I should be exhausted, but I’m not. I’m much too keyed up to sleep. Probably it’s my imagination, but when I close my eyes and sit very still, I swear I can feel the baby inside me. Not moving, nothing like that, it’s far too early. Just a kind of warm and hopeful presence, this new soul my body carries, waiting to be born into the world. I feel… what’s the word? Happy. I feel happy.

Shots outside. I am going to look.

*****END OF DOCUMENT*****

Recovered at Roswell Site (“Roswell Massacre”)

Area 16, Marker 267

33.39 N, 104.50 W

2nd striation. Depth: 2.1 meters

Accession BL1894.02

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For advocacy, encouragement, counsel, inspiration, expertise, friendship, camaraderie, patience, shelter, sustenance, and the general tossing of meat through the bars, thanks and ponies to: Ellen Levine and Claire Roberts at Trident Media Group; Mark Tavani and Libby McGuire at Ballantine Books; Gina Centrello, president of the Random House Publishing Group; Bill Massey at Orion; the spectacular publicity, marketing, and sales teams at Ballantine and Orion; Rich Green at Creative Artists Agency; Michael Ellenberg and Ridley Scott at Scott Free Productions; Rodney Ferrell and Elizabeth Gabler at Fox 2000; my brilliant and intrepid readers, Jenny Smith, Tom Barbash, Jennifer Vanderbes, and Ivan Strausz; my many wonderful colleagues and students at Rice University; Bonnie Thompson; John Logan; Alex Parsons; Andrea White and The House of Fiction; ACC, best boy ever; IAC, the girl who saves the world; Leslie, Leslie, Leslie.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in New England, JUSTIN CRONIN is the award-winning author of The Summer Guest and Mary and O’Neil. Having earned his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Cronin is now a professor of English at Rice University and lives with his family in Houston, Texas.