The questions were somehow tied up with the book, and she was beginning to think that maybe the book was formulating an answer to these questions. It was beginning to frighten her because she realized she had no idea what would happen next. She sat down every day and picked up the thread from where she’d left off the day before with no plan or plot or even forethought, if she was being completely honest.

It was most like writing in her journals, the free flow that was never meant to be seen by anyone other than herself. Did she realize that millions of people all over the world would eventually read this book? What would all those people think? Since beginning this new project, she herself rarely liked what she wrote—and she was pretty sure she hated her largely unsympathetic characters. A long suffering and childless couple, whose withered ambitions, broken promises, and marital betrayals had left them both bitter and prone to engaging in verbal jousts and petty slights. Would two such people even stay married to each other? And if so, why would they do it? Maybe she should guide them to some redemption—some reconciliation. If that was the case, she couldn’t see any ladder up from the pit she had flung these two characters into.

Curled on her couch with her feet beneath her, Clare sighed in frustration. She wasn’t probably making a mistake with this project; she knew she was.

What are you so afraid of, Clare? It was like she could actually hear Donna, all these years later.

Charlie, tired of lying in the sun at the edge of her shag rug, jumped up onto her lap, stretched his paws high onto her chest, arched his back, and extended his mouth up for a quick lick of her face. He stood there, squirming and wagging his tail, insisting she come back to the room, back to this present, back to the sun and the view and the life that was right here. She smiled at him, and his tail picked up the pace.

“How can I love you so much? You silly dog.” She held his long ears in both her hands and kissed his head.