“Then we’ll deal with it,” John said.

I was irrationally encouraged by that “we.” “We’ll deal with it.” Like we were a team. Like the early days.

I looked at him, seeing the tired lines in his face, the oxlike set of his shoulders. He’d been bringing work home this week, staying up late in his office, making up for the time he’d taken off so I could be with my mother.

How could I ask him to do any more?

“Thank you, honey.”

CHAPTER 7

Jo

When I moved to New York, I started running again. I memorized landmarks, learning my way around my new neighborhood: the brown spire of the Episcopal church, the plywood construction barriers, the Greek produce stall, the Korean dry cleaner on the corner. I ran in the early morning, before or after the sun came up, when the air was cool and full of promise, after the garbage trucks came through. Alone, except for Dan the Homeless Guy on his cardboard patch in front of the bodega, and a few people walking to the subway or waiting for the bus. The thump of my running shoes measured my progress, claiming my territory.

In those early days, I was in love with the city, like Joan Didion, drunk with adulthood and freedom. Five years later, my affair with New York was what I imagined marriage might be—inconvenient, sometimes disappointing or exhausting. But I was committed now. I kept running after I lost my job at the paper, staying a few steps ahead of panic.

It was cheaper than paying for a gym membership. Or a shrink.

After I was hired at Gusto, it got harder to force myself to stumble out of bed in the mornings. But on Friday, I laced up my shoes and ran through the Meatpacking District to the High Line, the old elevated freight rail turned public park beside the Hudson River. The path was clear of tourists and of snow. The cold quiet was an antidote to the noise and smoke of the kitchen, the stress of orders rattling in, the bodies bumping in tight space. The grease that coated everything like the miasma of failure. The fear that I wasn’t measuring up. That I was letting people down. That I wasn’t, in my father’s words, “fulfilling my God-given potential.”

Between the blocks of buildings, the pale sun sparkled on the distant water. The pressure to succeed, to perform, built in my chest, knifing my lungs like cold. I ran, chasing . . . something. A dream.

As far back as I could remember, I’d wanted to write. Stories scribbled on notebook paper, stitched with yarn or stapled along the edges to resemble the real books I borrowed from the library. Plays on the parsonage porch performed with my sisters.

The first Christmas our father was in Iraq, I’d written him a letter. More of a journal, really, day-to-day stories about our family and the farm, complete with pictures. Like a blog, only there were barely any blogs back then. I worked on it for ages, adding and polishing, taking pages to Mrs. Ferguson, my AP English teacher, for feedback.