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  Megan Hart

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  MEGAN HART

  To my trusted crit partners, you know who you are.

  To my family, for your support and love.

  To my readers—without you, I'd have no success. Thank

  you.

  I don't write books without music. My thanks to the artists

  and musicians who make it possible for me to sit at my

  computer day after day and make worlds and the people

  who populate them. Please support their work through

  legal sources.

  Don McLean, "Empty Chairs"; Joaquin Phoenix and

  Reese Witherspoon, "It Ain't Me, Babe"; Joshua Radin,

  "Closer"; Justin King, "Same Mistakes"; Lifehouse,

  "Whatever It Takes"; Meredith Brooks, "What Would

  Happen"; Rufus Wainwright, "Halelujah"; Sarah Bareiles,

  "Gravity"; Schuyler Fisk, "Lying to You"; She Wants Revenge, "These Things"; Tim Curry, "S.O.S."

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Author's Note

  Chapter 01

  Chapter 02

  Chapter 03

  Chapter 04

  Chapter 05

  Chapter 06

  Chapter 07

  Chapter 08

  Chapter 09

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 01

  Sometimes, you look back.

  He was coming out. I was going in. We moved by each

  other, ships passing without fanfare the way hundreds of

  strangers pass every day. The moment didn't last longer

  than it took to see a bush of dark, messy hair and a flash

  of dark eyes. I registered his clothes first, the khaki cargo

  pants and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. Then his height and

  the breadth of his shoulders. I became aware of him in the

  span of a few seconds the way men and women have of

  noticing each other, and I swiveled on the pointed toe of

  my kitten-heel pumps and folowed him with my gaze until

  the door of the Speckled Toad closed behind me.

  "Want me to wait?"

  "Huh?" I looked at Kira, who'd gone ahead of me. "For what?"

  "For you to go back after the dude who just gave you

  whiplash." She smirked and gestured, but I couldn't see

  him anymore, not even through the glass.

  I'd known Kira since tenth grade, when we bonded over

  our mutual love for a senior boy named Todd Browning.

  We'd had a lot in common back then. Bad hair, miserable

  taste in clothes and a fondness for too much black

  eyeliner. We'd been friends back then, but I wasn't sure

  what to cal her now.

  I turned toward the center of the shop. "Shut up. I barely

  noticed him."

  "If you say so." Kira tended to drift, and now she

  wandered toward a shelf of knickknacks that were nothing

  like anything I'd ever buy. She lifted one, a stuffed frog

  holding a heart in its feet. The heart had MOM

  embroidered on it in sparkly letters. "What about this?"

  "Nice bling. But no, on so many levels. I do have half a

  mind to get her one of these, though." I turned to a shelf of

  porcelain clowns.

  "Jesus. She'd hate one of those. I dare you to buy it." Kira snorted laughter.

  I laughed, too. I was trying to find a birthday present for

  my father's wife. The woman wouldn't own her real age

  and insisted every birthday be celebrated as her "twenty-

  and insisted every birthday be celebrated as her "twenty-

  ninth" along with the appropriate coy smirks, but she sure

  didn't mind raking in the loot. Nothing I bought would

  impress her, and yet I was unrelentingly determined to buy

  her something perfect.

  "If they weren't so expensive, I might think about it. She

  colects that Limoges stuff. Who knows? She might realy

  dig a ceramic clown." I touched the umbrela of one

  tightrope-balancing monstrosity.

  Kira had met Stela a handful of times and neither had

  been impressed with the other. "Yeah, right. I'm going to

  check out the magazines."

  I murmured a reply and kept up my search. Miriam Levy,

  the owner of the Speckled Toad, stocks an array of

  decora tive items, but that wasn't realy why I was there. I

  could have gone anyplace to find Stela a present. Hel,

  she'd have loved a gift card to Neiman Marcus, even if

  she'd have sniffed at the amount I could afford. I didn't

  come to Miriam's shop for the porcelain clowns, or even

  because it was a convenient half a block from Riverview

  Manor, where I lived.

  No. I came to Miriam's shop for the paper.

  No. I came to Miriam's shop for the paper.

  Parchment, hand-cut greeting cards, notebooks, pads of

  exquisite, delicate paper thin as tissue, stationery meant for

  fountain pens and thick, sturdy cardboard capable of

  enduring any torture. Paper in al colors and sizes, each

  individualy perfect and unique, just right for writing love

  notes and breakup letters and condolences and poetry,

  with not a single box of plain white computer printer paper

  to be found. Miriam won't stock anything so plebian.

  I have a bit of a stationery fetish. I colect paper, pens,

  note cards. Set me loose in an office-supply store and I

  can spend more hours and money than most women can

  drop on shoes. I love the way good ink smels on

  expensive paper. I love the way a heavy, linen note card

  feels in my fingers. Most of al, I love the way a blank

  sheet of paper looks when it's waiting to be written on.

  Anything can happen in those moments before you put pen

  to paper.

  The best part about the Speckled Toad is that Miriam sels

  her paper by the sheet as wel as by the package and the

  ream. My colection of papers includes some of creamy

  linen with watermarks, some handmade from flower pulp,

  some note cards scissored into scherenschnitte scenes. I

  some note cards scissored into scherenschnitte scenes. I

  have pens of every color and weight, most of them

  inexpensive but with something—the ink or the color—that

  appealed to me. I've colected my paper and my pens for

  years from antique shops, close-out bins, thrift shops.

  Discovering the Speckled Toad was like finding my own

  personal nirvana.

  I always intend to use what I buy for something important.

  Worth