Thirty-one-year-old Grace Holloway was, by every public measure, a lovely woman. People used that word often. Lovely . Lovely smile. Lovely manners. Lovely home. Lovely to work with. Lovely to have at dinner. She remembered names, birthdays, dietary restrictions, anniversaries, children’s allergies, preferred wine, and exactly how long to hold eye contact before looking modestly away. She sent sympathy cards on thick cream stationery. She volunteered suggestions where photographs might be taken. She touched forearms when speaking, leaned in at the right moments, laughed without showing too much gum, and could make almost anyone leave a conversation feeling slightly improved. Grace had spent years becoming indispensable. No one noticed that no one really knew her. --- The headaches began in late October. A bright, needling pain behind the left eye. Brief at first. A pulse. A stitch. Then gone. She blamed backlit computer screens. Stress. Weather. Then came the lost minutes. Standing in ...
He sometimes said his greatest regret was not taking the old Trans-Siberian Railway eastward to Lake Baikal. Not because he cared much for bucket lists. He considered such catalogs as vanity with stationery, for those who had wasted decades suddenly writing down ten expensive ways to continue wasting time. No, what he regretted was more precise than that. He regretted never sitting in a dim canteen somewhere near Irkutsk while some broad-faced stranger lied to him magnificently over soup and vodka. He regretted never hearing the room laugh at a joke he only half understood. He regretted missing stories that would now likely never be told the same way again. His body had long since vetoed such ambitions. These days he was lucky if the month’s arithmetic ended with enough left over for prescriptions. If Melinda French Gates wished to finance a crippled Pennsylvanian’s global adventures, he remained open to discussion, but until then, conversations near Lake Baikal would have to survi...