Free Equilibrium by Lorrie Thomson Page B

wonder whether the look of regret had as much to do with Laura as her conception. Now she’d never know for sure.
    She dumped the dry ingredients into the wet and blended with her favorite wooden spoon, folding dark grainy stripes into the dry sands. Her arm muscles tensed and picked up speed.
    Each and everything she’d made for her family had blossomed from that emptiness she’d felt as a child, the feeling as if she were the only one without any family to speak of. She’d always craved open fields and mountain views, even though she’d spent her childhood on city streets, conjuring small-town life from all the books she’d read. For a while there she’d even grown to believe in the power of her imagination to influence her life, although she’d never spoken of magic out loud.
    Now she believed only in what she could see. The readers who never knew Jack the person didn’t suffer the consequences of his real-life actions, those that diminished rather than elevated their children. Those that—
    The crunch-snap of wood brought her attention to her spoon broken into two tidy sections, not a splinter in sight, and a very well mixed dough. She rubbed at her spent muscles, tossed the doomed utensil, and spread a plastic-wrap bonnet over the bowl.
    Now what? Letting the dough sit for half an hour provided way too much time to think, when that was the last thing she wanted. She cleaned the dough dribbles off the counters, wiped the completely clean kitchen table, and then made her way to the broom closet. No matter how many times a day she swept the kitchen, she’d always discover more dirt.
    Swish, swish, swish.
    Sometimes, in the middle of the night, the notion that she was an adult woman responsible for two teenage children seemed preposterous. Deep inside of her lay the young girl who had willingly stayed up all night, reading under the covers with a flashlight borrowed from her mother’s emergency car kit. Later, she’d set her intentions to paper, deciding exactly what her life would look like ten years down the road, and the precise steps needed to birth the dreams of marriage, children, and a published novel by age thirty. She certainly hadn’t signed up for widowhood at age thirty-four or a fatherless life for Darcy and Troy.
    Laura stopped sweeping, visualizing another girl hiding beneath a white bedsheet with a silver flashlight in hand. She headed straight for her desk to jot down the sketchy character before the story seed dissolved.
    When the ideas thinned, she read what she’d written and chuckled her way down the page. Okay, either she was entirely too smart for herself or just a BS artist. Maybe both. Really, whom was she kidding? Even if she found a story train, what right did she have to follow it? Time was running out on her free lunch. Come fall, she’d need a job. A paying job. Best-case scenario for writing and selling a first novel would get her a check for a few thousand dollars in about four years.
    Jack was one of the few writers who’d actually earned a decent living out of his passion. Thank goodness for the long tail of royalties. The ideal of the struggling writer never included a thirtysomething widow with two teenagers in need of financial support they could depend upon.
    She rubbed at her eyes and stood to her anklebones crackling a protest at finding themselves up and about so late at night. Then another sound drew her attention outside her weary body. The music of a strumming guitar flowed seamlessly from Aidan’s closed apartment door, through her office nook, and penetrated her chest.
    One note, then several successive notes rippled the air. She couldn’t make out the tune, but she adored it right away. The flowing melody thrummed bittersweet, the strings plucking chords of deep regret and unspeakable sorrow, making her think he was playing her song, like in the old Roberta Flack tune “Killing Me Softly.” A joy just below the surface kept popping in, refusing to bow to the