Epilogue 2 Summer Rain
Summer
The bookstore in Wrigleyville is independent, mid-block, with a green awning that says WORDS in gold cursive and an interior that smells like old paper and the candle the owner burns at the register.
Patricia picked it. She's been making these calls for me long enough that I've stopped questioning them.
The book launched at midnight. It's one o'clock in the afternoon on launch day.
The line for the signing wraps three times around the inside of the store, out the front door, and down half a block.
Patricia was right about the breakout. The Times reviewed it on Sunday, and the trade press called it the most uncomfortable thriller of the year and a knife in a silk sleeve and a writer at the height of her powers, and Patricia framed all three quotes and FedExed them to my apartment last week with a note that said DO NOT GET COCKY.
I'm in the chair at the table at the front of the store.
Sharpie in my right hand. A glass of water and a small bowl of M&Ms Patricia set out before I sat down.
The faces come up to the table one at a time.
Each one tells me a small piece of their life.
I read this on the train and I missed my stop.
I read this in three days. I'm supposed to be on bedrest. I read this and I called my sister for the first time in two years.
This made me leave my marriage and I'm not asking for advice, I'm just telling you.
I sign every book. I look up at every person. I say thank you for reading every time and I mean it every time.
Three rows back in the line is my husband.
Colt has been in the bookstore for hours.
He came in with the rest of the family and got in line at the back because he refused to skip it, because I want the full experience, Summer, don't deny me.
He's been moving forward at the rate of a paying customer.
He's been pretending to read a magazine.
The twelve copies of the book ride in a little folding cart he wheels forward each time the line moves.
I told him this morning he didn't need twelve copies.
He told me that he had calculated. One for him.
One for Dom. One for Sam. One for Marisol.
One for Bex. One for Mama and Daddy. One for Autumn.
One for Jake. One for Patricia. One for the firm's office library.
One for Lucia, for when she's old enough.
One for a shelf in our apartment, saved unread for our own future child, the one we haven't talked about yet but have started, in the evenings, to circle.
Twelve copies. They're stacked in the cart like a small unstable tower.
The line crawls forward. Lucia, ahead of him in the line, is on Marisol's hip and is, at three years old, of an age now where she can read her own name. Marisol has been teaching her since September. She knows the L, the U, the C, the I, and the A. The order is occasionally optional.
She comes up to the table.
"Auntie."
"Lucia."
"Can you write a special word for me on my book."
"What word would you like."
"Shnake."
"That's a very good word, Lucia."
"I'd like shnake with a heart."
"I'll write shnake with a heart."
"And the date."
"And the date."
I open her book to the title page. I write, in my best handwriting, For Lucia, who is going to be a writer one day if she wants to be. Shnake, with a heart. Love, Auntie. June 14.
I hand her the book. She holds it against her chest with the gravitas of a child receiving a saint's relic.
Walks back to Dom, who is already crying, just a little, just at the corner of his eye.
Dom gets misty without warning now, at small moments, and we've all agreed not to acknowledge it because it embarrasses him.
Mama and Daddy are next. Mama hugs me across the table.
Daddy puts his hand on my head and says, "Proud of you, baby girl," and I sign their copy with a sentence I had been holding for so long, and Mama reads it and her face crumples, and Daddy reads it over her shoulder and his jaw tightens and he doesn't let any of it on his face but he holds Mama's hand on the way back to their seat.
Jake is in town. He flew up from Charleston with Greg's leftover pecan pie in a Tupperware as carry-on because Patricia called me three times and I'm the responsible King family representative now and I bring pie to launch events.
He's sitting at the back next to Patricia, who's decided she likes him and is grooming him for some kind of unspecified larger role in her plans.
Autumn is at the signing table next to me.
She's been my unofficial assistant the whole signing.
She passes books down the line and refills my water and tells the people who try to give me their entire life story in the line that Summer would love to talk to you in greater depth but the line is going to start booing, please move forward.
She's wearing the dress she wore to my wedding.
She hasn't worn it since. She told me this morning that she pulled it out of the back of the closet because she felt like it was absolutely the right outfit for the day.
