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heroes, and Overton was giving up two of its own. I closed my eyes.
    The thrill of escape was ecstasy, super-powered by four hundred horsepower and the revving guitars of the E Street Band. On a hill overlooking the highway, a sign in the window of Bubba’s Sub Shop said it all: CLOSED .

~ F OUR ~
    When some cold tomorrow finds you
When some sad old dream reminds you
How the endless road unwinds you.
    —Steve Winwood
    “While You See a Chance”
    Tuesday morning I awoke to the smell of bacon and immediately thought back to what I’d written the night before. As I lay in bed upstairs, feeling a surprising sense of peace and comfort, I finally shook off the cobwebs enough to realize that Mrs. Hernandez had let herself in. In my groggy state, having stayed awake writing until three, I’d thought at first it was Marianne.
    Mrs. Hernandez comes by a couple of times a week to cook and clean. It’s a ritual she’s repeated now for eight years. A proud first-generation Mexican American, Mrs. H has three grown children and five grandchildren all living outside Providence. Long before I was earning the kind of money that comes to best-selling authors, Mrs. Hernandez was helping a bungling bachelor run his household. The thought of a single man cooking and cleaning for himself was totally unacceptable to her. We’d met through the church and soon adopted each other. She’s been a blessing ever since.
    I heard her downstairs singing in Spanish. I put on my robe and made my way to the kitchen. “ Buenos días, Mrs. Hernandez,” I said, squeezing her shoulders.
    “ Buenos días, Jack. I thought this might wake you.”
    “Woke me to a dream. Nothing says ‘I love you’ like a hot breakfast,” I said and grabbed a strip of bacon.
    “You are up late again last night?”
    “Yes, writing again.”
    “Oh, that’s good, and so you have an appetite this morning?”
    “I’m starved,” I said, in the mood for some of Mrs. H’s homemade food.
    She switched off the stove, scraped the eggs onto a plate, and picked up a few slices of bacon with her fingers, dropping them beside the eggs.
    “Come, eat.”
    I poured myself a cup of coffee and carried my plate to the table. The house was filled with an incredible wash of light, as if there were two suns, one shining from the heavens above and another from the snow below.
    “Do you have time to sit down and have breakfast with me?”
    “No, busy day. I’m finishing here. Then I’m cleaning Mrs. Delaman’s house. Do you know her?”
    “No, can’t say I do.”
    “Well, I hope to finish here and Mrs. Delaman’s this morning. Oh, I brought your mail in. It’s on the table.”
    “Thank you, Mrs. H.”
    She rinsed the pan in the sink and left for the other room. I put on my glasses, digging into the morning mail and my breakfast. Among the utility bills, junk mail, credit-card offers, and coupons was one piece of mail that sent chills through me: a picture postcard from London, England. On the front, a nighttime photo of London Bridge strung with colorful Christmas lights. On the back, this neatly written message:
Dear Jack,
Angela and I read your very fine book. You should be proud! We’ll be in Providence before Christmas and would love to see you! Keep up the good work!
The Lord is a rewarder of faithfulness.
Howard and Angela Cameron
    Five sentences. Three exclamation points. Classic Howard Cameron. The card had been mailed weeks earlier.
    I tossed the postcard back on the stack. Two decades had passed since I’d seen any member of the Cameron family, though their impact on my life remains to this day. Jenny’s parents were returning to Indiana after twenty years of missions work in London. Strange how we hadn’t seen each other in all these years, but the book had reached faraway places. It had found its way to nightstands around the globe. The postcard threw me off kilter. Everything that had happened since Sunday night left a trace of strangeness. My life had been