She'd driven for two hours, slicing through a rain-battered dusk, wishing that she lived closer to Dodge and her parents. If she did, she wouldn’t have to spend so many hours traveling from one city to the other. Maybe it was time to move home, she thought, for the tenth time that month. There wasn’t much keeping her in Topeka anymore—not since she broke off her engagement to Liam. She was self-employed and could write her fitness column from wherever she pleased. All she needed was a good pair of sneakers for running, her laptop, and wireless Internet at a nearby Starbucks. Her apartment was a sublet. She could give a month’s notice and be out of there in a heartbeat. The change would do her good. Not that she wasn’t happy in her work. She loved what she did. There were no problems in that department, but everything else seemed so uncertain and unpredictable. Her brother had gone out to buy ice cream after supper one night, and he never saw another sunrise again. Jessica had imagined she’d be married by now with a kid on the way, but the man she chose for a husband turned out to be a self-absorbed child, and she was suddenly single again, paying off debt from a honeymoon she had no choice but take alone.
