But that morning, as she watched the sunrise, she found herself thinking about him.

And as she looked out over the world from her high perch, she felt a deep, desperate dread that she might never find her place in it.

And she felt like she was going to throw up. Because she thought she had done all she could have done to find her place in this world. She had earned. She had accomplished. She had experienced. She had traveled. She had influenced and hobnobbed.

But she still hadn’t found it.

And then a strange lightness filled up her insides. It overwhelmed her. And relieved her nausea. And made her feel like she had the warmth and light of the very sunrise she was watching inside her. And like she might levitate or something.

And she realized that she didn’t need to find her place in this world.

Because she had already found it.

It was with him.

And she needed to see him.

Right then.

So she skipped out on her early conference call with her clients from the other side of the country.

And went to him.

Right then.

She got on a plane to Boston. And then to Bangor. And then she took a taxi to get to him.

And now, she was about to see him.

And it looked like he was home.

The lightness she had been feeling as she stood in his driveway gave way to another equally alien feeling—one of yearning. And it surprised her. Because yearning was something she had trained herself not to do. The people she associated with didn’t yearn. For anything. If they wanted something, they got it. And if they wanted to accomplish something, they accomplished it. And if they wanted to be something, they became it.

The woman had learned well from them. And she had gotten really good at getting and accomplishing and becoming. She did it better than any of them.

And she didn’t yearn anymore. Or—so she thought.

But there she was. In Almost. At his house. Yearning. Hoping.

But still absolutely certain that she’d get what she deserved.

A surge of anticipation—and maybe the cold, too—made her shiver.

She smiled at how right everything was about to be.

And she continued up the driveway toward the house.

Her shoes made the going rough. And made her feel like she wasn’t from there anymore.

And that made her happy. Because she wasn’t from there anymore. And she had worked hard to seem like she wasn’t from there anymore.

Which may be why she hadn’t been back to Almost since she went away to college. That—and her family had moved away shortly after they dropped her off at a university that no one from Almost, Maine, had ever gotten accepted to. So there was no reason to go back. Because there was nothing in Almost for her. Or so she had always thought.

The woman started toward the modest ranch-style house again, her heels crunching in the icy driveway. And she must have crossed some magical plane, because a motion sensor turned on the black outdoor post lamp that lit the path from the driveway to the front door.