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both being dorks about this whole separation thing, and now you've sold our house right out from under me.”
     
    She sniffled for effect and wiped at an imaginary tear, which really wasn't so imaginary if she thought about it. “Mom, you spend so much time at your office that I hardly ever see you.”
     
    “But if you lived with me—”
     
    “Sorry, Dad's earned way more brownie points than you. At least he's usually around when I need him.”
     
    Her father straightened and crossed his arms, slanting Lissa's mother an I-told-you-so smirk. Mom just rolled her eyes.
     
    “So if you won't let me stay with Granddad, then I've decided.” She skewered her mother with a cold, hard stare, praying her words would hit their mark. “I'm moving to Putnam with Dad.”
     

5
     
    S eated on her secondhand apartment sofa, Natalie hugged her knees and watched the late-August sun climb into the morning sky. The effect lost some of its beauty as seen along the corrugated roofline of the sheltered parking area. Though she should have been dressed and on her way out the door by now, she still lingered in her gray sleep shirt, elephant-print bottoms, and bare feet. Despite the sunny morning, a dreary cloud hung over her—a lethargy of body and spirit—all because she happened to see a bright yellow school bus rumble past the apartment complex entrance, a painful reminder that Lissa started school today in Putnam.
    It wasn't fair. Natalie should be the one exulting in the smells of Lissa's new backpack, pencils, and notebook paper. Natalie—not Daniel—should be the one driving her daughter to school, helping with her homework, listening to the endless gossip about her friends and which boy she had a crush on this year and how mean her new English teacher was.
     
    Okay, if she were perfectly honest, she also missed tripping over Daniel's musty briefcase and sweaty sneakers, shoving his endless clippings from the sports pages to the other end of the table, teasing him out of a funk when his team lost a game. She missed all of it.
     
    Across the room, stuffed into a lower cube of her modular entertainment center, she glimpsed the hodgepodge of materials she'd collected on strokes. She wondered why she kept it, why she'd bothered ordering it at all. Half the treatment recommendations were geared toward patients with far more control and cognition than Mom displayed. The other half were so depressing in their descriptions of life after a massive stroke that Natalie couldn't bear to finish them.
     
    A tremor worked its way up her body and culminated in a stifled sob. She felt as if she'd landed on a barren beach at the foot of a rocky cliff, with no way up and no way around. And behind her an angry sea closed in fast. If she didn't find an escape route soon, she would surely drown. She needed help, and it was high time she admitted it.
     
    Uncoiling her legs, she pushed up from the sofa and reached for the phone on the breakfast bar. Her fingers felt heavy and numb as she pressed the number for Fawn Ridge Fellowship. The secretary answered and immediately put Natalie through to Pastor Mayer.
     
    “Natalie, how are you? Everything okay with this week's newsletter?”
     
    “That isn't why I'm calling, Pastor.” Her voice sounded distant, hoarse, not like her own at all. “I … I need … ”
     
    Pastor Mayer must have recognized the desperation darkening her tone. “How can I help? Do you want to come in and—”
     
    “No, no, I can't.” Until her mother's stroke, she'd prided herself on her optimism, confidence, and self-control. How could she now slice open her heart and reveal its ugliness to someone she'd known for most of her life? “If you could just give me the name of someone. Preferably someone who doesn't know me or my family.”
     
    “I see. Yes, give me a moment.” A few seconds later he offered the name and number of a Christian counselor. “Dr. Julia Sirpless practices from her home office in