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She was standing on the sidewalk in front of Thistle & Ink (she’d chosen this spot partly for the view of the parade route and partly to get a better look at the window display, which in daylight was less unsettling and more extraordinary, Claire’s arrangement of books and objects and light creating something that was definitively art even if she couldn’t have explained what it was doing) when she became aware of someone coming toward her through the crowd.

She knew before she looked.

She’d been knowing before she looked for six weeks.

She looked anyway.

He was moving through the crowd with the economy of a man who knew exactly where he was going, not hurrying, just direct, the way he did everything. Dark blue plaid flannel, the travel mug, the same Shane she’d been seeing on Main Street for two months.

He stopped in front of her.

He looked at her.

Not a glance. He looked at her the way he had looked at the student panels at the festival, the way he looked at things worth his full attention, and the full attention of Shane Colter was, she was discovering, an intense and slightly overwhelming thing to be on the receiving end of.

The flower crown. The red dress. The bold brows and the red lip and the way she was standing in it, not like a costume but like herself in a different key.

He looked.

He said nothing for long enough that she became aware of her own heartbeat.

“You’re not in costume,” she said, because she had to say something and it was the first thing her brain produced.

He looked at her for one more moment, and then his face settled back into its usual evenness.

“You noticed,” he said.

“It’s Halloween.”

“I’m aware.”

“The whole town is in costume.”

He looked back at the parade briefly. “Most of it.”

She studied his profile, the jawline, the set of his shoulders, the Thursday flannel, the travel mug, and tried to locate her composure, which had apparently gone somewhere without telling her.

“What are you supposed to be?” she asked.

He looked at her again, with something drier than the almost smile in it.

“Myself,” he said.

“That’s not a costume.”

“No,” he agreed, and brought his travel mug up for a sip, and she tried very hard not to smile and managed it for approximately four seconds.

* * *

He stayed.

That was the thing she kept coming back to, later. He stayed. He had walked through the crowd specifically to where she was standing and he stayed, through the whole parade, and neither of them suggested moving and neither of them did.

The kids went past in their costumes, all of Main Street watching, and somewhere in the middle of it Charlie Keller appeared on a bicycle, witch costume, hat at a precarious angle, clearly unconcerned, and wove through the edge of the crowd with the skilled navigation of a child who had been riding this street her whole life. She caught Allison’s eye and grinned with the grin of someone who knew something and wasn’t saying it.

Then Charlie looked at Shane standing beside Allison.

Then she looked back at Allison.