Since that night, ten days had passed.

They weren't the worst ten days of her life, largely because she'd found the energy and resolve to keep herself busy. But she spent far too much time thinking of Eli and had even picked up the phone four or five times with the intention of calling him. Her resolve hadn't protected her at those moments, not completely, but the idea that he simply didn't fancy her did ... well, that and the specter of him off somewhere fucking Ellen Saenz. It hadn't exactly enraged her, but since she didn't intend to waste money on buying a new phone, her last such moment of weakness had been some days before.

She'd never grown so attached to anyone so quickly, or so thoroughly unaware of her own intentions. And what she felt as she went about her days was a kind of dull heartache she'd never known before. She missed seeing him, but, more, she missed the pleasure that looking forward to seeing him had given her.

Still, life went on. And perhaps it was the influence of his calm, single-minded deliberateness that had helped to fuel her productivity.

Over the past week and a half, she'd taken care of a vast array of things she should have gotten done many months before. As part of her first order of business, she'd sold each of their five high-end vehicles, purchased a modest new pickup, and disposed of the boat Otto kept, largely unused, in a slip near Venice. She had even negotiated a partial refund of the annual slip fees, which were exorbitant.

A certain pleasure had tickled her when parting with the vehicles. The coupe had been her delight, but she had come to like the feel of riding in a truck. Even more, the price was right. She needed to be frugal, like her parents, and after careful research, the sum she'd received for boat and vehicles satisfied her enormously.

After some haggling, she'd parted with all her paintings and other pieces of art, save two simple pieces she had always admired. The art had been easier to dispose of, since Otto had had all such things appraised. Their value hadn't been princely, but it struck her as odd her husband hadn't sold or pawned them to finance one of his many schemes. Perhaps holding them was his way of planning for the future.

Either way, there were many items missing from both houses, most of them quite costly, and she decided no longer to be nice about it. There was little question who had stolen what, and she was finished with paying lawyers to negotiate and threaten for the return of what rightfully was hers. After making a careful list of what was missing and with whom the items likely now resided, she went down to the nearest police station and filed a report.

"Let the butt-fuckers explain it to the cops," she'd muttered on the way out the station door. It was one of the few moments during the last ten days in which she'd felt some satisfaction.

There was a passel of other things on the agenda, including disposing of Otto's personal items. All his suits went to a charity that helped unemployed men get back on their feet. The remainder of his clothing went into a variety of charitable hampers. What she could find of his watches and personal jewelry all went on the chopping block. After much thought, so did hers. There were some pieces of jewelry Otto had bought for her over the years that she liked, and a few that she downright loved, but after much soul-searching, it had dawned on her that not a single piece held great sentimental value. She sold all except a few tiny pieces she'd had before their marriage.

To be on the safe side, she'd had three different appraisers come to the house to give her a sense of what the furnishings and other household goods might fetch—she intended to keep nothing but a few odds and ends and some kitchen utensils—and after a few days' negotiating, went with a small firm her due diligence had told her was reputable. The auctioneers would come in two weeks to collect her household and, following a public auction, had agreed to buy at a set rate whatever items found no takers.

That very morning, she met with three different realtors to assess how to best dispose of her two houses. It had become apparent over recent weeks that there was no way for her to keep either of them. The upkeep, insurance, and property tax on the beach house alone, where she'd originally intended to reside, was too much for her to manage given her limited job prospects.

But the news was otherwise good. All three realtors were confident the beach house would fetch a handsome price in the current market, and each was sure that, brokers fees and other expenses aside, the sale price of her house in the Hills likely would be sufficient to pay off the various outstanding mortgages against it. It all depended on how long she was willing to leave the properties on the market, but none estimated the process would take longer than six months. Her economizing should keep her afloat that long.

The news about the houses soothed her. Inner conflict and indecision over what to do with them had been the source of much of her angst over the last seven months. The decision to part with both had eased some of that anxiety, and the morning's realization that the sale would be easier and more profitable than she'd imagined had lifted much of the rest. She was finished with clinging to artefacts of the life she'd built with Otto, was finished with bemoaning the loss of it all. Her brief time with Eli had taught her that she mourned more for herself and her plight than she'd ever done for her husband. Eli was right. Despite his many blemishes, her late and lamented husband deserved better of her than that.

There were other things with which to deal, and she would get to them one by one.

