THE PHONE RINGS. The landline. I hate the landline. In the weeks after Michael died, it was constantly ringing--the sympathetic neigh­bors, the PTA moms, everyone wanting to know how I was doing. You don't need to know how I'm doing,  I'd  think. Michael died eight months ago, so it doesn't ring that much anymore. I guess I'm still not doing well. "Stacey," the voice sings into the machine, "pick up your goddamn phone . . ." It's my sister, Jenny. "Hang on," I say as I pick up. I hold the phone away from my mouth and call down into the basement. "Time to brush teeth, boys. Get ready for bed." "You guys want to come here on Friday? We can stream a movie, make milkshakes?" We've  spent  almost  every weekend at her house. The boys are probably expecting it, but I'm starting to feel trapped. Michael was so big on routine, and now I feel like I've fallen into another one. Some­ times I just want  to wing  it. I don't know how to tell her that. "I don't know," I say. "We should let you guys get back to your own lives. I mean, we'll be fine." "No, we love having you!" I know she means it. She was born to mother--her own kids, me, the boys. This past year, she's been amazing, and I know in some ways she loves it. Being so necessary. I wander back into the living room and sit down in front of my lap­ top. I got it out earlier to look at job postings, but with my background­ an advanced  degree, two published books of poetry, and no real work experience--it's discouraging how little I'm qualified for. I could be a barista maybe. Jenny keeps talking, but I'm not really listening. I'm checking my Facebook, my e-mail. I have a separate account that comes in from my author's website, but I haven't been paying attention to it. I haven't been writing anyway, and  besides, it rarely has anything in it. But today, there's something there. The subject line reads, Interested in your book, so I open it. The note is short. "Listen to this," I say, interrupting my sister, and I read her the e-mail. Dear Ms. Lane, I just had the pleasure of reading your novel-in-verse, Monsters in the  Afterlife.   I'm wondering if you have an agent who rep­resents you. I'd be interested in discussing the film rights. "Seriously? That's so cool! Who's it from?" ''Alan something-or-other. Probably some nobody," I say, but I'm already plugging the name into Google. "Is this the same guy? Holy shit." The list of credits is long. Really long, and I recognize a lot of it. "Oh my god. What do I say? I don't have an agent." "Then answer, 'Thank you, that sounds amazing, but no, I don't have an agent because there's no money in poetry.'" It's true. My first book, The Seduction Of Eve, came out with a tiny press, but the reviews were good and it sold close to six hundred cop­ies, which  for poetry is really not bad at all. It wasn't a novel-in-verse like Monsters, but it was thematic, and each section opened and closed with poems titled "The Seduction" that retold this one moment, but the perspectives, the voices kept changing. Some of them were really beautiful, like love poems, but in others the language turned danger­ous, dark. The day the box came with the first copies of the book, I just sat on the floor and read it cover to cover, like it was something new, like it wasn't even mine. "Wow,"  Michael had said when he'd come home. "Congratulations." And he picked up a copy and flipped through it, not to read it, just to see if it was real. "One more chapter?" Stevie begs. I look at the clock. It's late, past their bedtime by ten minutes, but I say yes anyway. I like reading to  them. I feel like I can fall into the book, and then I'm giving them what they want, but I don't have to think. I don't have to find my own words. When the story's over, I kiss Stevie first, leaning into the bottom bunk to tuck him in. "Give me a squeeze," I say, and he does, his little arms tight around my neck. "Who's my favorite monkey?" I say, and he squeaks, "Me!" I step on the rail and pull myself up to kiss Ben. I smooth his Hulk blanket across him, ruffle his hair. "Thanks for being my kid," I whis­per, and he smiles. "Thanks for being my mom." We do this every night. Every touch, every word the same. I love the ritual of it, the few minutes when I feel like I'm my best self. I feel like I'm getting it right. I flip off the lights and stand in the hallway outside their door, leaning against the wall, listening to them talk. Some part of me is always expecting to overhear something painful or profound, to hear them talk about Michael or me. Most nights, they don't. Tonight Stevie is talking about Spider-Man, imagining new powers he thinks would be better, what if he could fly, what if he could be invisible too?  "Invisible all the time?" Ben asks. "Or just when he wants to be?" I walk down the hall to my bedroom, and Bear pads along behind me. He curls up on the big fleece mat in the corner of the room. It's funny to think he's as settled as ever. It's the boys and I who are floun­dering. Just in different ways. They want nothing more to change, and I want everything to. Last week while the boys were at school, I packed up all of Michael's things. It seemed pointless to keep hanging on to it all, the T-shirts, the electric razor. I went to a grief session once, in the very beginning, but one of the other women was talking about how she couldn't wash her husband's clothes, how she held on to the smell of him. Some days, she said, she spent hours on the floor of their closet, trying to breathe him in, and I thought, I shouldn't be here, this isn't for me. I packed one box for each boy using old pictures. Here is the tie your father wore for your christening. Here is a T-shirt he was wearing one day at the park. In the photo, he's pushing you on the swing. Here is a wallet, a watch. I didn't know what to do with his wedding ring, so I just put it in a velvet jewelry box with mine. The upshot is that now I have all this empty space to fill. I tried spreading my clothes between both dressers, but I couldn't find the right balance. Everything feels disordered. I can never find what I want. I walk down to the kitchen and pour myself a glass of wine. At first I'd felt weird about drinking alone, but I have a rule about stop­ping at one glass, so I think it's okay. I do use my biggest glasses and I pour them pretty full, but I always stop after one. Michael and I met in Boston, in graduate school. He was studying actuary science. I was studying poetry. He had a job lined up months before graduation, and when he proposed, he said, Marry me, Stacey. God knows you can't afford not to. Then he laughed. We both did. We were really young then, and happy. We moved to Omaha right out of grad school, the year we got married. It's where Michael grew up--flyover, landlocked, just about as far as you can get from either coast, which is where I'd always lived--Boston, and before that San Francisco. First one coast and then the other, and now I'm right in the center. I don't feel very centered. I used to. I don't anymore. I take  the wine out to the living room and sit on the couch. My laptop is still sitting open, but the screen's black, timed  out. You realize your book could end up a movie?  Jenny had said before we hung up. I wonder what they'll pay you.  In my best year, just last year, I made three thou­sand dollars. Look at you, Michael said. I think he thought it was cute. He did risk calculation for an asset-management firm. It's not really risk if you understand math, he used to say, but I don't understand math, not even a little, so he told me not to even look at the numbers when we bought our first house. It was this sweet little bungalow in Mid­town with wood accents and dormers. Michael didn't love it, but he liked the commute, and he liked that I liked the built-in bookshelves next to the fireplace. "It's close to the university," he said. "Maybe you could teach." "I don't think we can afford this," I said, running my hand along the dark wood of the shelves. "Maybe we should rent." "Maybe you should trust me," he said. There were not any jobs at the university. There never are, but for a while  I did part-time development for an arts nonprofit. I wrote some grants and sat in on a few board meetings, but it didn't pay much and I wasn't very good at it. When Ben was born, Michael said I should just stay home. I'd walk Ben in the stroller for blocks and blocks through Happy Hollow and Dundee with all the big brick Tudors and overgrown lawns and one-way streets. We'd stop at this cute little corner market and I'd buy Ben grapes most afternoons. Plums when he got a little older. Some nights we'd walk down to this offbeat vegetarian place, though Michael liked to tease me that if I was going to be a Nebras­kan, I was going to have to learn to eat steak. I wasn't sure, really, how I felt about Nebraska, but I loved Midtown. "We need a bigger house,"  I told Michael after Stevie was born, and what I meant was a big brick Tudor with ivy. But all he saw were the detached garages and the radiators and the retrofit piping for cen­tral air-conditioning. So he bought this house, or rather it just fell into his lap, a corporate relocation deal that he couldn't pass up on. "I don't want to live out west," I said. "It's closer to my parents." "I hate your parents." But he convinced me. So we moved west. All the way west, past the cornfields at Boys Town, away from the narrow streets to the part of town that's all pedestrian malls and golf courses. We have a three-car garage and a lawn service. We have a monitored security system and a stacked slate fountain by the front walk. We don't have any ivy. Not that any of that matters now. Michael set everything up years ago, so you won't have to make any decisions, he'd  said. And there had been all these papers for me to sign. I just remember him saying, Life insurance ... trust account ... annuity. I know I should be grateful. It's probably for the best. I'm not all that good at decisions, and a job is a long shot. Still, it would be nice to have some direction. According to the boys, Jenny's husband makes the world's greatest milkshakes. I wouldn't know. I've never tried  one, though he's made them a million times. Todd is this  big, burly guy who can't go five minutes without offering you a snack or a beer, the ex-football player