The Book of Cold Cases

by Simone St. James

“Esther, I don’t want to be set up.” “It isn’t a setup exactly. It’s just dinner. You can’t be single forever.” “I can. I literally can. That’s a thing.” No one understood single people. If you didn’t have a partner and babies, how were you spending your time? I’d tried the marriage thing, and I’d still been me. Except an unhappy version of me.

Besides, Michael wasn’t telling me everything about himself, either. No one did. Everyone kept secrets, at least for a little while.

She’d read a copy of On the Road that she’d swiped from the library, looking for the glamour and forbidden excitement, but all she could see in it was a bunch of boys driving around, showing up at their girlfriends’ when they needed a place to stay. Beth didn’t want to be a girlfriend who took in a broke boy and fed him, gave him money, and had sex with him before he went off to other adventures and other women. That didn’t sound like freedom, like free love. It sounded like a bore.