It was a remarkable thing, Marianne thought, to deliver someone to her purpose, especially if that purpose was not quite what you intended, or even believed in. When she thought of Terri Schiavo, which until reading Janine’s poems had not been very much at all, she mostly thought the opposite of what Janine thought. She saw an empty shell of a person, an empty, grasping, brain-dead—or at least brain-compromised—vegetable person. She saw a suffering and emptiness so deep that the only answer was an end to that suffering through death. She thought the doctors had made the best choice in a difficult situation, and that Terri’s husband, chosen in adulthood, had more of a right to determine what happened to Terri than her parents had.

But that wasn’t how Janine saw things at all: Janine saw Terri’s parents as the rightful and righteous guardians of a life worth guarding, a life they had after all created. She saw a flickering of something in Terri’s brown, hollow-looking eyes; she saw smiles where Marianne saw accidental grimaces. The sacrifices being made on Terri’s behalf were not, in Janine’s mind, a loss of freedom or agency but instead the representation of a higher calling. She saw not base suffering, but noble struggle, in all of it, and truly believed she’d been sent here to write about it.

How much better, or at least easier—happier?—might Marianne’s life be if she could think the same way Janine did? If she could think, here I am, alive, and be happy for it?

The sun seemed to flatten before it disappeared entirely, and Marianne could hear gasps and appreciative murmuring. But there was no green light, no flash, just an ordinary sunset. Janine stood and folded her chair. “Eleven more chances,” she said, and didn’t sound displeased or worried about the clock ticking down. “Though I guess you get to see them all the time. Do you live here full time, Marianne?”

“Yes and no,” said Marianne, who suddenly realized how strange that sounded. “I used to live in Brooklyn.”

“With Eric,” said Janine.

“Not with Eric,” Marianne corrected her. She’d wondered, if they did get back together, whether Eric would push to move in. But that was the beauty of the Ranch, wasn’t it? They could live together and apart at the same time. “He lived in Queens, actually. Then he moved back to Charlotte.”

“I just meant, you went to school together? And were writers together, in the city? With agents, and publishers?”

“That’s not really how it works,” said Marianne. “Not for poets, anyway.”

“I think I met an agent the other night, or maybe a publisher,” said Janine. “At the opening night party? Her name was Regina Somers.”