Home felt different from the moment I unlocked the door. Something in the air, a different kind of energy, as if a good friend had been here and left behind good wishes.

I loved the feeling—as illusory as it was.

Sorrow danced himself silly out the screen door to the first spot on the driveway he found to squat—unfortunately it was beside my car, but, I asked myself, what did that matter? In the whole scheme of things—with the imminent end of everything quickly coming upon us—what was a little pee running toward a tire?

The feeling of someone there with me was so strong I had to check the bathroom, the bedrooms, and Sorrow’s screened-in porch before I was convinced there was no one in my house.

My next thought was the answering machine, maybe a good voice on it, telling me I’d won the Publisher’s Clearing House million-dollar prize; or the guy in Nigeria really was going to put money into my bank account. I had myself well amused by the time I pushed the button showing only one message.

I knew the voice. My stomach dropped; my heart dropped; my chin quivered—here it came, an in-person rejection.

Madeleine Clark—in that high-pitched, languid voice, speaking as if expecting me to pick up at any moment. “Emily Kincaid? Madeleine Clark here. I’ve finished your manuscript and would very much like to represent you and Dead Dancing Women. I need to talk to you, of course, but I’ll be in London for a week. What I’d like to do, in order not to hold up anything, is return the manuscript with edits and suggestions for strengthening the story. It might require some work … well … you should have it by the middle of next week. I’m looking forward to representing you and hope our relationship will be a satisfying and successful one. I’ll call when I get back from London. I have ideas, where the book should go. A couple of editors I know would be perfect for your book …” Her voice trailed off, ending with a faint “bye-bye.”

I played it again. Then again. Then again. After that I leaped into the air, pumping my fists at the ceiling and screaming. Sorrow leaped and barked with me. This was it—the next step. All I had to do was rewrite parts of the manuscript …

With a thud, a new thought struck me. What if Fritch was right? Wouldn’t that be the cruelest cut of all—to taste success and have it stolen by four guys with flaming swords? That part of what was going on had to be put out of my mind. I just wasn’t going to go there. This was my chance. What kind of god would dangle that before my nose then stick his/her tongue out as it was snatched away?

What I had to focus on was getting back to work on the same manuscript I’d been working on for over a year and make it better, even though I’d thought it was perfect as it was. That brought me down with another jolt, like Mary Poppins at her uncle’s tea party. More work—but who cared? I had an agent! She liked my novel. She was going to sell my novel.

This wasn’t the kind of news you kept to yourself. I picked up the phone. I would call Bill. But I couldn’t. I’d failed the friend test, or whatever line we’d almost crossed the evening he got back from Lansing.

Jackson? He would turn it around to be about him. This wasn’t something he would celebrate. I’d probably get asked again to recommend him to Madeleine Clark, then get blamed and hear what a terrible agent he’d heard her to be, if she dared turn him down.

Dolly wasn’t even in the picture, though I had the feeling she would have been happy for me. First thing she’d do would be to claim she’d known it all along, that it was her who kept encouraging me, and if I’d only listened to her in the first place I could have saved myself a lot of my goofy agonizing.

I sat on the floor, folded my legs under me, took Sorrow’s head in my hands, and stared directly in his face. He blinked and rolled his eyes. “Did you hear my news? Isn’t it great?”

He lifted his head, trying to get free of my hands. I took that for a “yes.”

“Just a little more work, Sorrow. We can do it,” I whispered and buried my face in the top of his curly black head. “We can do it. You just watch.”

He groaned and hit the floor. He stretched his legs out, and closed his eyes. I sat, patting his head as he went to sleep, figuring that though he was my best friend, he was just a little bored with exuberance, and maybe not quite as ambitious as I.