The most immediate was what to do with her horses. Stabling costs in the Los Angeles area were stiff, but she'd grown up riding, and it was one of the few true pleasures she had left. The thought of giving up her animals was so inconceivable that she'd procrastinated for months over what to do. Enough was enough, so after her meeting with the realtors, she went by the stables to enjoy a ride and to talk over the issue with the stable manager. She wanted to keep her horses, and reducing costs might make that possible. 

Sadly, though, she and the manager hadn't reached any accord. So she decided to head home to begin a search for a new stable and to make a final decision on which realtor to use.

When Kate pulled her new pickup into the drive at around 4:00 pm, it was the first time she'd made it home before dark in over a week, and by reflex she went to the kitchen to prepare an early dinner. There really was no need. She scarcely had eaten during the past week and a half and had slept little. Mostly, she imagined, coffee kept her going, and she'd even pondered the idea of taking up smoking so she could boast in days to come of having been 'fueled by coffee and cigarettes' through the hardest days of her life.

Except these weren't her hardest days, at least not in most senses of those words, and the idea of moving forward was what got her up in the morning and what kept her moving during the day. It wasn't the coffee.

Get this all behind you, girl, and the universe will provide, she thought, hummed, or mumbled more than once.

So, she drank some coffee and picked at her food. All the while, she found herself doodling on a piece of paper on the kitchen counter. She marveled at the number of ways there were to present Eli's name and lazily began making a list of the possible permutations and their effect. She came up with about a dozen. Her favorites, in order were:

Elijah T. Pitt-Rivers, inventor of the guacamole gin.

E.T. Pitt-Rivers, circus promoter.

E. Tecumseh Pitt-Rivers, Civil War general and hero of the Battle of Santa Ynez.

She knew what she was doing wasn't healthy, but she needed to let her engine idle from time to time, and when she did, such things happened. Her latest mood was the modest tirade she was having at him for not calling, even though she didn't want him to call and prayed she would have the courage not to pick up if he did.

The paper on which she'd been doodling was nearly in the rubbish bin when she relented and slid it face down onto the counter. Treading toward the back deck, she thought she might have a look around the yard before she got to work on research. There wasn't much of a yard—Otto didn't like grass—but before she'd dispensed with his services, a man used to come by once a week to trim any stray weeds and water the potted plants. If the house was to go on the market soon, a little inspection might be in order.

The whole thing took about thirty minutes and caused no great concern. A small tool shed on the property had everything she needed to do the stray trimming herself. It was now on her mental list of things to do, and as she moved back to the rear of the property, she thought it might be nice to let her feet dangle in the pool for a while. Before long, that would no longer be her pleasure.

She'd just reached the pool, with the city below her in the distance and the house to her back, when she saw it ... rather, when she saw him. For just a few moments, it simply didn't register, and she raised a foot slightly to remove a sandal. It was only when she realized the impossibility of what she was seeing that she suddenly became unable to govern the movements of her own body.

Out of nowhere, a man had entered her yard—for it clearly was a man and nothing else—except he wasn't in her yard as much as over it. As she stared, powerless and startled, her heart suddenly scrambling up her throat, the man glided smoothly over the corner of the yard to her right, at about twenty feet above the ground. For a split second, her stomach pitched as it might while watching an actor fall suddenly from a great height in a movie. Only, this man wasn't in a movie, and he wasn't falling.

Instead, he cut a steady and even pace above the corner of her yard and then, following a course at a slight angle, right to left, cut across and away from her yard until he approached the void where the hillside dropped abruptly and precipitously beyond her deck and pool. Her stomach registered another grizzly twist when she saw him glide over that void with nothing lifting him from below and nothing holding him from above. 

He was flying.

The man said not a word and made not a sound, but he was as clear to her as day, and, as he passed, he glanced over at her casually, as a motorist might at a roadside pedestrian, before looking ahead and continuing his flight at a steady pace. She watched him for a total of about fifteen seconds before he disappeared behind some trees on a wooded spur down the hillside to her left. His appearance was tattooed on her mind, from his medium-length straight black hair and tanned features, to his dark mountaineering glasses, to his brown jacket and tan cargo pants. He was wearing, of all things, leather sandals on his feet.

A few moments passed after his departure before she once again had hegemony of her body, and her first action was to back-peddle, stagger, and upend herself over a deck chair. She flailed, cried out, and, finding her feet, dashed for the house.