Excerpt from The Things That Keep Us Here by Carla Buckley, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

“Been a while.”

“Crazy times, huh? Libby sent me out for water today, but all I could find was that fizzy designer stuff.”

“I got lucky at a gas station on Franz. A delivery truck was just unloading when I pulled up. We’ve got extra you can have.”

“I’ll take you up on that. Libby’s been a wreck about it.”

They talked back and forth across their patios. Would the NFL adjust to a few missed games? How much farther would the Dow Jones skid before recovering? Was there any end in sight to the price of gas? Libby came out, the baby in her arms, and handed Smith a platter.

“Hey,” Peter said.

“Hello,” she said coolly.

Well, at least she wasn’t pretending he was invisible. This was progress. Peter pushed his luck. “Jacob’s gotten big.” Last time he’d seen the baby, he’d been cradled easily in one arm. Now the kid straddled Libby’s hip, reaching forward with one plump hand for the piece of bun Smith held out.

Smith said, “Gonna grow up to be a linebacker, just like his old man.”

The coals glowed softly. The smell of cooked meat rose. Peter pressed the spatula beneath the hamburgers and lifted them onto a plate. Picking up the platter, he dialed off the heat.

“Hey,” Smith said. “I got an idea. Why don’t you guys come over?”

An old tradition, combining their cookouts onto one patio or dining room.

“Smith,” Libby said.

“Jeez, Libby. Come on. If Ann’s cool with it—”

“Actually,” Peter said, “Libby’s right. We should probably be keeping our distance.”

Silence.

“Christ.” Smith’s voice came to him out of the darkness. “Right. I guess I saw something about that on the news. You really think it’ll do any good?”

“It’s all we can do.”

The clatter of a grill lid lowered into place. “Well, good to see you, Peter.”

“You too.”

Peter looked around at all the houses, large, dark squares rising out of the ground, windows glowing bright, islands separated by lawns and closed doors. The empty patios, the tables with the chairs stacked and the umbrellas furled. No one else was out enjoying the spate of clear weather.

He looked back at his own house. Through the glass he saw into the kitchen—Ann reaching down a stack of plates from the cabinet, Maddie collecting her drawing materials, Kate pouring a glass of milk. It all appeared normal, but it wasn’t. Everything had changed.

Excerpted from The Things That Keep Us Here by Carla Buckley Copyright © 2010 by Carla Buckley. Excerpted by permission of Delacorte Press, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.