EPISODE 9: FIVE MINUTES ## CHAPTER 1: GROCERY STORE ROSES Eight o’clock. Sweats. A cooking show I am not watching. Dolly a warm comma against my thigh, gray, long-haired, cat, offering no advice. The doorbell. I look through the peephole because I am not fourteen. Jacob Palmer. He has not slept. He is holding a grocery-store bouquet like we are in a movie I did not agree to be in. Carnations trying to be something else. The plastic crinkles when he shifts his weight. I think about the dark. I think about letting him stand there until the flowers droop. I have spent too long letting other people pick the hour I deal with my life. I open the door. I do not take the flowers. “Jane.” His voice breaks on it. “What are you doing here.” “I heard you’re leaving. Moving to Beaufort.” Word travels. This island is a porch with ears. I told Martinez yes this morning in my body and I have not told the island yet, but the island has a way of knowing a thing before you finish deciding it. Or he heard me tell Shelby. Or he heard Martinez tell someone at the hardware store. It does not matter. “I haven’t said yes out loud to the people who pay me,” I say....