648 days, 5 hours, 0 minutes, 26 seconds

Ridiculous. It's only four o'clock. It's bright sun out, and she's sitting on the screened-in porch. Everything's skewed in California. A twelve-hour flight yesterday that should have been no more than six, all the way south to north Texas before heading further west. And it will be the same going home, another two or three-hour layover. All because she didn't want to spring for the direct flight. All because she worried about missing connections. Then, after a plane ride that didn't even offer snacks and a meal at TGI Friday's, she arrived in Sacramento at nine o'clock, midnight by her watch, lugging her suitcase down an endless jetway straight into the arms of what seemed like a section of rowdy high school cheerleaders there to welcome home a Mormon missionary. And his family. Probably his family.