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feel?
    Of course not. She’d done the same thing to Jessie as Heather had done.
    Jessie stood, scolding herself for feeling like a victim. Even if it was just a fleeting thought, she didn’t like feeling that way. That was the whole point of the book she was writing: you can’t be made a victim by anyone but yourself. All those soap operas between her and Heather and Monica and Bryan and Todd were years ago. Jessie had been just a kid. She’d never been serious with either boyfriend, even if her feelings had been strong and the rejection devastating. So she could either go through life feeling bitter and resentful—or not. She chose the latter. Jessie didn’t like what bitter and resentful did to her. It had made her reckless, and destructive, and unhealthy, and unattractive. So, with the help of a good therapist, she had made the choice to move past it. Both Todd and Bryan were corporate types anyway. She’d probably never have lasted with either of them even if Monica and Heather hadn’t intervened.
    Jessie had come to the sad conclusion that she had never really been in love. She’d thought she’d been, with both Todd and Bryan, and certainly when Emil showed up, she’d convinced herself that he was the real thing, her true soul mate. Jessie wasn’t proud of the fact that such a foul thing as Emil had been the first man she’d given herself to. Even Todd or Bryan would have been better choices. But in her acting-out phase, Jessie had been all too glad to let Emil be her first. She remembered the night she lost her virginity, in a boozy haze in the back of Emil’s van, to the sharp, shattering soundtrack of rap music. She’d thrown up afterward. The pain had been terrible, and she’d thought she could never do such a thing again. If that was what sex was like, why did so many women say they liked it? But Emil had gotten sex from her whenever he wanted it, even after Jessie got pregnant. Jessie was eternally thankful that part of her life was over.
    She was starting a new life. Maybe, somewhere in this new existence, she’d meet a man, a good man who could help her discover the true pleasures and intimacies of sex, things she’d never experienced. The only orgasms she’d ever achieved had been brought about by her own fingers, and she wasn’t even really sure about those. Jessie hoped someday she might meet a man and discover whether romance might still play a part in her life. She was only twenty-seven, after all. She still had plenty of time.
    But in fact what really motivated her at the moment wasn’t the desire to fall in love again. Instead, it was to raise Abby right, the way Mom had raised her, to love nature and to see the goodness in the world around her, and to instill the kind of self-respect and confidence that Jessie herself had forgotten during those few terrible years with Emil, and which she now held so firmly in her hands once again. She was excited to make a life for them here on the green, green lands of Hickory Dell, and to spend her days while Abby was in school writing her book up in her room, overlooking the great fir sentinels that stood protecting her and reassuring her that she was home.
    Stepping outside onto the back porch, Jessie inhaled the crisp, clean Connecticut air. Her nose twitched. Sometimes goldenrod made her sneeze. But even that she welcomed—it was far preferable to the exhaust of cars and the steam of subway trains. She glanced around the yard, at the maples and the white birches. A hawk soared above, making a long, sweeping arc through the shockingly blue sky. Her eyes followed the creature as it disappeared into the trees that surrounded the stone peak of John Manning’s house next door.
    Jessie gasped.
    In the topmost window of the house, someone stood looking out. It was impossible to know for sure, because the figure was cloaked in shadow, but it seemed as if the person in the window was