“Maybe he’s just visiting, Dad. Maybe he’s here for a few days and then will be on his way again.”

“You get that impression?” Sully asked.

Maggie was afraid to answer. No, she hadn’t thought, by anything he said or did, that he was dropping in to get laid and then would be moving on. “He wasn’t very specific about his plans, Dad.” However, he had said he was coming back to her.

“Well, I get the impression he could be hanging around,” Sully said. “That be okay by you?” he asked.

“Well, I guess. I’m hanging around. But my way isn’t as clear as when I got here. I was taking a break, yet I’m still here. I’ve been trying to figure out what I’m going to do next. More specifically, I’d better figure out who I am and where I belong.”

“Walter gave you some things to think about,” Sully said. “Good.”

“What did you and Walter talk about while I was walking down by the lake?”

“Oh, you know, the usual. Weather. Broncos. How you’re a work in progress.”

“Is that so?” she asked somewhat indignantly.

“And pretty much on schedule. We used to call it a midlife crisis,” he said. “What do we call it now?”

“What are you talking about, Sully?”

“You know—the day you wake up and see that even though you been busy every second there’s a whole lot missing outta your life. I was about your age when I decided it was time to get married.” He shook his head. “I don’t regret it but I should’a thought that one through a little better.”

“Well, then there was me...”

“That’s why I have no regrets. Isn’t that just about what happened, Maggie? You wake up one morning and say to yourself, something’s gotta change here?”

“I don’t think it was quite that abrupt...”

“Everybody’s got a different bottom,” he said. “But a midlife crisis used to have a lot to do with seeing forty staring you in the eye and asking yourself some important questions about whether it’s time to get that old.”

Oh yeah. And for a woman it has a lot to do with her eggs.

It had seemed to Maggie that it had been more like a boulder rolling down a steep hill, picking up speed as it went, rather than a sudden explosion. But it must have seemed abrupt to everyone around her—the rush of emails, the call to her neighbor to keep an eye on her house, she never did call Sully, and calling Phoebe when she was on her way out of town, headed south, her car full of luggage. She heard her mother saying, “Have you lost your mind? What do you mean you’re taking an indefinite leave? You don’t study for twenty-five straight years and then just walk away!”

Her bottom? She’d been building to it. She loved her work, but she wanted more. She wanted a family. She wanted a permanent partner, not some convenient boyfriend. She remembered that night with Walter in the hospital, suddenly thinking she wanted to be that doctor, that single person everyone depended on. And she’d been right—it was as if she was made for it. And then, when the pressure and frustration became overwhelming and she needed relief, she was alone. Even the short-lived joy and excitement of having a baby grow inside her was suddenly gone.

“It was both,” she told her father. “It was a slow, steady build and then it was all of a sudden. I was having irrational thoughts, feeling so lonely, wondering if I’d be alone my entire life. You ever feel like that, Sully?”

He laughed softly. “Well, I got married all of a sudden, to a woman I’d known for three weeks and couldn’t hardly get along with. I don’t know much about all those deep feelings—I never bothered to check what I was feeling. But I know I did some things that I can’t explain and they were way out of character for me. I married Phoebe and brought her to a country store to live in an old house with my elderly father. What do you think?”