Loneliness always hits sudden. A spark of lightning and then you finally see how deeply the pain has gored you. On the second Tuesday of September, Sierra Chastain had to learn that there was no easy step after the realization. Her hands, foreign looking things with old lines carved into her palms, did not know what to do with themselves. She found them boxing old photographs, wrapping blankets that no one would use anymore, patting down a mattress now designed for guest again instead of child.

They did not write her gently like she hoped. Nothing stood in the emptiness of her home and told her what words to use now, what language was safe. Instead she began to think. Not of her daughter, no, she would have been able to accept that. Sierra found herself thinking about Chuck. About all American football star and first love of her life — because she was old now and there had been so many versions of love. Sierra stood in a house that croaked like a ship on the verge of wreck every time the wind blew and she thought about the warmth of large hands, the sweet of first kisses.

And she thought about how if she had been less picky through her life she wouldn't be so alone, so absolutely without. Chuck would have been great. Or Paul. Or Larry. Or any number of men who hadn't been exactly awful or violent, not like the man she married at all. No. Their crimes had been being boring. Or stupid. Or busy. Busy, like she couldn't wait a few extra minutes a night to get their attention. She'd learned what being alone was really like in her marriage and now she knew better. Now that she had seen Scott walk away and never come back, not even at the end of Molly's battle with cancer, she understood all too well. Molly was gone and Sierra Chastain was utterly alone.

Will I be like this forever? Will it ever end?

She stepped out of her dying home and walked toward the lake, more verb than noun suddenly, and Sierra Chastain walked through the cold river of her backyard. As the water took to her lungs she thought about the kindness of her last love's smile and how much she'd miss him. Not for being best but for being last. A goodbye kiss to life, to this world.

That's all, folks.

"What do you do, when you just can't go on, Susie?"

"Me?" Nothing, she moved to say.

Next to nothing.

I take night walks through Chicago until I'm exhausted. I clean my grandmother's tin tea pot, her mirror and her jewelry, as if she's always ready to walk through the door and take them back once again even though it has been two decades since I saw her last breath.

I read — sometimes twelve books at a time. Everywhere: on the train, drinking coffee, in the kitchen, on the toilet. I buy puzzles by the handful and finish two thousand pieces at a time before frustration makes me destroy them again. Then, I do them over. I feed strays. I order my cabinets and label my spices — in English and French. Sometimes, I take sleeping pills. Sometimes, I take shots. I don't watch television in fear a man who looks just like him will pop up. Gradually, I turn to stone.

"I carry on."

The same, every day. That's the way you survive. Other than that simple thing, I do absolutely nothing.

The smell of rain always bothered her.

It had been such a throwaway remark about Grandma Lu but suddenly the entire Chang-Kim-Landon clan were thinking over the very simple fact. Grandma Lu hated the smell of rain. A joke they'd uttered to one another in jest and good faith for decades already, for two full generations.

They realized in slow steps they had never taken the time to understand why. It hadn't ever seemed to matter. No one had taken the time to ask or understand much of anything that the matriarch of their blended family had done. Why was her kitchen more of a maze than a display, everything hidden behind something else? Why did she valiant at her windowsill watching over everything and nothing? Why had she never worn an outfit, even for sleep, that hadn't hung off the back side of a door for two days beforehand?

Why had the smell of rain always bothered her?

"She said it smelled old." The sound breaks like a sudden shot through the room. No one had realized how quiet they were being until Chuck began to talk, his bloated hands folding over one another in nervous energy. His voice was steadier than the flesh of him could prove to be and the whole family was grateful for it in that moment, listening to the careful pace of his words. "Not old like age but old, like a thing that was there before you and chased you all your life. We were what, twelve? You remember, don't you, Tommy?" The youngest of Grandmother Lu's kids didn't remember, not a conversation where his mother had ever dared to reveal a secret from her chest. "That weekend! We went to see Fist of Fury? We were eating lunch and it started to pour. I don't think she knew I heard her, leaning against that window in her kitchen back then, but I did. She said smells like that were older than you and your secrets and they would always try to catch you."

Everyone wondered why Chuck could, or would, remember the thought but he didn't bother to expand on it. No one needed to know that it was the first weekend he'd gotten to see Justine in all her thirteen year old glory or the way he'd memorized every detail about the woman and her family he would one day marry. Especially any details about the woman he wanted to grow up to call mom.

As they sat with coffee cooling in their West Coast hands the rain began to fall in West Virginia. Grandmother Lu smelled it and turned away, silver key slipping like new into her rented car. Her secrets weren't going to stop her now. Not when she was finally getting somewhere.

In the sixth grade my teacher, Misses Larsson, told me your shadow was the thing you always took with you. On the afternoon of the eclipse as I walked side by side with Tabitha I knew then what every kid grows up to know, I guess. Your teachers don't know any better than any other damn grown up around you.

Our shadows vanished into the light, the gloomy light that fell on us like moonlight's cousin recovering from a long fever. The whole world out before us looked like it was covered in the stuff. We weren't sure where the city ended anymore, there on our secret rock, and I'm not certain I would have minded if the world broke apart just then. Because she took my hand in hers and did something I never expected.

She sang.

For the life of me, I can't remember the words. It haunts me like a faded dream. Sometimes, right before falling asleep, I remember the note she hit, that first note, then it all runs away again. All I can remember is that her mouth burned through the darkness and all I could see was the thousand ways I wanted to kiss her. All I still see are the thousand ways I should have kissed her there. Before it all began.

"We should go somewhere. Anywhere. They won't find us, not if we're real good about it. What do you say, Ev? Could we do it?"

Yes, a thousand times yes. A thousand times yes even now.