I woke early the next morning and walked to my usual café. The writing was a bust. I got the words down, but they were garbage, hardly cogent, nothing more than the rambling thoughts of a troubled neurotic, most of which I’d later delete.

I was writing the last third of the book, maybe the last quarter. When I flipped through all the pages, I couldn’t believe how many there were—over two hundred of them. I was certain the book would be under three hundred. A year of my life, this was its equivalent on paper, the pages filled with a story that came from the heart, one loosely based on my little hometown of Spencer and the people I still remembered from there, and maybe the book would be worse because of it. But the story had occupied my mind for a while, and I had to tell it for no other reason than to be done with it.

I gave up at noon and walked home. Carolyn was showered, dressed in a red sweater and dark jeans, standing at the window looking out. She turned and could see that the day’s work had been hard. She walked across the room and hugged me.

“I love you,” she said.

“Love you, too.” I dropped my bag on the floor beside the desk. “You going somewhere?”

“I feel like going downtown. I dunno, walk down Michigan and shop a little. Do you want to come?”

I dropped face-first into the bed. “Oh darlin’. I’m tired and cranky and the weather outside can gargle my nutsack. Going downtown is the last thing I want to do.”

“Pleeeeeeeeease.”