I picked up my novel and tried to read. The darkness was thickening outside, and within ten minutes I had to turn on a lamp. From not too far off, there was a deep rumble. Thunder.

I made myself read a couple of sentences. I really, really wanted to lose awareness of the here and now. The best way for me to do that was bury myself in a book.

We keep a box of secondhand paperbacks in the backseat of the car. When each book has been read, we leave it where someone else can pick it up. If the book’s in very good shape we keep it to trade. We stop at every secondhand bookstore we see to restock. I’ve read a lot of things I hadn’t planned on reading, due to the selection at these stores. And I’ve read a lot of books years after they were bestsellers, which doesn’t bother me a bit.

Tolliver’s not quite as omnivorous as I am. He draws the line at romances (he thinks they’re too predictable) and spy novels (he finds them ludicrous), but he’ll read just about anything else. Westerns, mysteries, science fiction, even some non-fiction—almost any book is grist for our mill. Right now I was reading a tattered copy of Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone. It was one of the most frightening things I’d ever read—but I’d rather be afraid of Preston’s account of the origin and spread of the Ebola virus than think about the rumble of the thunder.

Before I tried to re-immerse myself in Preston’s exploration of a cave in Africa, I glanced at the clock. I estimated that the waitress would leave the room next door in about an hour. Maybe by the time the storm got here, Tolliver would be alone.

With the book weighted open in front of me on the cheap table, I turned on my cordless curler and used it. Then I brushed my hair. From time to time I glanced up at the mirror. I looked okay, I thought. Not too bad. Frail and pale, though.

My brother and I didn’t look anything alike, aside from the similarity in our coloring—black hair, brown eyes. Tolliver looked tough, secretive, a little forbidding. His scarred cheeks and wide, bony shoulders made him seem very male.

But it was me who frightened people.