find the loving family they longed for. Maybe they didn’t get to stay together. But I’d left it as a possibility, okay?Rose-colored glasses, Gray mocked in my head.
But that was me. Deep inside my corny Kansas heart, I believed in happy endings or at least in hopeful ones. Because if you told yourself a story often enough, it could come true.
“You said I should try something new,” I reminded her.
“Yes. Noel was quite impressed. Not only by the technical aspects of the story, but by the maturity of the writing.”
A smile bloomed inside me. Spread to my lips. “Really?”
“We’ll be meeting next month to formally allocatesupervisors. He’s expressed an interest in working with you on your dissertation.”
My grin threatened to take over my face. “Wow.” She was almost certainly as relieved as I was. I started to collect myself, my bag, my thoughts, my sweater. Preparing to leave. “That’s...”
“Or...” Maeve continued as if I hadn’t spoken. Her black gaze pinned me to my seat. “You could work with me.”
Nineteen
Mornings at the shop had a rhythm, set by the beat of the foot traffic outside and punctuated by the in-and-out ringing of the bell over the door. First the staccato demands for coffee, tea, and cigarettes, then the steady shuffle of pensioners looking to fill the hours until noon. The stop-and-go of mums pushing strollers, picking up a can of beans or a loaf of bread after dropping off the older kids at school. A rush of office workers, squeezing errands and a sandwich made on Fiadh’s fancy bread into their lunch hour.
Some days after lunch, Dee and her friend Reeti came by. Sam would hear them talking about how hard this class was or how tired they were after grinding at the library. And Sam, who had been on his feet since five that morning, would smile and bring them tea.
Sometimes his impatience swelled and grew, ripping him up from the inside. Life was happening out there, outside the shop, on the sidewalk, across the river, passing him by.
It hadn’t always been that way. In the first months after his da died, Sam had been too numb, and too busy, to feel much ofanything, overwhelmed by worries for the shop and his family, focused on learning what he needed to survive. What they needed to survive.
In the beginning, the mindless routine was a comfort. Old pals dropped in to share stories of his da. Neighbors offered condolences. Then the stories and condolences stopped, replaced by the awkward unsaid, the judgment of strangers.What’s a young guy like you doing behind the counter?
Whatever. Dreams didn’t pay the bills. So his life hadn’t turned out the way he’d planned. It was still a good life, his father’s life in his father’s shop. What was good enough for Martin Clery was good enough for Sam.
Or it had been until Dee came along.
Sometimes he almost resented her for stirring up old dreams, for making him twitch with unspoken restlessness.
But that wasn’t fair. She never wanted anything but the best for him. Never saw less than the best in everybody.
This wistful jealousy... That was on him.
The lull came after lunch—he could tell time by the way the traffic died. He picked up his book. He was readingA Goat’s Songagain, drawn in as always by the stark poetry of Healy’s language and the destructive love of his playwright protagonist. And maybe Sam read to make himself feel better, too. Because he might be a moody, whingeing shopkeeper, but at least he wasn’t an alcoholic on a fishing boat like the guy in the book.
The bell jangled. Sam glanced up, the smile for Dee already forming on his face. But the woman standing there was older, flat-chested, with brilliant dark eyes and lips the color of dried blood.
“Dr.Ward,” he said in surprise, and then wanted to kick himself. She wouldn’t remember him.
He recognized her, though. She could have come straightfrom his father’s funeral: same mannish black shoes, same pointy black umbrella. What was she doing this side of the river?
“What can I get you?” he asked, keeping the smile in place.
“I hear you’re thinking of reapplying,” she said without preamble.
“No,” Sam said.
She glanced at his book. He resisted the urge to hide the cover. “You could be doing that.”
He attempted a joke. “Getting shit-faced on a trawler?”
