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ready to talk dates."
    "We are if we're trying to get the location of our dreams," she explains. "You have no idea how much planning we have to do. It's perfect. It's early spring. It will be warm, but not too hot. We can have the wedding outside. If there's an issue, we can move it indoors. I love the location, Chris. I adore it. And you said you liked it, too. So it's really kind of a no-brainer."
    I don't know what to say. All of this talk about locations and roast beef and dates. I just want to read this story. I want Ethan Frome and Mattie Silver. I want to do my job and get it done. I can't deal with this right now.
    When I don't respond, she slides off the bed and heads into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. I listen to her entire bedtime routine—the washing of her face and brushing of her teeth—and, when she returns, sans makeup and smelling faintly of mint, frowning, I crumble.
    If I screw this up, she'll never forgive me. I can't keep screwing things up.
    "I'll talk to Mom tomorrow. If there are no conflicts, we'll do the first weekend in May."
    Her expression softens, melting into a smile. She crawls across the bed on her knees and kisses me easily on the lips. "I knew you'd come around." Her voice lowers further, smooth and sultry. "Whatever can I do to thank you?" she teases.
    "You can let me finish this book."
    She pulls away, forehead crinkling. "Seriously?"
    It's Saturday night, and I've just chosen a book over my girlfriend of four years. My fiancée. "Um...kind of. Yeah."
    She laughs. "Okay. You're easy to please. Rain check?"
    "Absolutely."
    She plants another kiss on my lips, then slips under the covers and turns off the lamp on her bedside table. "Don't stay up too late," she says. Overhead, the ceiling fan spins quietly—around and around. Every few seconds the cord plinks against the glass globe.
    I pick up Ethan Frome one more time.
    ...and she had smiled and waved to him from the train, crying out, "You must be Ethan!" as she jumped down with her bundles.... But it was not only that the coming to his house of a bit of hopeful young life was like the lighting of a fire on a cold hearth. The girl was more than the bright serviceable creature he had thought her.
    I continue reading by the light of the lamp on my side of the room, turning pages quietly, lost in the cold, dark world of Starkfield and Ethan Frome. I know it ends badly. Jaden warned me, the author warned me, but it does little to prepare me for those last moments Ethan and Mattie share: the desperation—the desire to feel her, to kiss her one more time. And, when they fail....
    I close the book and place it on the nightstand, run fingers through my hair, shiver against the breeze from the fan.
    It's late.
    It's past late, even. It's almost...early.
    I pull Callie's feather comforter all the way to my chin and reach for the lamp cord, plunging the room into darkness. I wait for my eyes to adjust. I wait for the blankets to warm my bare skin. I wait for my head to make some kind of sense of everything I just read. My mind reels with reflections of Zeena and Ethan and Mattie and Ethan and love and loss and longing.
    They should've run away.
    He should've tried harder.
    He should've let her go.
    Callie shifts beside me, rolling over, but her breathing remains rhythmic and even.
    He should've gotten the hell out of there.

 
     
    C HAPTER S EVEN
     
     
    I park my sport bike—a Suzuki GSX-R—in the Teacher of the Year space at the front of the school. Beside me, Principal Howell slams the door of his minivan shut. He walks me toward the entrance, playing with his keys. It's cold and dark—another cloudy, miserable day—and when the sun sets in the next hour or so, it will be even colder. Darker.
    Starkfield.
    "Sorry for the inconvenience," I say, breath turning to smoke in the frigid air.
    "It's all right," the principal replies. "I happen to enjoy spending the last few hours of my weekend at work."
    I fight back a smile.