“I think I’ll sign up for a writing class at UW,” she said slowly. The words felt pulled out of her somehow.

“Really? That’s great. You always were a kick-ass writer.”

Kate didn’t respond. She sank down to the sofa and just stared at the TV, surprised when she began to cry.

Almost immediately, Kate regretted the decision she’d made. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. What she actually regretted was that she’d told Tully, who’d told Mom, who’d told Johnny.

“You know, it’s a great idea,” Johnny said a few nights later as they lay in bed, watching television. “I’ll help out with whatever you need me to do.”

Kate wanted to give him a laundry list of reasons that it was too burdensome for her schedule. He and Tully made everything sound so easy, as if life were a combo plate you could order and pay for. She knew how wrong they were, how it felt to find that you weren’t good enough.

In the end, though, she could lie to herself and make excuses for only so long. When Marah went off to school, waving wildly, Kate was left with the empty hours of her day. Chores and obligations could only fill some of her time.

So, on a hot Indian summer day in mid-September, she dropped Marah off at school, drove onto the midmorning ferry, and merged into the downtown Seattle traffic. At ten-thirty she parked in the visitors’ lot at the University of Washington, walked to the Registration Building, and signed up for a single class: Introduction to Fiction Writing.

For the next week, she was a nervous wreck.

“I can’t do it,” she whined to her husband, feeling sick to her stomach on the day of the first class.

“You can do it. I’ll take Marah to school so you won’t be stressed about catching the ferry.”

“But I am stressed.”

He bent down and kissed her, then drew back, smiling. “Get your ass out of bed.”

After that, she moved on autopilot—taking a shower, dressing, packing her backpack.

All the way to UW she thought: What am I doing? I’m thirty-seven years old. I can’t go back to college.

And then she was in the classroom, the only person in the room who was over thirty—including the teacher.

She wasn’t sure when she relaxed, but gradually, her stomachache eased. The more the professor talked about writing, about the gift of storytelling, the more Kate felt she belonged here.

From her place at the news desk, Tully finished her on-air banter with the show’s cohosts, then turned her attention to the TelePrompTer, reading the news seamlessly. “Chief Tom Koby of the Denver police conceded today that mistakes were made early in the JonBenét Ramsey investigation. Sources close to the case allege that . . .”