“I’m getting older now.” Myrra remembered holding a china tray and watching as Imogene passively yet artfully batted her words over the coffee cups, over the breakfast table, arcing them right over the top of Marcus’s wall-like newspaper barrier so they’d fall right in his lap. “If we don’t try soon, we might never be able to have one.” He would volley back with a grunt, or mumble something about stress at work. Finally, after many mornings of similar repetitive banter, Imogene found her kill shot, something to fire straight through the newsprint, singe the edges, hammer through his mustache and knock out his teeth: “Don’t you want to make something that will outlive us? What about your legacy?”

Talk of his manly legacy, his ego, and he was cowed. Imogene won the match.

But once born, Charlotte was treated as an investment by Marcus, and Imogene mostly ignored her in favor of getting her figure back. Myrra knew Charlotte better than anyone, what songs she liked, which cries went with which problem, what you could do to make her giggle.

Maybe this could also be the type of thing Jake liked. Jake seemed like the kind of guy who wanted kids someday.

Myrra ended the letter with a genuine note of thanks for the book that Jake had given her. Another object secretly given in the alley behind the shop, but at this point they’d moved past the quaint brushing of hands. Myrra had showed her appreciation in the most intimate of ways. She knew just how to touch him now.

Myrra mostly stole books from Marcus’s library, but this one was hers to keep. Just as long as Imogene didn’t find it. On reflex, Myrra reached down and let her fingers slip through the slit she’d cut into her mattress. She felt around through the foam batting until she found the rough spine of the book. She pulled it out and cradled it in her palms. It was an old one, with tanned pages and a faded orange cover. But then again, they were all old. Books, like paper, were rare. Marcus had one of the largest collections in New London, but most people only had tablets. It was truly a beautiful, meaningful gift. Jake’s family was well off, but this was something else. This was an I-love-you gift. An investment gift. The World Is Round, by Gertrude Stein. Myrra had taken to reading five or ten pages each night. It was fun—bouncier than the books she’d swiped from Marcus. Some of those had been terrible slogs, pushing through only a word or a sentence at a time. Tolstoy, Balzac, Joyce. The writing was dense and impossible, and mostly it made her feel stupid. But she’d kept at it, powered by spite and stubborn force of will. People who got paid read books, so she would read books too.