Though Joanie and the visiting writer are less than a third of the way across Topawako Gorge when the trouble begins, closer to the rope bridge's beginning than its end, it seems easier to keep moving forward. And so, Joanie coaxes the woman, whispers encouragement, even tugs her sleeve. But the visiting writer is well stuck, gripping the right-side guide cable with both hands, eyes lost in some bottomless panic, then just not there at all.  

The woman on the phone said to come straight through to the back, and so Magnus does, trudging through brambles and shaggy ferns along the bungalow’s side to the empty swimming pool behind, then to the squat back cottage, almost the bungalow in miniature.  He raps on the cottage’s screen door, can see light faintly through its mesh.  

THEY’RE SITTING in the empty ball diamond in the woods when Lloyd sees a cardboard box moving through the tall grass just inside the left-field tree line. He watches for a few seconds while Mona chatters about baking shows, finally points, maybe just to confirm he’s not gone crazy. Mona sees it too then, gasps and stands. 

When the guy eating ice cream on the subway, wearing jean shorts and an Argos tank top, stands to offer his seat, Joan hesitates but takes it.  He smiles at her and hugs a pole, hooking his bowl arm then spoon arm around it.  When the train lurches, when the guy stumbles, there’s a slapstick inevitability to how his bowl drops, to how he clutches it messily against his chest. 

Every person is entitled to decide one day that they require nothing more from other humans.  Though Morgan realizes this late, just past her forty-second birthday, she does understand it at last.  Soon after, she breaks up with Mitchell, who has become a drain on every source in her being.  And she stops calling her best friend Cass, who has never really cared about her, Morgan can increasingly see, except as some sort of pet failure.