Saving Alyssa. Loree Lough

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      Billie paused and thought for a second before beginning to type a bulleted list of the pages she would include on Noah’s site: Home, Types of Bikes, Bike Parts, Rides/Events, Rentals/Repairs and Contact Us. Each page would include a defining paragraph and photographs.

      After supplying a list of similar shops in the area, she printed the proposal onto Landon Designs letterhead, slid it into a hunter-green pocket folder, slapped her label on the cover and set it aside. Tomorrow, when she visited him at the shop, Billie would ask him to turn on his computer so she could show him her own business website. He would be impressed by the number and variety of clients she’d acquired since opening the doors to Landon Designs three years earlier. Feeling suitably prepared, she went back to updating another client’s site.

      Hours later, she noticed the clock in the corner of her monitor. How could it be after midnight? Working the kinks out of her neck and shoulders, she walked into the kitchen, and was immediately greeted by a bold black message printed on the pizza box lid: “BUY A TIMER,” it said, “AND YOU WON’T GET HEARTBURN FROM EATING COLD PIZZA AT MIDNIGHT.” And beneath it, a smaller line that read, “Or make your brother eat alone.”

      Poor Troy. She had been too caught up in work to even notice the time. Billie grabbed a slice of pizza and bit into the now congealed cheese. Not bad. She took another bite. She’d risk the heartburn.

      * * *

      BILLIE SHOULD HAVE taken Troy’s advice. She’d tossed and turned all night, waking up and falling asleep more than a dozen times, thanks to dreams of those life-altering moments under the glaring delivery room lights.

      She got up and trudged into the kitchen to start the coffeemaker, then grabbed Troy’s sweatshirt jacket from the hook beside the door and carried a slice of pizza onto the deck. A light rain was falling, so she pulled up the jacket’s hood. A motorcycle buzzed by out front, and on Main Street, the squealing brakes of a school bus pierced the otherwise quiet morning. It had rained hard last night and she inhaled the scents that rode the autumn breeze: of roses, planted all around the deck. Damp leaves, fluttering against the fence. Bud, her elderly neighbor, frying bacon. Her coffee, spewing into the carafe.

      Leaning into the railing, Billie watched a chipmunk scamper through the mulch surrounding the sunflowers, its cheeks puffed to three times their normal size as it prepared for the winter. She loved it here, in this place she’d bought and paid for with her half of the settlement, arranged by Chuck’s attorney.

      An odd feeling engulfed her, something between resentment and melancholy. Even after all this time, Billie still didn’t fully understand why her ex had left. She’d loved everything about being married, even the things that most women complained about, like socks on the floor and toothpaste tubes squeezed from the middle. Living alone all through college had taught her that she wasn’t cut out for a solitary life, so having someone who shared her views on politics, menu changes at their favorite restaurant and what to save their money for had felt like a fairy tale come to life.