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Back Reverie
Chapters (53)
  1. Front Cover
  2. Letter from the Author
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Contents
  6. • One •
  7. • Two •
  8. • Three •
  9. • Four •
  10. • Five •
  11. • Six •
  12. • Seven •
  13. • Eight •
  14. • Nine •
  15. • Ten •
  16. • Eleven •
  17. • Twelve •
  18. • Thirteen •
  19. • Fourteen •
  20. • Fifteen •
  21. • Sixteen •
  22. • Seventeen •
  23. • Eighteen •
  24. • Nineteen •
  25. • Twenty •
  26. • Twenty-One •
  27. • Twenty-Two •
  28. • Twenty-Three •
  29. • Twenty-Four •
  30. • Twenty-Five •
  31. • Twenty-Six •
  32. • Twenty-Seven •
  33. • Twenty-Eight •
  34. • Twenty-Nine •
  35. • Thirty •
  36. • Thirty-One •
  37. • Thirty-Two •
  38. • Thirty-Three •
  39. • Thirty-Four •
  40. • Thirty-Five •
  41. • Thirty-Six •
  42. • Thirty-Seven •
  43. • Thirty-Eight •
  44. • ∞ •
  45. • Thirty-Nine •
  46. • Forty •
  47. Epilogue
  48. Acknowledgments
  49. Excerpt from Be Dazzled
  50. One
  51. Two
  52. About the Author
  53. Back Cover

Kane smiled, trying to get her to laugh. She didn’t. In the low light, her eyes churned with helpless fury, barely holding back tears.

“I can’t be the only one watching out for you, Kane. Scare me again, and I’ll make sure you flunk that evaluation. I’m done lying for you.”

They didn’t talk for days after that. A cold war opened between them, fought in glances over breakfast and silently passing one another in their shared hallway. Their parents noticed but were reluctant to add any more tension to their small, stifling house.

Kane kept telling himself he didn’t care. Sophia wouldn’t sabotage him, and they both knew it. She was just making this about her, and he had bigger worries than his sister’s hurt feelings right now. Bigger worries, and far greater fears. He had to find the loom for Poesy. And he had to figure out what he’d done to Maxine Osman, for himself. His heart couldn’t take not knowing.

His guilt turned him to the internet, where he learned everything he could about the woman. He found her address and phone number on an old committee mailing page for a banquet she’d organized. He read interviews she’d done for the paper where she talked about her love of the Cobalt Complex, which she lived near. He found a few videos, too, put together for a special about area artists on the local access channel. In them, she was a quiet speaker, but sharp and funny in a dark way. After her husband died, she’d tried any hobby that would tolerate her. Pottery, but it was too messy. Then she got into cross-country skiing, she explained, showing the camera a pair of ancient ski poles. They were pinned into the dirt of her garden as though they’d been there forever, tomato vines winding up them. “As you can see, I was very, very slow,” she said dryly. Then she showed off a collection of bejeweled eggs that lay in glass cases around her living room. “We have more than one hundred. We take them out sometimes,” she said, referring to herself and her friend, another lady who was somehow even older and even smaller, standing behind her. They laughed as they showed the camera a blue egg flecked in gold. “We talk about what would hatch from them,” her friend said. And then the interview turned to Maxine’s studio, which was the house’s second bedroom. “I do most of my work in the field, but this room has the best light in winter,” she said. “The light is important, for the colors. And of course my tan.”