So did someone else.
Their hands landed on the box at exactly the same moment — hers in black leather on the left side, his in nothing at all on the right, a long pale hand with a class ring on the fourth finger. The cardboard dented a little under both their grips. For one second, neither of them moved.
Gina turned her head.
He was about thirty, she thought, and he looked like he had been assembled from a catalog for a store she could not afford. Side-parted chestnut hair, very neat, a little wet at the ends from the snow. Clean-shaven, with the kind of jaw that had never once needed to be clenched in a fistfight. Tortoiseshell glasses. A navy peacoat over a forest-green cable-knit sweater, a gray scarf looped once around his neck, and the general air of a man who had been to a lot of weddings in Connecticut. He was looking at the doll. Then he was looking at her hand. Then he was looking at her, and his face did something complicated, as though he had just remembered he'd left the stove on.
"Oh, no."
He said it quietly, not to her exactly. More to the universe, which had apparently scheduled this.
Gina smiled at him. It was her sweetest smile, the one she used on the receptionist at the agency when she wanted the good conference room, the one her brother Vince said should be registered with the police.
"Let go, sweater boy."