type you see a lot of in Nebraska, though he is not Nebraskan. Jenny and I have known him since we were kids. They moved here so our kids could be cousins like the kind we never had, Jenny said. But I think Todd fell in love with the lawns mostly. We didn't have lawns this big in San Francisco. The kids are close though. Jenny has three, two girls around the same ages as my boys, and then her littlest, a boy still in preschool. Jenny jostles the pot on her stove, waiting for the popcorn to pop. Todd's in the great room, fixing the surround sound. "No, the other remote," I hear Todd say for the third time. Jenny wrinkles her nose. I turn away from her, move to look out the window. It's late enough that the sky is a heavy gray. "So speaking of movies, this thing with your book sounds insane. I mean good insane. But, you know, crazy." Behind me the kernels start to pop, clinging loudly against the metal of the pan. There's the sound of the heavy pot dragging across the grate of the stove as she shakes it and shakes it, then the rustle of her pouring the finished popcorn into a bowl. The bowl is the color of butter and it reads Popcorn in big white letters. I have a matching bowl, but I don't ever use it.  "Can you imagine what Michael would say? I mean, he would be like, 'This is insane.'" "Wow. It's like you're channeling him." I lean closer to the win­dow, peering out. "I think we're in for more snow." "You know, refusing to talk about him is never going to make this any easier," she says. "Well, with you around, how will we ever find out?" I turn around and she's scowling, one hand on her hip. "I'm kidding," I say, but she doesn't soften at all. "You're right," I say. "He'd be thrilled."   I'm making dinner late again because I haven't been paying attention to the clock. Stevie had finally asked for a snack and I said, You've already had one, and he said, Yeah, but I'm hungry again, and when I looked up it was already seven o'clock. Lately, I've been doing this a lot. I cradle the phone against my ear while I heat tomato soup. Ben doesn't really like it, but Stevie does, and it's the fastest thing I can do. It's almost their bedtime. "I don't really understand all of this, Mom," I say. "They're buying a six-month option, whatever that means, but they're sending me a check for fifteen grand and flying me out to work on the script." I don't really need the money, but I like the thought of making it. And more impor­tant, they're flying me somewhere. More important, I get to leave. "Jenny says this producer seems like a big deal," she says. "Maybe you'll get into screenwriting and move out to L.A. and we'll actually see you once in a while." "You're seeing us for Christmas. We'll be there in a month." "You know what I mean. I don't know why you don't just move home." "To San Francisco?" I laugh. "Sure. The boys would love it. If we sell the house we could swing an efficiency apartment over someone's garage." "That's a little hyperbolic, Stacey." She's using her best professor voice. "Anyway, Jenny would  kill me if we left." They moved out here three years ago when Todd got a job with the railroad. The hours are long, but the benefits are amazing, and the cost of living's so low, Jenny's able to mostly stay home. She used to teach French full-time. Now she gives private lessons. "I'm just saying this could open some new doors." "I wouldn't get carried away," I say. "From what I understand, these options almost never pan out. Honestly, Jenny shouldn't have even told you yet."     THERE ARE FOUR SEPARATE FLIGHTS to get to the island, first to Denver, then to Newark overnight. We land in Turks and Caicos early evening, but then there's still a little island-hopper flight. The plane is tiny, with just a handful of people on it. The whole time we're in the air, I sit with my legs crossed, my right foot hooked around the back of my left calf. It makes  me feel smaller, more  steady. I balance my book on my knee and flip slowly through it. I've been away from this book so long I don't know if I can slip back into its voice, and that's what they're asking me to do. We love it as a skeleton, he'd said, but of course we need some of the scenes you left out. The things you implied, well, now we need you to write them. They're bringing a screenwriter too. The landing is less than pleasant. The plane tips heavily to one side, and I throw my hand out to brace myself. "Fuck!" I look around to see if anyone else looks nervous, but no one seems to have noticed me or the plane's sketchy maneuvering. Just then the wheels hit and the seat I'm clutching shudders hard and begins to vibrate as the plane struggles to slow itself. I close my eyes and clench every muscle until the shaking stops. When it finally does, I pull out my phone and switch it off airplane mode. I text Jenny, Landed. How are boys? and then slip it back into my pocket. On the tarmac there's a man waiting for me with my name on a sign. He takes my bag, and then we're in this Mercedes, and we're driving through hills and past beaches, and we finally pull up to this huge gate. He types in the code, and the gates open, and we drive up to this massive stucco