To top it off, she was now all alone. The foundation of the stable loving relationship in which she’d thought she’d been involved had turned out to be built on quicksand, and she was going to have to start over from scratch—although, after all this time, she was not sure that she still knew how.

Laurie sighed, stared once again out the window, looking down at the street and its tiny toy cars below. Her period was two days late. That’s what she was really concerned about, that’s what was really on her mind. And while a baby would certainly force a change in her life, she did not want to be carrying Matt’s child. She wanted nothing more to do with that sick loser, and despite the fact that her biological clock was winding down, she was not sure that she wanted to be a mother at all. She didn’t have any burning desire to reproduce, no deep-seated need to cuddle with something small and cute and fetchingly defenseless, no inclination toward spending the next eighteen years of her life catering to the material needs and overseeing the intellectual and emotional development of another human being.

She wasn’t sure she was ready for the responsibilities of taking care of a kitten, let alone a baby.

What if she was pregnant? Would she abort it? She wasn’t sure. She didn’t think so, but she couldn’t rule it out. At this point, she had no feelings for whatever might be growing inside her, no protective maternal urges, no bond of any sort. But how could she tell? She might keep it and it might turn out to be a good thing. It might force her to make just the changes she needed in order to slough off this midlife malaise or whatever it was that seemed to be afflicting her.

Or maybe not.

Laurie looked once more out the window, once more toward the bay, then walked back over to her desk and tried once again to get through the Mieger file.

Before heading home, she stopped by the bookstore. Josh was busy, discussing Taoism with an obviously like-minded customer. She wasn’t in the mood to hang around for an hour or however long it took for him to wind down, so after browsing politely, waiting a respectable ten minutes, she smiled at him, blew him a kiss good-bye, and started out the door.

“Wait!” he called after her, holding up a hand.

She mimed dialing a phone. “I’ll call you,” she said in the exaggeratedly simplistic tone she’d use on a deaf person attempting to read her lips.

Her brother nodded from across the store, circled his thumb and forefinger in an “OK” gesture, and turned back toward the customer.