Chapter 2

The cold on the porch hit Pilar's face the way cold hits a face that has been warm for too long — a correction, a pulling of the skin. She stood on the new concrete step for a moment with her hand still on the door handle, listening to the silence inside the house the way you listen to a kettle after you've taken it off the stove.

No one came after her. She hadn't expected them to. The floorboards were hers to walk away from, and the front door was new, and the deadbolt had been installed by a man who'd charged by the hour.

She walked down the drive to her car — a ten-year-old sedan she'd bought used the year after the divorce, when Harris had kept the house and the truck and the boat on the river. The engine turned over on the second try. She sat in the dark with the heater blowing cold air for a full minute before she put it in gear, and then she drove away from the new-build house without looking back at it in the mirror.

She wanted to. That was the thing she would admit later, to no one and to herself. She wanted to watch the windows. She wanted to see which silhouette moved where, who spoke first, whether Harris's glass was still in his hand when he finally lowered it. But twenty-two years of being the ex-wife had taught her one habit above all others: don't give them the satisfaction of a backward glance. Don't let them catch you wanting to be in the room you've been asked to leave.

She drove to the flower shop.

It was closed, of course. Christmas Eve. The lights were off behind the big front window, and the white orchids in the display case stood in the dark like patient guests waiting for a host who'd never arrive. Pilar parked around the back and sat in the car with the engine off and the heater ticking as it cooled.

She had keys. She always had keys. She'd signed the shop over to a manager two years ago, but she'd kept a key, because the manager was twenty-four and had never had a crop-duster's emergency or a wedding order gone wrong, and Pilar had learned that you keep keys for the same reason you keep the original of a contract: you never know when you'll need to walk in and put your hands on something.

The back door opened onto the workroom, which smelled of soil and cut stems and the faint chemical sweetness of the flower food they mixed in five-gallon buckets. She turned on the work light over the big table and sat down on the stool where she'd sat for twenty-two years, first as the owner, then as the one who came in early to do the arrangements no one else trusted themselves to do, and finally as a woman who came in sometimes just to sit.