Seven Days in June

by Tia Williams

“I’m not just writing about you,” said Shane. “I’m writing to you.”

“I wrote my books like you were the only one who’d ever read them,” he continued carefully. “My books did what I couldn’t.”

She doesn’t hurt like I do. Did.” Eva corrected herself.

It took confidence to own that crowd. And Audre did it by being friendly and empathetic and not an asshole. My golden child,

Eva wanted things. She’d just forgotten how to get them. She used to be brazen. Where was that girl who’d run away from her mother, to Shane, to Princeton, and then to New York? Who was that girl?

She also knew that Genevieve had always lurked on the outskirts of her personality—muted by motherhood, career, self-preservation, and common sense, but there. Eva was older, but the same bones were under her skin. The same flame, dulled to an ember, waiting for a spark to set her ablaze again.