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special note to shut the door. Its icy touch soothed him. As he ran another finger down the door’s wood grain, he wondered if he’d ever be able to accept his wife’s passing without his crutch. If only he could be as strong as Alexandria, maybe he wouldn’t be so alone. Perhaps he could even find someone else to share his life?
    Sam turned on the overhead lamp, looked at his den, and smelled the musk from the time he had spilled his aftershave. The carpet still stank, but he kept it because he and his wife had chosen it together.
    He’d once used the room to prepare for hunting trips. Along one wall was a large bookcase for his hunting guides. Directly across from it was a desk used to reload shells.
    But every time he entered this place of solace none of these things caught his eye. To him the dominant item was his wife’s portrait that hung over the mantel. Resting below it, placed before his hunting rifle, was the urn holding her ashes. Sam stared at the urn. As a familiar pain welled in his chest, he knew that he would never be able to take that one final step and remarry. Since he could not live out the rest of his days with Trina, then he would spend them alone. He would never replace her.
    He walked to his sitting chair, slumped his shoulders, and sighed. His grasp on hope weakened. Staring at the portrait, he collapsed into his leather recliner. Sam wondered if he’d get through this night, let alone the rest of his life, without a drink.
    He didn’t even realize that he had grasped the bottle of whiskey he kept stashed beside the chair.
    The evening quickly matured into night. Though Sam had advertised in the local paper as well as with the local employment agency, no one had come about the job.
     
    Alix rested upstairs in her room with the lights off, and cuddled her giant Pooh Bear in her cozy wicker chair. She knew by now that Sam would have lost heart.
    Staring out her large glass window at the constellations so far away, she glimpsed a star shooting across the heavens. She wished upon it that there might be something she could do to help Sam. She feared greatly that she might lose him again. A single tear tickled as it made the lone journey down her cheek. She dared not touch it. She allowed it this sojourn. It reached her chin, and clung as if for life. She prayed that Sam, like the tear, would cling to his life.
    Her alarm clock read 9:22 p.m. The evening had grown too late for anyone to come about the job, and that surprised her. She knew many people, mostly fellow students, who needed the work. She wondered why no one had come.
    Then she remembered: Sam’s reputation as a drunk. It saddened her that, though there were many in the small town who needed any kind of employment, no one wished to work with that “Conway loser.”
    Alix caught the clinging tear from her chin and held it gently in her palm. She closed her fingers over it; its cool touch on her warm skin was not unlike her sorrow for Sam. He must be aware that the town thought of him as nothing more than a drunk. And that, worse yet, so did she.

 
     
     
    CHAPTER SIX
     
    A loud, shrill ring ended the silence. Alix leaped from her wicker chair and flew down the staircase. She wished she’d come down earlier to bring the phone to her room, as the noise might disturb Sam. Before answering the phone, she peered down the unlit hall at the den. She saw that the light emanating from the bottom of the door didn’t flicker. The ringing hadn’t bothered Sam, after all. By the beginning of the third ring, Alix picked up the receiver.
    “Hello?” she sang, grabbing a folding chair. She waited for the person at the other end of the line to speak.
    Alix opened the chair to face south toward the front door, with her back to the den. Again she said, “Hello?”–this time a little louder.
    Hearing Betty’s voice, she relaxed into the plastic folding chair. “Hi, Betty! Guess what? Sam’s reopening the store! Isn’t that