Willow hobbled into the waiting room and glanced around.  “Darla went next door for coffee,” the receptionist said as Willow stepped to the desk and asked.
“I need to pay for today and last Thursday.”
“Your friend Bill called to take care of it,” Lila the receptionist and intrigued manager of Dr. Weisenberg’s office assured her.  “He made an appointment for you in Rockland for this afternoon…”
“Yes.  I wasn’t ready to go but apparently people don’t care about little things like housework and-”
“And ambulation.”
Willow’s face pinked slightly.  “Ok, so maybe you have a point.”
Lee Wu burst into the door.  “Ok, so I’m late.  I saw Darla and told her I’d take it from here.  Let’s go!”
Half way to the road between Fairbury and Rockland, Willow wondered aloud whether they’d have time to stop at Boho.  “Oh well, I didn’t bring the sketches anyway-”
Lee whizzed down a side street, took two rights, and turned left back onto Market Street.  “Let’s go get them!”
***
Like nervous parents, Bill and Lee sat in the waiting room at the Physical Therapist’s office.  They flipped through magazines, examined the detailed pictures of muscular structures, and in general, avoided eye contact at all costs.  For an hour, both people managed to memorize every feature of the room without meeting one another’s eyes.
“She’s late.”
“They’re teaching her how to do things at home- it’ll take longer than a simple hour session,” Lee retorted.
“If she lived here, that wouldn’t be necessary.  I hope she takes that job.”
Lee’s face fell.  “I do too but she won’t.”
“You want her to take it?”
“Why wouldn’t I,” Lee questioned indignantly.  “It’s an amazing offer!  To design for one of the most popular and exclusive boutiques in Rockland?  Who wouldn’t want to do that!”
“So why are you trying to stop her?”
Her expression was priceless.  She stared at him as though he’d taken leave of all of his senses and a few other people’s as well.  “Who’s trying to stop her?  I drove her back so she could get her sketches.”
“But at her house-”
“I pointed out what she was saying.  I backed her decision.  It is her decision!”
Bill’s voice escalated slightly.  “What decision!  I didn’t hear her say-”
“Having fun you two?”
Willow’s voice stopped the heated discussion.  Leaning on Bill’s arm as they left the building, she told Lee about the exercises her therapist had shown her.  “It’s just like I’ve been doing.  She said it’s ok if it hurts but not if it feels like it’s tearing.”
In Lee’s car, Willow sank into her seat exhausted.  “Maybe we shouldn’t go to Boho.  I’m so tired.”
Bill forced himself to be silent.  He wanted her to talk to Suki face-to-face.  Certain that if Willow could see the job and all it entailed, she’d see what a fascinating opportunity it was and accept without second-guessing the idea.
***
That night, alone on her porch swing, Willow thought about her options.  Suki wanted an answer immediately.  Her excitement over the sketches was stimulating.  They’d talked animatedly for an hour about fabrics, styles, and the necessary pieces to create the collection they wanted for next spring.
On her bed, a stack of the proposed spring fabrics waited for her hands to convert from a flat sheet of nothingness into three-dimensional clothes.  She was anxious and eager to start on them but the night was cool and breezy, the crickets chirped and the frogs seemed to be singing their last songs before the end of summer.  Willow had always enjoyed late summer nights on the porch.
Headlights slowly advanced up the driveway.  “It must be after ten,” she thought to herself as she saw Chad’s pick up pull into his accustomed spot.
“Hey, what are you doing out here?”
“Freezing.  Easy night?”
Chad reached inside the door, grabbed a hand knitted afghan from the back of the couch, and brought it to her.  “Yep.  Beat ended at nine, I caught up on paperwork, went over to the Jenkins’ and told Alton to go to bed or I’d run him in, and then the night was over.  B-O-R-I-N-G.”
He unbelted his gun belt and set it inside disappearing long enough to bring back glasses of water.  “Drink up.  I know that therapist said you weren’t drinking enough.”
“How’d you know that?  Did Bill call?”
“No.  But anyone can tell your skin is looking dry and your lips are getting chapped.  It hurts to walk so you don’t get up.”
“Observant.”
“Occupational hazard.  So Bill was there?  I thought Lee took you.”
Willow nodded.  “She did but Bill met me there.  Something about insurance and billing.  I don’t understand it but I’ll have to look at it when I don’t have painkillers in my system.”
“I thought you weren’t taking them anymore?”
“Only for actual physical therapy sessions but I assumed it’d take a long time for them to get out of my system.  We went to Boho too.  She sent home fabric.”
“Oh.”
Unaware of his growing restlessness and quiet, Willow plunged into a discussion of the fabrics, designs, and expectations of the store.  “I brought it home- I’ll make them because it’ll be fun but-”
Chad listened intently.  “But what?”
“I’m going to have to turn down the job offer.”
“Why?”  His relief was evident but Chad didn’t care.  He was certain she was making the right decision.
“Because they want an answer now and I can’t do that.  I cannot decide something that affects the rest of my life in the matter of a week or two.”
“Well, if you didn’t like it, you could always just come home.”
She shook her head emphatically.  “That’s just it.  I can’t.  If I left tomorrow, half the food I need to survive wouldn’t be picked, stored, canned, butchered, and in every other way, ready for winter.  If I don’t let some things go to seed, I won’t have seeds for next year-”
“You could buy your food and seeds-”
Her deep sigh cut off his protest.  There was more to it than just her uncertainty but he didn’t know how deeply to pry.  Tucking the blanket in around her feet, Chad shrugged and said, “You know what you’re comfortable with.  I don’t want to influence you either way.”
“My life here isn’t just playing at farming.  It’s about survival and living life to the fullest.  We have our own corner of Walden here and I can’t just give that all up because I have a wonderful opportunity to do something different.”
“I still think they should let you do it here.”
She smiled, a mischievous light in her eyes.  “That’s my goal.  I’ll bring my finished garments to the store and submit a proposal.  They’ll either accept it or reject it.”
“What will Bill think?”
The light extinguished.  “He’ll think I’m crazy.  He’ll probably stop coming out here to see me, and he’ll work even harder to make my money grow to make up for it.”
“Why would he stop coming?  So you don’t move to Rockland.  That doesn’t mean you guys can’t-”
“Yes it does.  If I’m not in Rockland, there is no “us.”
Appalled, Chad stared at her slack-jawed.  Thankful for the darkness that hid it from her, he tried again.  “I think you’re underestimating him Willow.”
“Hey, those are his words, not mine.”
“He actually said that if you didn’t do it his way-”
She shook her head.  “No, no.  He said that he couldn’t live out here.  He said that for an us of any permanent kind, it’d have to be in the city.  He’s afraid out here.”
Chad didn’t know what to say.  “I’m sorry-”
“I’m not,” she countered.  “It’s just how it is.  It was flattering but-”
“But what?”
At first, she didn’t know how to explain it.  Everything that came to mind seemed inadequate but finally, Willow smiled as she said, “But I can’t change my life or who I am just because I respect someone.  Even if I loved him I couldn’t change me to please him because eventually we’d both regret it.  How much worse would it be to do that for someone I may not grow to care about?”
The swing creaked as they rocked.  The crickets still chirped; Saige snored in the corner.  Every minute that passed was indefinable.  Minutes, hours, seconds melded into one homogenous passage of time.  Thunder cracked overhead.  Rain slowly dripped from the sky in intermittent and gently falling drops.
Willow’s mind was several years in the past when Chad’s voice dragged it to the present.  “Do you think you’ll ever marry?”