Page 151 of Wreckage and Rain

"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."