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later that afternoon.
    She had enough going on without getting sappy about Mike. She was grateful to him for giving her a job. Gratitude. That’s what it was.
    Okay, he was a good-looking guy, but she knew lots of good-looking guys.
    Maybe she was just tired. Life with her mother and father, then just her mother, had been a protective cocoon, but now she was a butterfly, out in the real world where she had to make her own way.
    She couldn’t go on living at home. Her maturity would regress five years in a week. Her mother would treat her as she had when Allie was a child, cooking for her, doing her laundry, cleaning her room. It was already happening, in fact. She’d stepped out of the shower this morning to find her bed already made, and the few clothes she’d put in the hamper were gone.
    Could she even afford a place of her own? It wouldn’t hurt to look, would it? She bought a copy of the local newspaper, sat down on one of the old-fashioned benches that were placed here and there on Main Street and turned directly to the classified ads for apartments.
    “Top flr twnhse, furn…”
    She was familiar with the row of townhouses at the bottom of Hubbard Hill. They were new and cheaply built. She’d hate to think how they were furnished.
    “Room for rent at…”
    No thanks. If she didn’t need independence and solitude, she’d stay at home with her mother. There were so few rental offerings that they took about a minute to skim. She knew every house, every apartment in town,and knew none of those few in the paper would meet her needs, even if she could afford them. The decent places were snapped up as soon as they came on the market.
    She sighed, got up from the bench and began walking, not aiming for any destination in particular. She reached the library and paused. Libraries always soothed her soul, made her forget the world outside.
    She wandered in, tempted to go to the children’s section and relive the books she’d loved way back when, but something drew her to the computer. She typed in “health care professions” and watched a list of books appear on the screen. None of the books that interested her was on the shelves, which didn’t surprise her. She’d have to request some.
    She noticed the head librarian walking her way, so she ducked into the stacks. She didn’t want to hear yet again how surprised everyone in town was to see Allie Hendricks back at home. And how stunned they were that she’d left medical school, and how amazed they felt that she’d done something so terrible to her wonderful mother.
    Hey, nobody in town was more surprised, stunned or amazed than she was.
    She wandered the aisles for a few minutes, looking for the what-to-do-with-your-life section. She could use a book or two on that topic. Not finding any, it occurred to her to check the Psychology section. She could surely use a little counseling. As she skimmed the titles, one book seemed to jump out at her. The title was, Get a Grip: Understanding Your Emotions .
    She flipped through it, seeing discussions on transference, projecting and other psychological terms with which she wasn’t familiar.
    Suddenly she realized what was going on with Mike.In a psychology class she took in undergraduate school, they’d talked about how people often confuse their emotions. For instance, sometimes a person would transfer what they were feeling about one person to another person. Or what they were feeling in one situation to another situation. Often they’d fall in love with their therapists simply because the therapists had helped them with their problems.
    Exactly what she was doing with Mike. He was helping her deal with her problems. She was confusing her gratitude with something else. It was as simple as that.
    What a relief. Now that she understood what was going on, she’d be able to see him as a friend again. She picked out a couple of additional books and joined the checkout line.
    Fortunately, the head librarian was reading