Novel September Novels & Stories

I wasn’t even going to tell him to stop calling me princess since he seemed to enjoy infuriating me. We walked back into the library and he handed me the blanket before almost shoving me back into the seat. Taking the seat next to me, he opened the book I was reading before and started to read out loud. “I’ve read that part already.” Resting my chin on my hand as I leaned forward on the side of the chair, I hoped that I was looking as bored as I felt. He lifted one eyebrow before turning the page. “September 19th, 1789

September came again. The second September had a different quality from the first. Not in its weather or its light — September was September, the specific month that couldn't decide whether to be summer or autumn and split the difference in the way Daniel had come to appreciate rather than resist. But in the way he inhabited it. The way it felt from the inside.

The first was the September when I was still in the penthouse, still counting ceiling tiles, still two months away from a text message at twelve forty-seven in the morning that changed the direction of everything. This September, I am at a restaurant table with a case file, a man with a sketchbook, and the neighborhood that is mine, and coffee that Rosa brings without asking because she knows. The difference between those two Septembers is the whole story. “The sketchbook,” I say. “What is in it?” He turns it and shows me.