I sank deeper into the couch. “Yeah, I know.” For months my mother had been pushing for a June wedding. I wasn’t sure why I’d resisted, other than the fact that since birth I’d resisted my mother pushing me to do pretty much anything, but now that it was April, planning a reasonably sized wedding in June was outside the realm of reality. Maybe Rafe was right about that procrastination thing.

“Tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll tell her tomorrow.”

Or if not tomorrow, then at least the day after that.

This week, for sure.

Rafe picked up the remote, but I reached out and put a hand on his arm. “One more thing,” I said. “I could use some help. With finding Ryan Anderson.”

*   *   *

The next morning, sun streamed in through the kitchen windows, making every surface gleam. Oak floors, pine ceiling, cream-colored cabinets with glass knobs, and hanging light fixtures that looked like something from an old boat; it was a beautiful kitchen, even to someone like me, who had the cooking skills of masking tape. Rafe and I sat side by side at the kitchen island, me in wet hair and a bathrobe sipping coffee, him in his school clothes spooning cold cereal into his body faster than should have been possible.

“What’s the rush?” I curled my hands around my mug, letting its warmth ooze into me. Rafe had a school board meeting that night, so I’d scheduled myself to work at the library until it closed and didn’t have to technically be at work until noon. “You don’t normally leave for half an hour.”

“Mmph,” he said through a milky bite of toasted oats. He swallowed. “Sorry, just got a text. We had a substitute all lined up for Bob Rivera’s class. Bob’s out, remember? He fell in the grocery store parking lot, hit shoulder-first, and now he’s on medical leave for at least six weeks. Anyway, the sub called in, saying she has to take her dad to the emergency room because he slipped and fell on some ice.”

I hoped that both her dad and Bob would be okay, but I still wasn’t sure why this meant he had to leave early, and said so.

“Because this means”—he picked up his bowl to drink the last of the milk and I hastily averted my eyes while he did so—“that I have to take over the class until we get another substitute.”

I laughed. “ ‘Have to’? Or ‘want to’?”

Rafe pulled on his cold-weather board-meeting jacket, tweed complete with elbow patches. In summer he sported a navy blue jacket with bright brass buttons. I kept threatening to take him shopping so he could get out of the 1980s, but he told me that he’d picked a style decade he liked and saw no reason to change.