house with a Spanish roof. The double front doors are wooden and open, and when we walk in, the whole place is full of light. The back of the house is all glass, doors  and windows, and they're all open  to  this enormous terrace overlooking the ocean. It reminds me of a hotel Michael and I stayed at in Kauai. I love it here, I said the first night. I wanted to stay out late and drink too much and walk barefoot in the sand and kiss in the moonlight. Michael was tired though. I'm still on Central time, he said. "You must be Stacey." The voice comes from the left, and I turn to see a man walking toward me, hand extended. He looks about fifty. His head is shaved and the top is pink from the sun. He's got a full, round face, thin lips. His graying eyebrows are obscured by the black frames of his glasses. His hand, when he grabs mine, is soft and firm. "I'm Alan. Welcome. Welcome," he says. "Can I get you a drink?" He turns to the driver behind me and says, "Put those bags in her room." He looks back at me. "Ready to get started?" "Sure," I say. "Yeah." I'm not ready at all. I need to catch my breath, to look around. "I'm just kidding. We'll let you settle in first. We'll start tomor­row. Joe got here this morning. He's the screenwriter. Great guy. I've worked with him a ton. He's got a working draft. Just a sketch really. Needs a lot of work." I realize he's leading me slowly into the room as he talks. "So you want that drink?" I shake my head. "No, thanks. I'm good." "And you call yourself a writer?" He pours himself a smallish splash of something--bourbon, maybe--and puts the bottle back. He pats the bar."Tommy's got a hell of a bar here, so help yourself. This is his house, by the way, but you probably knew that. He gets in tomorrow." I have no idea who Tommy is, so I just nod.   I wake up to  the sound of the ocean. I barely slept all night. I just lay there staring at the ceiling, the walls, but  then sometime around five, I closed my eyes. Now it's light out, and I'm not sure where I am for a second. My hair is curling from the humidity, but it doesn't look bad. It's always curly, though not quite this full. I pull my fingers through, half untangling it, half checking for grays. I don't feel like I'm old enough, but stress can do that. I found one last week, a little wisp of silver against the brown. I pull on a clingy white tank and a pair of shorts. They're looser than they were last year, kind of hanging off my hips. I don't mind this part at all. Grief is terrible, but it looks amazing on me. If Michael were here, he'd grab my ass and try to pull me back into bed. He's not here though, and I need coffee. It must be nine o'clock, but no one seems to be up. I know there's staff here. Someone unpacked my bags and cleaned up from dinner last night, but now there's no one around. There's a cappuc­cino machine that I don't know how to work, but I find a regular coffee­ maker too. I brew a full pot and take a mug out to the terrace. I sit cross-legged on a sofa holding the coffee in my lap, and I close my eyes. I'd forgotten how good the sun can feel. I think, This is what happy feels like, and I think about how people say you should just let the good feelings wash over you. But then I think, No, and I open my eyes. The coffee tastes kind of stale and bitter, and I wonder why this Tommy doesn't keep better coffee in his house when he has such an amazingly stocked bar. I hear footsteps behind me. "Well, don't you look gorgeous, all sun-kissed and fresh?" When I turn to look, it's someone  new. He's  young, maybe  late twenties, skinny, his short black hair swept to one side. He holds his hand out. "I'm Daniel. Tommy's assistant. I do everything. Well not everything . .. ooh, coffee." He grabs my mug and takes  a sip. "Jesus, who stocked this?" He looks around like there  should be someone there to answer him. "I'll get you something else, honey. Don't drink that shit." He sits down in the chair across from me  and  leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "So you're Stacey?" "I'm Stacey, yeah." I smile. "Tommy's in the  shower. He's a mess as usual.  I got him on the plane at four, and other than crashing out on the flight, he hasn't had much sleep." He makes an exaggerated face. "Models. At the hotel last night. It was not a good scene." He shakes his head. "I was like, 'You know we have an early flight,' and he was all, 'Shut the fuck up,' and I was like, 'Whatever, as long as you sign my paychecks."' He sighs. "Actually, I sign my own paychecks, so it's a good thing I'm honest. I mean, I should give myself a bonus anytime I have to drag his ass out of some strange bed that smells like morning-after pussy." I laugh, but it's more fucked-up than funny. Daniel raises his eyes above my head. "Well, there you are, sunshine." The voice behind me is a low grumble. "Fuck off." He moves around the couch and drops  next to me, bumping my leg. He's wearing jeans, a gray T-shirt, damp at the collar from his hair, which is dark, very dark, almost black, and it's combed back from his face, which I can't really see because his hands are at his temples like he's trying to hold his head together. Then