Grant: Sweetheart, it is nothing.
Sweetheart to shrink her. Nothing to shrink the waist. Two shrinks. Neither worked. She was already in motion.
Riley: Claire, please—
Please stop walking. Please stay in the version where I am maid of honor. Please do not make me stand at a hedge in this color. Please was all she had. It was not enough.
Claire: Save it for the toast.
Then no toast.
Then the pretty lights on an unfinished night.
Then a life that refused to decorate the wound.
Claire Bennett is not a symbol.
She is a woman who crossed a lawn.
Grant Bennett is not only a villain in a blazer. He is also a villain in a blazer. Both can be said. He sold rooms. He used a garden like a room he owned. He did not own his daughter’s dinner.
Riley Cole is not a story to hunt. She is gone to a river city. The pale green is donated. The please stays in the air of one summer.
Patricia Bennett keeps fruit where listings were.
James Holloway keeps tomatoes.
June keeps a name that waited.