“I don’t know that there are any happy ones to choose from. He was so seldom home. When I was a girl, a trip might take him around the world for a year or more. When he returned, he’d stay with us four or five days, then be gone again. It’s like he thought he was some kind of old-time whaler, rather than a very minor merchant. There was no reason for him to be gone so much, or for so long, but it was the only way he would live. He didn’t love us, I finally decided, or he loved the water more.”

“There must have been one good day.”

It took some prodding, but she eventually produced a happy memory. A birthday party where Galen surprised her, swept the little girl off her feet and took her sailing all around the harbor, to watch the sunset on the banks of Liberty Island. Or perhaps it was Coney Island. I can’t be sure. By that point, the brandy, the sun, and the rocking of the boat had drained every ounce of pain right out of my shoulders, and I was half asleep. She was too. We traded stories like that for a while, daydreaming about good days that hadn’t seemed so good at the time, but were now all we had left.

It was nearly dark when I left her. She said she was going to sleep on the boat, and no matter how strongly I warned her against the dark, she only laughed, and I laughed too.

The shadows were long, and I did not hide from them. A last burst of energy caught me as I crossed the railroad tracks, caught hold with enough force that I forgot to be afraid. I had just five hours to stop a war, and I knew I would never make it. Let Barbie and Van Alen bleed each other dry across the Borderline. I’d find some other way to keep Cherub off the front lines. I’d tie him to a telephone pole or drag him back to my house by his belt, throw him into bed, and hold him there until the city burned to the ground and was born anew. I danced through the shadows, taunting them to take me. They didn’t have the nerve.