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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.
   Worthwhile. Love letters written with a pen that curves
   into my palm just so and tied with crimson ribbon, sealed
   with scarlet wax. I buy them, I love them, but I hardly ever
   write on them. Even anonymous love letters need a
   recipient…and I didn't have a lover.
   Then again, who writes anymore? Cel phones, instant
   messaging and the Internet have made letter writing
   obsolete, or nearly so. There's something powerful,
   though, about a handwritten note. Something personal and
   aching to be profound. Something more than a half-
   scribbled grocery list or a scrawled signature on a
   premade greeting card. Something I would probably never
   write, I thought as I ran my fingers over the silken edge of
   a pad of Victorian-embossed writing paper.
   "Hey, Paige. How's it going?" Miriam's grandson Ari
   "Hey, Paige. How's it going?" Miriam's grandson Ari
   shifted the packages in his arms to the floor behind the
   counter, then disappeared and popped back up like a
   jack-in-the-box.
   "Ari, dear. I have another delivery for you." Miriam
   appeared from the curtained doorway behind the front
   counter and looked over her half-glasses at him. "Right
   away. Don't take two hours like you did the last time."
   He roled his eyes but took the envelope from her and
   kissed her cheek. "Yes, Bubbe."
   "Good boy. Now, Paige. What can I do for you today?"
   Miriam watched him go with a fond smile before turning to
   me. She was impeccably made up as usual, not a hair out
   of place or a smudge to her lipstick. Miriam is a true