he drops his left hand to my knee in this apol­ogetic pat, and Jesus Christ, I can't even think, but it's fucking Tommy DeMarco. "Sorry," he mumbles without looking at me. He looks like shit. I mean, gorgeous, of course, but like hell. Daniel leans across and hands him my mug. "Have some coffee." Tommy stares at it. "It's cold." "Just drink it." Daniel digs through a bag next to him and pulls out a prescription bottle. He shakes a pill into his palm and hands it to Tommy. He looks at me. "Vitamins." Tommy takes it and swallows half the coffee. "This is terrible." "Your life? Yeah, it's a mess. Just drink the coffee. I'll get you an espresso in a minute, but only 'cause I'm making one for her." Daniel nods in my direction as he walks away. With that, Tommy looks up at me, and he smiles this amazing little smile, and suddenly, he doesn't look like some hungover piece of trash. He looks like a movie star. I mean, he is a movie star, but right now he looks like something out of a movie, and he winks  and  says, "I don't travel so well." I laugh, and he holds his hand out and takes mine. "Tommy. And you're Stacey." He's still holding my hand, not so much shaking it as just holding it, and I really, really hope I'm not blushing. "I loved your book, by the way. Obviously, or we wouldn't be here. But really, it's beautiful. Awful, but beautiful. And it really challenges the whole idea of what  monstrous is. What makes a monster? And who or what is responsible? Or are we all? It's just great. I loved it." "Wow." I hate it when I don't know what to say. I mean, I'm a writer. I should be good with words, and instead I'm like, Wow. "I'm flattered. I didn't realize many people had bothered to read it, much less get that much out of it, so that's really generous of you." "Oh, a lot more  people will read it now. Once the publicity machine starts rolling  for the movie, people will get interested in the book. Your sales should pick up quite a bit." Daniel reappears with the espressos and sets one down in front of me. "Here you go, sweetie." He looks at Tommy. "And you, fucking degenerate." "I should fire you. I swear to god, man." He takes a sip of the espresso. "That is good though. Really good." He closes his eyes, leans his head back, and rubs his jaw. "It's bright out. You have my glasses?" Daniel pulls a leather case out of his bag and hands the dark glasses to Tommy, who puts them on over his closed eyes. "Jesus, I could die. Do we have anything to eat?" He gives my leg the little apology pat again. "Sorry. I'm not usually this bad." Daniel's already on his way to the kitchen, but he calls back over his shoulder, "It's true. He's usually worse." The script is much, much worse than not very good. We're sitting on the terrace, and I'm thumbing through the hard copy in my lap. I'm the only one  still reading, though  I'm not reading so much as stalling. I'm not sure where to start. "I think one problem is that you've sort of taken the poems and turned them into dialogue. I mean, you've plucked out all the good lines and given them to different characters."  Joe nods. "Obviously, we'll have to add to it." He looks older than me, which probably means we're the same age, mid-thirties. I'm always surprised by my own age. Sometimes I feel older, sometimes younger. I never feel right. I glance at Tommy. He's stretched back on the couch next  to me. He has his head tipped back, his glasses on. I mean, he could be asleep. Alan is definitely not asleep. He's watching everyone. I'm not sure how this all works, if he works for Tommy, if Tommy works for him. I do know that I don't want to piss either of them off, but I don't want to let them break my book either. "Right. But it's more than that. I mean, this basically reads like kind of a typical Frankenstein movie," I say, holding up the script. "Your book is Frankenstein ," Joe says. "Kinky Frankenstein with this Frederick psycho building himself a girl." Tommy makes this grunting laugh. I guess he is awake.  "Okay, but this isn't based on the movies. This is based on the book, the whole nature-of-man discussion?" Joe looks at me blankly.  I feel myself slowing down, pausing between words, waiting for some recognition to show on his face. "So, where Frankenstein's crea­ture has a fully human soul in a physically corrupted form, my mon­ster has a beautiful exterior, but she's evil." "I thought the monster was always bad?" Joe looks at Alan and shrugs. "The creature only turns when Frankenstein rejects him. But that book is about  the corrupting influence of religion. Mine is about gen­der ideals and sexual power dynamics." "Great."Joe smiles a deliberately strained smile. "A feminist manifesto. That'll make a great  flick." "How'd you get your book in their hands?"Joe asks as everyone's heading in for lunch. Alan's already at the bar. He catches my eye and raises a bottle in my direction with a questioning shrug. It's barely even one. I shake my head. "I have no idea, really. I just got an e-mail one day." "You're kidding me." Joe says this like he might be kind of pissed. "No. Why?" "You just 'got an e-mail'?" He shakes his head. "You are one lucky bitch." Tommy opens three bottles of wine over dinner, but I don't think he finishes more than a glass. Alan has quite a bit. Maybe more. And Joe, Joe has a lot. He seems to be holding on to some anger from the day. Tommy and Alan spent the afternoon holed up somewhere, talking about I don't know what, which was not so good because Joe and I need a translator. The only language he seems fluent in is asshole, and in the past few hours, we've gotten nowhere but pissed off. "Well," Joe says, pushing his plate back and refilling his wine yet again, "I think we're fucked.  