Sinclair was right, I decided. It would be stupid not to enjoy the moment for what it was.

It felt strange to have him in my apartment, but a good kind of strange. The place was modestly furnished and decorated, but throughout my childhood my mom and I had gotten good at salvaging and rehabbing stuff from thrift stores, yard sales, and, yes, even Dumpsters, and I thought it looked pretty decent. After checking in vain for Mogwai, I gave Sinclair the tour—living room, kitchen, screened porch, bedroom, and bath—then left him to poke around while I found a bud vase for my rose and poured us each a few inches of single-malt scotch, my one mature indulgence.

In the living room, Sinclair was examining my music collection, the neat array of CDs I’d never gotten around to digitizing. “Thanks,” he said absently when I handed him a glass. “So you really do like the blues, huh?”

I’d told him that on our first date. “Why would I make that up?”

“Yeah, well . . .” He looked amused and a little apologetic. “Chalk it up to shit white girls say to impress a brother. Which is funny, because I know fuck-all about the blues. But you’ve got quite a collection.”

“Yeah.” I took a sip of scotch. “It belonged to a guy my mom dated for a while. A jazz bass player. He left it to me.”

“He took off?”

“No.” I shook my head. “He was killed in a car accident. It’s okay,” I added, forestalling his sympathy. “I mean, it’s not okay, but it was twelve years ago. He was a good guy. It turns out the blues calm me down, especially the female vocalists. He helped me figure it out.”

“Must have been a good guy to recognize this would mean so much to a kid,” Sinclair mused. “Play me something? One of your favorites?”

Feeling self-conscious, I fussed over my choice. Of course, now that he’d mentioned it, my immediate impulse was to pick something out of the pop culture mainstream, something like Ma Rainey’s “Deep Moaning Blues,” that would establish my blues credentials. But I didn’t want to be that girl, and if Sinclair really knew fuck-all about the blues, there was no point, so I went with something obvious instead.

Strings swelled in a simple, familiar arrangement, paving the way for Etta James’s effortlessly powerful vocals as she sang with impassioned tenderness about how her lonely days were over now that her love had come at last.

Okay, I really hadn’t thought about the implications of the lyrics. Way to go, Daise.

“Ah . . . don’t read too much into it,” I said hurriedly. “It’s a classic, that’s all. You know, she just passed away a couple of years ago. Etta James, that is.”

“Daisy.” Sinclair set down his glass on a bookshelf. “It’s okay. It’s just a song.”