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strong,” Chris responded. “You know only a few of us would do this alone, but together, well, together it's different.”
    “I can't do it.” Mary clenched her fists, began to cry as they moved slower and slower behind the other women. “Don't hate me.”
    “Hate you? Oh sweetie, we love you,” Chris said with love and warmth. “You don't have to stay with us if you don't want to. No one has to stay, but some of us, we just have to do this. It might seem ridiculous or goofy in a week or next year or maybe never, but right now this is the most important thing in the world to some of us.”
    There was a second and then another of silence, and Chris noticed that everyone was looking down the dark highway with eyes focused somewhere else. She guessed they were thinking of everything and anything, and in a lifetime there would never be enough walking time to capture all their thoughts.
    “Listen,” Chris finally told Mary. “You know it's fine to want to go home and be who you are. We'll all do that eventually too, but this walking is going to make some of us even more than who we are now. Can you understand that, Mary? You know some of us have these pains and heartaches that might only get worse if we don't do this.”
    “I've never needed much,” Mary said, looking off into the night like the rest of her friends. “I used to wonder if there was something wrong with me because I wasn't like half of the other women I knew. I hate to work, hate to travel, hate to be away from the kids and Boyce. I love being in the house when the kids come home, knowing the schedules, what will happen from one day to the next. It's a comfort to me.”
    Chris wished Mary would stay then just so she could prove to her that it
would
matter if she stayed. She wished she could convince her with her words that there was something so absolutely fabulous about connecting with other women on a grand adventure, that the insides of her kitchen cabinets could be blown to hell and back again and she still wouldn't have to leave the next intersection, where there might be a phone at the gas station.
    One and then two cars passed by them, and when the women turned to look they were blinded, like unsuspecting deer paralyzed by headlights.
    “Damn!” shouted Sandy. “Those cars scared the hell out of me.”
    “How do you think the drivers feel?” Joanne laughed. “My God, they must think we've fallen off a bus or something.”
    That's when Chris told everyone they needed to get off the highway for a few minutes. She led them through a row of bushes, not knowing what she might step on next, and sat down fast on a fallen tree where she expected to tell them about Mary and other practical matters.
    “First of all,” she began, “this is a good place to rest, and second, Mary wants to stop.”
    “Mary?” Everyone said her name at once, turning in the dark for an explanation that was totally unncessary. Mary has been a good listener all these months. She has come to the meetings and brought the best wine and made it clear that she loves each of them and the time they all spend together. As the women sat on logs and piles of damp leaves at the edge of a rolling field, they already knew that a dramatic movement, a surge into the night, a walk away from troubles of the heart could be a powerful force and they were feeling the power of what they were doing.
    When Sandy got back from the bushes and Gail finally decided to squat instead of sit so she wouldn't get her pants wet, it was Sandy who made them think of heartaches, losses, regrets, the hand of a lost lover right there, of all the weight of the world that they were dragging among them.
    “I think Mary knows she can do what she wants,” said Chris, “but we'd better talk about what we're going to do when dawn breaks and our husbands wake up to discover that we are missing and walking down some county highway in nothing more than our slippers and spring jackets.”
    Alice