647 days, 21 hours, 3 minutes, 59 seconds

So okay: last night she understands why her blood was high. When you walk into a home in California and the first thing you see is an orange tree, there's no way you can resist fresh-squeezed juice. But then it was down this morning, and okay before dinner, then a dinner of sole, asparagus, and salad, and bedtime when she took it just to see if it was better, just to feel good about herself, it was high. Disgusted, she turns to solitaire. Plays out the second game, then insists she has to play out three games. Takes her blood again, finds it's still high. She gives up. She gives in to the headache that never quite left today, even with Tylenol.

648 days, 4 hours, 35 minutes, 39 seconds

So her reading wasn't till noon and she went to the library thinking she could get on the Internet, only she needed ID to get on the Internet so she sat down and finished a review and then tried to call him at work and got his home machine. At work? She checked the number on her cell. Then she thought it's Friday, he's working at home, he had the calls transferred, except it's Thursday not Friday. And when she reaches him later, at work, he said she obviously dialed wrong.

648 days, 4 hours, 46 minutes, 38 seconds

She got out of the car last night and the first thing she heard was the train whistle, which she hears again now. Freight trains, mostly, though Amtrack runs by here. Her husband, who asked this morning why she didn't call when she got in last night, forgetting the time difference, would have adored these trains, yet this morning she forgot to even mention them. She left her cell phone charger on her desk when she ran out yesterday morning, spent $40 for a new one at the airport. $40 for what would probably be $15 elsewhere. $40. That's how much she loves him.

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.