“What if they come?” She’d talked herself into a drive-by pick-up now? “Jenn, I don’t think that’s going to happen.” I tried to hook her arm under my elbow, to ease her away from her machine corral.

“Don’t touch me!” Tears welled up. She wrenched her wrists from my grip and whirled away. “You never did believe me! You just pretended to!”

“I believe you! I do! But how would they get here? Even if they can, they’re not going to travel that far with a super-storm on the horizon. They’ll wait till it’s over.”

Jenn bent over a screen to type so rapidly I had to think it was random.

I wasn’t helping things. Hopeless to reason with her in one of these moods, especially when my own self-control was stretched near as thin as hers. “Forget it. How ’bout this: you keep your favorite to work on and the kids can wrap up the rest?”

The teeners were already circling at a distance.

Suddenly, Jenn flared up, right in my face. “It’s all Rubio’s fault!”

“What’s his fault?”

“We wouldn’t be going if he hadn’t stuck his nose into things!”

“Rousseau asked him to . . .”

“To shut him up ’cause all he did was complain!” She swiveled to her keyboard. “Serves him right what happened!”

“What do you mean? What happened?”

She turned back, her eyes mean with triumph. “You didn’t hear? He’s up in the Ward.”

I recoiled a step. “In the Ward?”

“Oh yes, he’s very sick! In isolation! He’s dying.”

“Rubio’s always dying.” I made light of it, but fear surged in my gut.

“This time it’s for real!” Her triumph winked out like a candle flame. She reached to wrap me in a teary bear hug. “But it’s okay, because when he dies, it’ll be so much better for you, you know it will, because then you’ll be free to go off with the book guy with all his money and special access and you won’t have to worry about taking care of Rubio who never appreciates anything nice anyone does for him, ever!”

“What are you talking about?” I struggled in her too-tight embrace. Who was she was maddest at: Daniel, Rubio, or me? “Daniel doesn’t have special access . . .”

She shoved me to arm’s length. “Of course he does! And money. Plenty of it. Who else would have his own boat and a landline and be able to survive in this world selling worthless old books? Or pretending to sell them. Are you freakin’ blind?”