“I’m not kidding. Last night I was working and he was cooking, fully dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and I stared at him for half an hour. Stared at him, Marly, like a ridiculous teenager, drunk on the barefoot man in my kitchen. What is that? And when he plays guitar, I might as well forget trying to do anything else, because he gets this faraway look in his eyes, and his voice goes all soulful, and I’m just gone. Don’t even get me started on the way he looks at me and loves everything I do. He even helps me come up with ideas for puppet shows, which should inspire me to do more, not less. But I swear it’s like my drive to do more has just fizzled out, and we haven’t even been together that long. Am I making a mistake? Because you can tell me. I need to know so I’m not walking around with blinders on.”

“Take a breath, Mads,” she said gently. “It sounds to me like you guys are crazy about each other.”

Madigan’s heart thundered, fear prickling her limbs. “It’s too much too fast, isn’t it?” She felt a jolt of panic. Please tell me it’s not.

“Only you can answer that. Deep down, in your heart of hearts, what do you feel for him?”

“Everything. I love being with him, and when we’re not together, it makes me happy to think about him. I love holding his hand and seeing him smile. I love the way my heart races every time I think of him and the way he holds me tight in the mornings and inhales so deeply it’s like he wants to fill his senses with me and never let me go.”

“Geez, girl. I want that.”

“I know. But it’s even bigger than that. I want to make everything in his life good, and I wish I could fix things with his sister, but I know he has to do that on his own, when he’s ready.”

“What if he never is?”

“I can’t think about that. She left a gaping hole in him that I don’t think anything or anyone else could ever fill.” She paused, readying to spill more of her feelings. “I feel so much for him, it scares the heck out of me. What if there’s another shoe hanging above us, and it just hasn’t dropped yet? I don’t want to get hit on the head with it.”

“I’m pretty sure he’d catch it before it hit you.”

Madigan smiled. “That doesn’t even make sense. It would be his shoe dropping.”