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how close I’d come to the grave, or what it felt like to be teetering on the edge, arms wheeling. I watched one student, a girl wearing a short skirt and kitten heels, flouncing across the road. A lot more stood between that girl and me than fifteen years. After a quick calculation, I had to amend: Twenty years.
    But Joss was probably twenty years older again. I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye. Her silver hair was perfectly bobbed around her ears, stylish. Her bangles, her careful manicure. Sometimes she came back from a long break with intricate henna designs flowering from her smooth brown fingers up to her wrists. I didn’t know much about Joss, but now I wondered what her life was like and who I could hope to be in a few, rushing years. Did she have anyone at home, or did her publishing record keep her warm? I wanted both. What was wrong with both? And now I had neither.
    The light finally changed. We rolled through the crossing as the last of the students jogged out of the way.
    “It just would have been nice to know,” I said. “That one of my options was closing up.”
    Corrine let it slide. I knew as well as anyone that one of my options had ceased being an option a long time ago, and it had nothing to do with the woman buying broccoli crowns.
    “Who’s joining me for a drink?”
    “Amelia, for God’s sake,” Corrine said. “What time is it?”
    “I’m not teaching today.” Joss shot me a sly smile.
    “Last call, Cor.”
    “I have prep to do for tomorrow. And so do you.”
    “I’m as prepped as I plan to be. Come on. You don’t teach until tomorrow either, right? You have all evening.”
    “I have—I can’t.” She sank back and stared out the window.
    “Well, I feel like celebrating,” I said. The pain in my pelvis was creeping forward, demure but insistent, reminding me of something. I found the bottle of water Corrine had bought me earlier and dug into my bag for my pill bottle.
    “You do?” Joss glanced over her shoulder at Corrine.
    “I’m alive, aren’t I? That deserves more than a couple of jelly-filled.” I threw back the pill and the last of the water and sat with my eyes closed until I felt the car swing into the circle drive at the back of Dale Hall.
    Corrine got out and slammed her door and, when I still hadn’t opened my eyes, rapped on my window. Joss used her controls to roll it down. “Drinking on top of those pain pills could kill you,” Corrine said.
    “Your concern is heartening.” I opened my eyes, the pinpoint of hurt that had been growing wide inside me already receding. “Cor, it’s OK. I went into serious, foreclosure-level debt to save my own life. No plans to do myself in.”
    “No need to call the hope hotline on you?”
    “I’ll have a virgin daiquiri,” I said. “What’s the hope hotline?”
    Corrine laughed, but I hadn’t said anything I considered funny. Maybe my voice didn’t sound the way I thought it did. Or maybe the pills were kicking in, and I hadn’t said what I thought I had. “I was joking,” she said. “But take it easy, OK? I just got you back.”
    “I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “Except to the Mill. I’ll see you tomorrow. Early.”
    She nodded, but the expression on her face said what she wouldn’t—that it might be time to call the hope hotline. Whatever that was.

    The daiquiri wasn’t virgin. The daiquiri wasn’t a daiquiri. I ordered a beer and waited for Joss to say something. When she didn’t, I began to wonder if I weren’t providing field research for the next Alberta Joss, PhD, sociological study. Women and prescription dependence. Society and social lubricants. Pharmaceutical crutches of victims of violent crime. The pills had kicked in, so this made sense to me. I might have jotted down notes if I’d had a pen.
    “What’s your next book about, Jossie?”
    She sipped her daiquiri. Which was a daiquiri but not virgin. It was barely eleven in the morning, so I had to give her some credit