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who had died. Keeping subject matters contemporary was a main reason why their friendship worked so well.
    Nathan was about ready to give up studying for the day. His mind kept returning to his dream, but he was even more frustrated that there was nothing he could do about it. Despite his recent twenty-four hour obsession with Mrs. McCarthy, he could not remember a single instance where he’d actually spoken to her. This could be why she had nothing to say to him in the dream.
    He decided to seek the counsel of Mrs. Buchanan. She was about as close to impartial counsel as he could get in his life. There weren’t really any other appealing options either.
    “Actually, there is something,” he began. “And don’t say I told you so.”
    Mrs. Buchanan said nothing but there was a look on her face that indicated she was pleased with herself. There was a long pause that followed as Nathan was hesitant to proceed.
    “Is go on acceptable, or shall that be banned from my vernacular as well?” she asked. Nathan felt embarrassed as he took another pause to formulate his words.
    “Do you remember the time we looked at that magazine and you told me about reading people?”
    “I do. Are you auditioning for Criminal Minds , or is this a new hobby of yours? Heavens knows you’ve got plenty of those,” she added.
    Nathan ignored the reference to the popular crime procedural and asked another question. “Can someone feel something strong toward another person just from sight alone?”
    Mrs. Buchanan looked like she was taken aback by the question. “I take it there’s more to this story than just that. Do you have a flask? That would go quite nicely with my tea for a discussion like this.”
    Nathan tried to describe his feelings with as few specific details as possible. This was challenging given the brevity of his dilemma and the lack of suitable stand-ins for the people in question. Mrs. Buchanan was not likely to prod where he was vague, but he wanted to give her an honest portrayal of his confusion so as to make proper use of her time.
    The description was long and relatively uninformative. He tried to avoid the cliché of, “I have a friend” as a proxy for the situation but he seemed to return to it every time there was pause in the story.
    They exchanged puzzling looks for a while before she began to speak. Nathan sat upright in his chair to give the sign of full attentiveness, for he knew this would be a long one. Mrs. Buchanan was good for advice, but was rarely brief about it.
    After a few deep breathes, she began to spoke. “Nathan, honey. I fear I will collapse and pass on from this world right here in this chair if I try to decipher that cryptic code you spent the better part of ten minutes trying to explain. Perhaps Dan Brown should sit in on our next conversation.”
    Nathan tried to speak, but she cut him off.
    “I’ll instead answer your original question. You’re asking me whether or not you can have strong feelings for someone you’ve never spoken to. I don’t know if there’s a yes or no reply to that. I’d like to say yes, but I’m not so sure that’s entirely accurate. Before you wander off into la-la land and ignore the rest of what I’m going to say, know this. Feelings are important. They’re not necessarily something you always want to act on. Let them guide you, but don’t make any strong impulse decisions until you’ve got something stronger to go on. That’s why you don’t kill someone who cuts you off, or bounces in that beer pong game, if that example is more fitting to your life.”
    Nathan laughed.
    Mrs. Buchanan allowed him to chuckle. She seemed to enjoy that she could still make a good joke at eighty-two. Then she continued.
    “It’s easy for me to say I loved my husband from the moment I met him decades after the fact. Had I gone by that idea when I was your age, who knows what might have happened? Which is to say, it didn’t happen. Women don’t generally have to worry