Monday morning, he called an eye doctor with an office in a strip mall close enough that he could ride his bike to it and made an appointment, knowing already he’d fail every single test they’d surely give him. That same afternoon, he showed up for summer practice only so he could quit the team, and he ignored every one of Coach’s shocked, confused protests, the same way he ignored Caitlin’s when he broke up with her only a few hours later.
He didn’t let himself think about the girl on the balcony at all.
He was seeing clearly now.
Chapter 1
Sixteen years later
For Eleanora DeAngelo Clarke, the best time of day was, many people would argue, not daytime at all.
The best time of day was before dawn.
It was a fairly recent development, this fondness for 4:00 a.m. When she’d first come back, it hadn’t been so much a choice as a necessity, the demand of days that started early and stretched long, the fallout from frequently disrupted sleep. During those times, 4:00 a.m. had felt indistinguishable from every other hour of the day: darker in quality but not really in character, another part of the grim, human process of saying goodbye that she hadn’t felt—wouldn’t have ever felt—prepared to go through.
When it had been over, though, when the daylight hours became busier and more bureaucratic, when the reality of her new life had started to sink in—4:00 a.m. had started to transform for her. Sometimes, she’d do little more than sit and stare, a mug of hot coffee cupped in her palms, steaming straight into her puffy, tear-stained face. Sometimes, she rose from a restless, unsatisfying sleep and walked to the back door, sliding it open and taking a single step onto the balcony, breathing in the crisp, cold autumn air like it was medicine. Sometimes, she’d sit at the old rolltop desk in the living room, making lists to help her move through the day, to help her feel in control in this place where she’d never once, not in her whole life, had to be in control before.
But day by day, 4:00 a.m. took on a softer rhythm, and Nora moved to its beats with some improved version of those early, impulsive behaviors. In the pitch dark and perfect quiet, she sipped at her coffee and stayed inside when it was cold, letting her body and brain wake up slowly, softly. She left the lists to later, letting herself breathe. She let herself think and not think, remember and not remember. She let herself be.
Eight months on and 4:00 a.m. had become habit, a secret practice she’d even put a name to. At night, when she got in bed, she’d open the clock app on her phone and toggle on the alarm she’d titled “Golden Hour.” She’d close her eyes and look forward to it, to the reset it always seemed to provide her, to the gentle welcome it always seemed to give her to the day ahead.
Four in the morning, she’d started to think, could fix pretty much anything.
Except.
Except for this.
It’d been two and a half weeks since it’d happened, and every day since, Nora had spent 4:00 a.m. exactly like she was right now: sitting on the balcony, still in her pajamas, fretting.
And it was all Donny Pasternak’s fault.
Nora knew it was a terrible thing to think, a terrible thing to feel. Who could blame a man for dying, after all, especially a man so quiet and kind as Donny? Who could sit in judgment of someone—a neighbor, a friend, practically a family member—who’d left this world so suddenly, so unexpectedly, so prematurely? Who could be so . . . so angry?
Well, the answer was Nora.
Nora could.
You’re not angry at Donny, she scolded herself. You know that’s not it.
She took a sip of her coffee, trying to get that golden hour feeling again. It was a perfect not-quite-morning, warm and dry and pleasant, the kind she’d waited for all through her first dark, brutal Chicago winter.
But it didn’t work.
She was angry. She was angry and stressed and scared, because quiet, kind Donny Pasternak was gone, and that was bad enough, especially so soon after Nonna. But beyond that—beyond that, there was the terrible realization that being Donny’s neighbor and friend and almost family member turned out to mean exactly nothing when it came to finding out what would happen to his apartment.
Nora had never been naive about how outsiders judged the old, brick, blocky six-flat that was, for