549 days, 11 hours, 7 minutes, 46 seconds

She checks the "day of your death clock" again, though still refuses to list herself as pessimistic. Saturday, February 13, 2027. At first she thinks it hasn't changed, then rechecks her notes and sees it's cut off exactly one year. But there's still the twenty years she's promised him. This thing is bullshit.

549 days, 11 hours, 39 minutes, 37 seconds

From today's Times – a headline on how airlines will now permit the small, disposable cigarette lighters on flights. Had Richard Reid used a lighter instead of matches that bomb might have ignited , but what's done is done. Can't live in fear of the past forever. And trying to confiscate lighters (and small scissors, and screwdrivers) trivializes the security process. Small batteries can set off bombs also. She thinks of her husband, traveling with a walkman, an mp3 player, and a cd player, never knowing what he'll want, or need. She thinks of their first years together, when he still smoked, pushed to the back of the plane. Always the last to board and exit. But he'd never think to harm anyone.

549 days, 11 hours, 46 minutes, 6.9 seconds

Her father calls. Glad she answered the phone. There's something he wants to send her and he can't find her address. No, not another medical article, not another piece on the stock market – it's an article on someone she was mildly friendly with 40 years ago. He writes down her address again. He's glad she answered the phone, that she still has the same phone number. He thought she might have moved.

549 days, 12 hours, 31 minutes, 17 seconds

Of course Hairy's deflated. He's on chemo. She's losing weight, too – ten pounds over the past two months. She'd been trying for years to accomplish this. And she's still ten pounds over what she was when she met him.