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Most evenings, Amity and her father talked to each other during dinner. Neither she nor he was ever at a loss for something to say, and there was no shortage of subjects that interested them. But on this momentous evening, Daddy wasn't in the mood for conversation. He said that he was exhausted and worried and needed to think, but no doubt he was also concerned that she would press him further about finding the right Michelle. She'd no intention of doing such a naggy thing, not because she wasn't capable of it, but because she had a keen sense of the limits of his tolerance for wheedling.

As on those other rare evenings during which they dined mostly in silence, Daddy resorted to an audiobook for entertainment. They couldn't listen to an entire novel during one dinner, and neither of them wanted to break a rattling-good story into like twenty dinners. So on these occasions, they listened to the same novel to which they had listened an amazing number of times before, The Princess Bride by William Goldman. They remembered every turn in the story better than they recalled many of the details of their own past, but the oft-told tale was never boring. No bullsugar. The story really and truly delighted them so much that, when they came to certain scenes, they recited the dialogue or the funnier lines of text in sync with the audio narrator, though they had never made an effort to memorize any of it.

Through salad and pizza, they listened to the second and third chapters. The third was titled "The Courtship," in which the vile Prince Humperdinck proposed marriage to a very beautiful milkmaid named Buttercup, whereupon she said that she had loved once before, it had gone badly, and she could never love another. Not accustomed to rejection, the prince seasoned his proposal with a threat.

Three voices—those of the narrator, Amity, and her father—served as the voice of the prince: "So you can either marry me and be the richest and most powerful woman in a thousand miles and give turkeys away at Christmas and provide me a son, or you can die in terrible pain in the very near future. Make up your own mind."

And Buttercup said, "I'll never love you."

Said the prince, "I wouldn't want it if I had it."

Replied Buttercup, "Then by all means let us marry."

At the end of the chapter, Amity and her dad laughed together, which was a fine thing, though it was also a strange thing because, among their favorite fantasy adventures, The Princess Bride was like no other. The story lacked a happy ending. It was a satire filled with stupidity, treachery, suffering, loss, and death—all of which were played for laughs. Few girls short of their twelfth year would take such delight in it. However, Amity was smart and precocious, and years earlier she had learned the primary lesson of The Princess Bride: As wondrous as life was, it was also full of sadness, and the best way to get past the sad parts and enjoy all the rest was to find the humor in even the darkness. Laughter wasn't just a medicine for melancholy, but also a sword raised against evil. A laugh said, You can't scare me into surrender, I'll fight you hard to the end.

She hoped that, in desperate straits, she could laugh in the face of pure evil. Until today, she'd not had much experience of evil. Of sadness, yes, she'd known her share of that, but not the kind of evil that turned your blood to ice water. She supposed she had done all right in that nasty version of Suavidad Beach, with the commie fascists and Good Boy and all. But worse might be coming.

With his paternal sonar sensing fear in the depths of his daughter, Daddy said, "Are you okay, honey?"

"Yeah," she said. "I'm good, I'm cool." But it was then, for the first time in a while, she became aware of the three teeth and the fragment of jawbone in a pocket of her jeans.