Is my mom all right? She’s perfectly fine. don’t worry, Bella, I have no quarrel with her. Unless you didn’t come alone, of course. Light, amused. I’m alone. I’d never been more alone in my entire life.
Bears, I muttered, adding a new fear to the pile. That would be just her luck, wouldn’t it? Stray bear in town. OF course it would head straight for Bella.
Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me.
It was a strange combination to absorb – the everyday concerns of the town doctor stuck in the middle of a discussion of his early days in seventeenth-century London.
