“February seventh,” Kane says, tapping that date with one tattooed finger. I’m not surprised that he remembers. He heard me rehearse it in a pantry. He saw the slideshow. He knows what it means.
“That one I already knew about. It can’t hurt me any more than it already did.” I close the planner. “It’s the others. Those were good days. If you’d asked me in November to name the best days I had, I’d have named half of the ones that have X’s on them now. And because of what they did to them, they’re gone. Not just the day, but the whole memory of it. It’s tainted. I can’t get at any of them anymore without them standing in it.”
My eyes are stinging, so I look at the register drawer.
“It’s fine,” I say. “It’s a calendar. Just a bunch of stupid holidays. Whatever.”
Kane doesn’t move for a lon
