Nora sat at the kitchen table on that rainy January morning, staring out the window long after the bus had pulled away from the curb, taking the neighborhood kids with it. She should have gone to work, she thought. The boys had left the day before, and they weren�t coming back, not for a long time, at best, and not ever, at worst. She needed to keep herself occupied. She needed to keep her mind on what was going to happen, to hope for the best and reconcile herself to those parts of her life she had had no control over, ever.

There was a vaguely unsettled feeling in Nora�s stomach, as if this situation, the way things were now, was not the way they were supposed to be. It�s possessiveness, she thought to herself. It�s your own stupid possessiveness, and you need to get over it. They were never yours. You never had a right to them.

And yet, that nagging feeling at the pit of Nora�s stomach would not go away for a long time. By the time it did, she no longer had to wonder what was going to happen next.