Sam is at the back of the room. He came in with Autumn. He's in a soft black shirt I've come to recognize as his book-event uniform. He's been at every reading I've given in Chicago, and most of the out-of-town ones.
The line keeps moving. Colt is two rows back. He pretends to read the magazine. He glances up at me. I glance at him. The corner of his mouth lifts. He goes back to the magazine.
Patricia comes up to the table partway through.
"We have to cut the line."
"How many?"
"Sixty more. The store wants to close at four. I'm going to tell the last forty in line we'll mail them signed bookplates."
"Tell them to come back tomorrow. I'll sign at the apartment building if I have to."
"You aren't signing at the apartment building."
"I'm offering."
"You are too generous and I'm protecting you from yourself. The bookplates are the move. Sign forty bookplates tonight before bed."
"Yes, ma'am."
She walks off. Autumn rolls her eyes at me. The line keeps moving.
Colt is one person back now. He's in his good shirt. The blue one I like. He's in jeans because I told him at breakfast that I wouldn't allow him to wear a suit to my launch event. He is, even with a cart of twelve hardcovers parked at his side, the best-looking man in the building.
The person ahead of him is a woman in her sixties who tells me she read my second book on a hospital floor with her dying husband.
I sign her book carefully. I take her hand.
I don't rush. Colt waits behind her with the cart and the magazine, and the magazine has long since stopped being his pretense.
Then it's his turn.
He lifts the twelve books out of the cart and sets them on the table.
"Twelve," I say.
"Twelve."
"You're ridiculous."
"I'm methodical."
"Open them. I'll start signing."
I open the first one. He has paper-clipped a small note inside the cover of each one. Names. He has labeled the recipients in his small careful handwriting. I read the first one. Dom. I sign it. For Dom, who carried me to the kitchen sink and never let me lie to myself. With every gratitude, S.
I hand it back. He sets it down. Opens the next.
Sam.
I look up at him.
"You sure."
"I'm sure."
I bend over the book. Sign carefully. For Sam, who built a room for me to be honest in, when no one else had built one. With love, S.
I hand it back. He reads what I wrote. He nods. The faintest pressure at the corner of his eye. Sam, across the room, is looking at us from the back, and he can't see what I wrote. He's going to read it tonight in our apartment, alone. I don't know what it'll do to him, and I don't need to know.
I sign the rest. Mama and Daddy. Lucia, with a second shnake and a heart, because Lucia gets two. Autumn, who I cover with a love note that takes up a third of the title page. Bex. Patricia. Marisol. Jake. Then the office library copy, which I sign generically. Then the unread copy.
The unread copy is the one I'm supposed to sign for the future child we haven't had yet.
I open it. I look at Colt across the table.
He nods.
I write: For the next reader in this family. Whoever you are. Your father saved this book for you before you existed. Your mother wrote it before she knew she'd write it for you. Read it when you're ready, not before. We love you already. Mama.
I close the book. Hand it to him.
He reads it. Reads it again. He sets the stack down on the table. He puts his hand flat on top of the books. He doesn't say anything. He looks at me. The crooked smile. The wet eyes he isn't trying to hide.
"Move along," Autumn says, deadpan, beside me. "The line is going to start booing."
Colt laughs. Stacks the signed books back in the cart and wheels it to a stop beside Patricia's chair.
The line keeps moving. I sign sixty more books.
By four o'clock the bookstore is empty of customers and full of my people, the small loud collection of human beings who've decided to be mine.
Patricia is on the phone with the bookstore's events coordinator.
The bookstore owner is opening a bottle of something sparkling.
Mama is taking a photograph of me at the signing table, both hands wrapped around an iPhone she isn't entirely sure how to operate.
Daddy comes up to the table. Pulls out the chair next to me. Sits.
"Baby girl."
"Daddy."
"You did it."
"I did it."
"You wrote a book and you put it in the world and you did it after the worst year of your life and you did it on your own clock and I'm not going to say a sentence with the word brave in it because I know your mother-in-law ruined that word for you. I'm going to say a different sentence."
"Tell me."
"You're the strongest person I've ever raised."
"Daddy."
"Hush. Take it."
"Yes, sir."