THE EMPTY CHAIR AT HER SISTER’S WEDDING WAS SUPPOSED TO PROVE HER FIANCÉ HAD LEFT HER—BUT WHEN A QUIET STRANGER SAT BESIDE HER, KORA NEVER IMAGINED HE OWNED THE HOTEL, OR THAT HIS FAMILY WAS ALREADY PLANNING THE MARRIAGE THAT COULD DESTROY THEM BOTH

said the poet wrote about weather as if weather were a verb. I have spent four weeks thinking about that sentence.”

He paused.

“I am not very good at this. I do not, as a rule, do anything in my life that does not have a brass plate beside it. I bought you a book.”

“You bought me a book,” Kora said.

“Yes.”

She opened it to the first poem.

The one that had continue reading …