Page 93 of Second Alarm

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"Is right on my heart."

"Yeah."

"Leave it."

"Okay."

Neither of us moves for a long time.

The ceiling has no duck. This is my ceiling — smooth paint, a crack in one corner that's been there since I moved in. The hall lamp throws a yellow rectangle across the floor. Ty's hand rises and falls with my breath.

"I have to tell him tomorrow."

"I know."

"Even though he's — "

"I know."

"I almost lost him, and I still have to — "

"I know."

"Mom said — " I stop.

"Tell me what Mom said."

"She said I'm a runner. And I said I know. She said the difference between running and staying is that the cost of running is never having had any of it, and the cost of staying is losing it later. And she said she'd rather have had my dad and lost him than never had him."

"That sounds like your mother."

"She saved that for ten years."

"I know."

"How do you know."

"Because I've watched your mother watch you for years, Hanna."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

A beat.

"Is your hand going to stay there all night."

"If you want it to."

"I want it to."

"Okay."

We lie there for a long time. My body is too full of something to sleep — not fear anymore, not desire. A word I don't have yet. A word likestaying,if staying were also a verb. I'm staying. Forthe first time in my adult life, staying: in a bed, with a man, in a town, with my family, in the middle of a crisis, with no plan to go anywhere.

At two in the morning my phone buzzes on the nightstand. Ty lifts his head an inch.

"Your phone."

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