Early Sunday morning, before we even would have been up to dress for Mass had I not been confined, the doorbell rang.

Still drowsy, I stumbled down the hallway. I looked through the peephole. It was Win’s mother of all people, and behind her, Win. I was about to open the door when I stopped. Maybe this will seem strange to you, but I wanted to watch him without him knowing I was watching him. I hadn’t had the chance to really look at him at the funeral. He was still so handsome. His hair had grown out from the summer and he was wearing hats again—a red plaid wool hunting cap with furry earflaps! His coat was the same one from the funeral and from Fall Formal 2082. I loved that coat. I loved him in that coat. I wanted to unbutton it and crawl under the flap and button myself in and forget everything that had happened.

They rang the bell again, and I jumped back at the sound.

Natty came into the hallway. “Annie, what are you doing? Open the door!” She pushed past me and did just that.

Win and his mother were both carrying sacks. “Anya, hello!” Jane Delacroix said. “I hope you’ll forgive me but I’ve brought you and Natty some groceries and other things. I know it’s a difficult time for your family. And, in my small way, I wanted to help.”

“Please,” I said, “come in.” I looked at the plump bags. “And thank you for this.” “It isn’t much,” Win’s mother said. “The least I could do.”

Natty took Win’s bag, then she led Win’s mother into our kitchen.

Win hung back, as if he didn’t want to get too close to me. Maybe I was being paranoid though, maybe he was allowing me a respectful space. “I’m so sorry about your brother, and Imogen, too,” he said.

I nodded. I kept my gaze directed at his shoulder. Now that I wasn’t safely behind the door, I was almost scared to look into his eyes.

“My mother, she really did insist,” Win said. “I wasn’t planning to come until the afternoon.” “I…” I felt sure I was about to say something really incisive, but nothing came. I giggled—yes, giggled—and I put my other hand over my chest in an attempt to muffle the sound of my stupid, dogged heart. “Win,” I said, “your father lost the election.”

He smiled, and I could see his pretty, pretty teeth. “I know.”

“Well, tell him when you see him that I’m not—” I giggled again; this giggling was getting embarrassing; I can only account for it by saying I was still not quite awake. “Say that Anya Balanchine isn’t at all sorry!”

Win laughed, and his eyes softened a bit around the corners. He took the hand that was over my heart and he pulled me in close to him until my face was up against that wool coat I knew so well. “I’ve missed you so long, Annie. You barely seem real to me. I’m worried I’ll turn around and you’ll disappear.”

“I’m not going anywhere for a while,” I told him. “House arrest.” “Good. I’ll like knowing where you are. I like this new DA already.”

There were so many things to be sad and worried about, but at that moment, I couldn’t be sad and worried. I felt brave and sturdy and better around Win. It would be so easy for me to love him again. Abruptly, I pushed him away.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Win … What Imogen’s sister said at the funeral is true. The people around me do tend to get hurt. You know that.” I touched his hip with my fingertips. “We don’t have to start this whole thing up again. Just because you met a girl you liked in high school doesn’t mean you have to stay with her forever. I mean, no one does that. No one with any good sense at least. I”—I had been about to say something about how I considered myself to be a person with ample good sense but then I said something else—“I love you.” I did; I was certain. “I love you but I don’t want—”

Win interrupted me. “Stop,” he said. “I love you, too.” He paused. “You underestimate me, Annie. I’m not blind to your faults. You keep too many secrets, for one. You lie sometimes. You have trouble saying the things in your heart. You have an awful temper. You hold a grudge. And I’m not saying this next one is your fault, but people who know you have a disturbing tendency to end up with bullets in them. You don’t have faith in anyone, including me. You think I’m an idiot sometimes. Don’t deny it—I can tell. And maybe I was an idiot a year ago, but a lot has happened since then. I’m different, Anya. You used to say I didn’t know what love was. But I think I learned what it is. I learned it when I thought I had lost you over the summer. And I learned it when my leg ached something awful. And I learned it when you were gone and I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again. And I learned it every night when I’d pray that you were safe even if I never got to see you again. I don’t want to marry you. I’m just happy to be near you for a while, and for as long as you’ll let me be. Because there’s never been anyone else for me but you. There will never be anyone else for me but you. I know this. I do. Annie, my Annie, don’t cry…”

(Was I crying? Yes, I suppose I was. But I was still so awfully tired. You can’t possibly hold this against me.)

“I know that loving you is going to be hard, Annie. But I love you, come what may.”

I looked him in his eyes, and he looked me in mine. His eyes were not the blindly adoring ones that had looked on me a year ago. They were clear. So were mine except for the fact that tears were starting to make everything blurry.

“So, do you like anything about me?” I asked.

He considered my question. “Your hair,” he said finally. “And you were a semi-decent lab partner last year. When you were around, that is.”

“I had to cut most of my hair off. It’s only half grown back.” “I know, Anya. It’s a great loss.”

“Hair’s not much to build a relationship on anyway,” I said.

I rose up onto my tiptoes and I kissed him on the mouth. The first kiss was soft, but then I kissed him again. The second was so hard, my teeth cut into my lip and I could feel myself start to bleed. I lapped up the blood with my tongue and laughed. Win moved in to kiss me again. “Stop, Win!” I said. “I’m bleeding.”

“I didn’t think there’d be bloodshed this soon,” he commented. I admitted that I’d hoped to avoid it.

“Maybe we should take it slow,” he said, as he pulled me to him again. “Make sure no one gets hurt.”

“Let’s do that,” I said. And then I took off his hat. He’d been wearing that silly hat this whole time. And I touched his hair, which was springy and silky and clean.

The heart is so very peculiar. How light and how heavy it can feel at the same time. How light.

Re: the remaining twenty-nine days of house arrest. I couldn’t go out, which meant I couldn’t begin to address all the problems in my life. Win came over every day, and Scarlet came over most days, and the month passed quickly enough.

We played Scrabble, and Natty and I cried some, and I basically ignored everyone who tried to contact me. I didn’t know what I wanted to say to anyone yet.

About three weeks in, there was a snowstorm, the kind that makes everything stop in the city. Win somehow made it uptown and he stayed for three days.

I had been having trouble sleeping at night, thinking of Leo and of Theo and of Imogen and even sometimes thinking of the man I’d likely killed in the grove, and I was glad for Win’s company.

“Unburden yourself,” Win insisted. “Confess.” “I can’t.”

“You’ll die if you keep it all in, and I want to know these things.”

I looked at Win. I could not visit a priest and I was tired of keeping secrets. And so I told him everything. I told him about growing cacao. I told him about the marriage proposal. I even told him about slicing off someone’s hand with a machete. What it had felt like to slice through human bone. What the hand had looked like there, lying in the grass. What the man’s blood had smelled like. I now knew that not everyone’s blood was the same.