Anything.

And she gave me back three years.”

And Ximena, who does not like her and never has, said: “Maren, she didn’t do it for you.”

And Maren said, “I know.

That’s why it counts.”

Part Twenty: The Parking Lot

The crate was in a rented Transit van in the lower lot for the entire day, in ninety-four degrees, with a two-foot silver bow on it.

I went down and looked at it at about ten at night, when the dancing was going and nobody was going to miss me, and I stood in a gravel lot in the dark with the side door open and the interior light on, looking at a plywood box that my son-in-law had built in March.