Real friends. The kind that don't purposely hurt your feelings or stop liking you for no reason.

The heat made people crazy. They woke from their damp bedsheets and went in search of a glass of water, surprised to find that when their vision cleared, they were holding instead the gun they kept hidden in the bookcase.

I am such a Pacific Northwest girl.

Do you love him?" How would I know?" You'd know.

If she wasn't careful, she'd slide without a ripple into the gently flowing stream of her old life, pulled back under the current without a wimper of protest. Another housewife lost in the flow.

Lately he'd been seen going out less and less, becoming that strangest of animals in a small town: a loner.

That was the one thing she knew now. Some chances came and went, and if you missed them, you could spend the rest of your life standing alone, waiting for an opportunity that had already passed you by.