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gossiping about a good client. Or maybe she was doing so because she had a crush on Jeremy and was trying to wave me off?
    Jeremy returned then. He and the waitress chatted about a bartender they both knew who had recently moved. The waitress left.
    And I remained slightly jarred.
    But any suspicions that arose during my chat with the waitress didn’t stop me from returning his kiss. His kiss, in the car, in front of my condo building.

15
    J eremy put his warm hands lightly on my cheeks and drew me to him, kissed me once, pausing to look at me before putting his surprisingly soft lips back on mine.
    I can’t say how long this went on. I’d been transported. When we finally broke apart, I was nearly breathless.
    He looked a bit shaken himself. “Well,” he said, “that was…”
    “…good,” I said.
    “Great,” he said.
    “I’ll up you again,” I said. “That was amazing.”
    “That kiss—” he leaned closer to me “—was fan-fucking-tastic.” He gave me the most adorable smile. “Do you mind if I swear?”
    I squeezed my eyes shut, giddy. Although I was, as I’d told Madeline, trying to quit swearing, the truth was, I loved swearing. But in a classic double-standard, I often found it crass when other people did. However, Jeremy sounded so good. Crass from that gorgeous face and that gorgeous mouth was just fine.
    I opened my eyes. “No, I don’t mind.”
    That started another round of kissing. Things were getting a little heated. Eventually, it dawned on me that now would be the time when I could ask him up to my condo. If I was going to ask him to come up.
    But…what was that odd feeling? It was awkwardness, I realized. My place was where I’d spent a lot of time with Sam. The place where Theo had lived with me rather recently. And the fact was, my place was sacred to me. The fact that it had been broken into last year only made it more so.
    Reluctantly, I moved back from the gentle pull of Jeremy’s lips. “I should go. I have an early morning tomorrow.”
    “It’s Saturday tomorrow.”
    “I know but I still need to get to work…” I let my words die away. I was about to say that I needed to do some work at the law firm, since I’d spent time at the gallery this week. But then I remembered Jeremy didn’t know Izzy McNeil, the lawyer. He only knew Izzy Smith, the art assistant.
    I wondered how that made me seem to Jeremy. What did my position in the art world do to shape Jeremy’s impression of me? Did that concept make me seem creative and artistic and maybe a little wild? Would he like me more if he knew I was a lawyer? Would that make me seem smarter? What about a criminal defense lawyer? He began kissing me again, and my questions quickly fell to the wayside.
    After a minute, he stopped. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll let you go.” He leaned his forehead on mine. “But only if you agree to go out with me again.”
    “Sold,” I said.
    I kissed him once more and got out of the car.

16
    E very Friday night, Madeline met with other Japanese women. They were the only Japanese people she knew. Like she’d told Izzy, she had been adopted by Americans when she was an infant. Her desire to know more about women from Japan—and therefore herself—was how she’d found herself involved in this Japanese dyeing and weaving class.
    Solace. That’s what she sought there, from people who were inherently like her. And after what she’d received just before she got here, she desperately needed solace.
    You will never be forgiven for what you did.
    She could probably call her family for support, but she simply wouldn’t turn to them for something like this. She didn’t dislike her adoptive parents. She had always respected them, appreciated them most years (except for in high school, when she’d hated them in the requisite teenage way that she still felt guilty about). And yet she’d always felt detached from them, from the corn and cow farms in Wisconsin, from others in their town