National Novel Writer's Month

She pulled her knees back up to her chest. "Did Mom ever tell you how Aunt Patty died?"

Sean sighed and leaned his forehead against the top of the windowsill. "Yeah. Couple of years ago. After I heard about it at school."

"I've never heard about it."

"Mom probably wanted to make sure you had, before anyone at school said anything. She wants you to believe her version of the story."

"There's another version?"

"More than one." He picked his head up from the windowsill. "Clary, for goodness' sake, come on back inside. I'll tell you, but not while you're on that roof."

She crawled across the roof to his window, letting him help her across the sill into his bedroom. He closed the screen behind her, but left the window open. The breeze felt good in her hair. She settled onto the floor where she could still feel it.

"Did you know there are people who don't even believe the storm is coming?"

"What?" Clary was incredulous. "How can they not believe it? You can see it, right there in the numbers —"

"Numbers can be faked, and there's only the astrophysicists' word about what they mean in the first place." Sean sat down on his bed, facing her. "There are a lot of people who say that they have different numbers, or that the interpretation is wrong."

"Do you believe them?"

"No, I believe Mom and the observatory."

"Why would Mom worry that I wouldn't?"

"You don't believe what you can't see," he answered. It had become a family joke. "One of the biggest arguments against the storm is that nobody can see it."

"But that doesn't make sense! It's coming at the speed of light, so we won't see it until it's here."

"I know that," he replied. "Anyone who thinks it through realizes that. But there are a lot of people who just cannot wrap their heads around the idea that every time we look at the stars, we look into the past." He shrugged. "Some of the people who do understand still don't buy into the idea of astronomers as fortune-tellers."

She frowned. "It almost sounds like they don't want to understand."

"Do you believe we're going to die, Clary?"

"Yes," she answered.

"Why?"

"Because the storm is coming."

"That's what I mean! If you don't believe the storm is coming, then you don't have to believe we'll all die in nineteen years. Some people see no reason to live if they're just going to die."

She shook her head. "But we all would die anyway, sooner or later."

"Yeah, but some people don't like to think about it."

"What does this have to do with Aunt Patty's assassination? Are you telling me the people who killed her weren't just jealous because she figured it out first?"

"Oh, Clary." He closed his eyes. "They weren't jealous. They were angry."

She drew her knees up again, leaning against the outside wall. The breeze in her hair was making her shiver now.

Sean shook his head. "They were angry, and they were scared. Patty was saying things they didn't want to hear. They thought that if they'd kill the messenger, they'd kill the message."

"But they didn't succeed."

"No," he said. "They didn't. That's because, for once, Dad believed her. He wouldn't let the media bury the announcement. It killed him, too."

"He didn't die of a broken heart?" It had seemed so romantic, even if it was about his sister instead of his wife.

"He died from a heart attack, Clary." He shrugged. "I guess you could say his heart broke. But not like that."