Or you are, anyway." He waves his glass toward Alan and Tommy. "It's not my money on the line." Alan leans forward and tries to do this calming motion with his hand, but it hardly seems to work. "Whoa, let's not get carried away. It's a rocky start is all." Joe looks at me and shakes his head. "She doesn't get it. Controlling bitch  if you ask me." He sort of sneers drunkenly. "How do you even keep a husband anyway? Seriously, how does he even put up with you?" Because, of course, it's right  there, at the back of the book, my whole life boiled down to a paragraph. It reads, Omaha ... husband  . . .    two sons, and I don't even know how to start correcting him. I don't even know which parts are still true. Tommy laughs. ''Joe, you're a handful, man." He stands up from the table. "Brandy?" He points to Joe, then  Alan, then me. "Please, yes, I'd love some." I get up and follow him to the bar. Tommy lines up four snifters and pours two fingers in each. "Let's talk outside." He hands me a glass and gestures toward the terrace. He points me to the couch and  then sits across from me. "Don't worry about  Joe," he says. "He's an asshole and a drunk, but he's really, really good. No one would put up with him if he wasn't. I think he hasn't quite figured out your vision yet, but he'll get  there. We'll make him get there. Promise." He rests his hand on my knee and smiles. I think it's supposed to be a reassuring gesture, but I just feel hyperaware of his fingers and maybe a little flushed, which is ridiculous because I'm not the sort of woman who gets flushed. "Just don't let him push you around." "Do I look pushed around?" God, I hope not.  I take a sip of the brandy and try really hard not to look rattled. Or look at his hand, which is still just resting there on my leg. Tommy laughs and leans back in his chair, taking his hand with him. "I don't know, honestly. You're hard to read."   In the morning, I walk out to the kitchen and find a full pot of coffee and a tray of sliced fruit. I pop a piece of pineapple in my mouth and take a cup of coffee out to the terrace. Tommy is already there. He's sitting with his feet propped up on the table. My book is in his lap, and he's writing in the margins. I feel strange standing there, out of place. He looks up. "Coffee's good today," he says. "Daniel took care of it. There should also be some breakfast in there if you're hungry." "No," I say. ''Just coffee's good." "So I'm making notes. I think if we look at these poems in terms of scenes, and then work from there. Who else is present for this scene and what will those characters say and do? Your monster is so fleshed out, so real, the rest of them need to come to life, give her some balance." "Right." I nod my head a little and stare at my coffee. The steam rises in a slow, looping swirl. "You know, I don't know if I can do this," I say finally. "Sure  you can." I set  the  coffee on the table and sit on the couch, cross-legged, holding both feet next to my hips, my fingers tight around my ankles. I look out over the  water  to the point where it merges with  the hori­zon. When I finally turn back, Tommy is looking at me. He must have shaved this morning. They like to picture him with  stubble, maybe to scuff up the pretty. That's really the word for it. Aside from the  hard line of his jaw, he has the face of a pretty girl-high cheekbones, wide green eyes. He lets the book fall closed in his lap. I just shake my head. "I know  that you can." He puts this emphasis on the word  know. Like it makes a difference. Like a person can know anything. Like knowing helps. "I don't have room in my head for the others. Hers is the only voice I hear." "That's bullshit." He stands up and grabs his cup. "I need a refill. You?" "No," I say. "Thanks." He turns toward the house and then turns back. "I can hear them in there. Right in the book. There are snippets of them, moments. You just keep them on too tight a leash. You've got to let them loose. You've got to give in to the chaos." I try to laugh. "I don't like chaos."  "No shit?" He steps closer and leans down until we're face-to-face. I feel myself shifting backwards, trying to make space. 'Jesus. You are wound so tight you're gonna break something. But you are not"--he raises his hand to point in the direction of the book where it sits on the table--"you are not gonna break this." He stands up and walks into the kitchen, and I turn my head back out to face the ocean and close my eyes as tight as I can and hold my breath. Excerpted from Monsters: A Love Story by Liz Kay All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.