“I’m fine! I love it here.”

Lena took the phone out to the porch. The porch and its shed roof are as wide as the cabin itself. She never tires of the scene it frames: a life-size Viewmaster reel of the Wallowa mountains looming up on the far end of the meadow. The vast diorama draws her to the porch’s rough planks at all hours, even in the middle of warm nights, naked, leaning against the railing and looking up into a sheet pan of stars. This morning, while her friend Tammy tries to talk her into coming back to Portland, she listens with her other ear to the Western Meadow Larks and watches a screed of slate clouds slide in from the west.

Tammy sighs loudly.

“We miss you here. Callie misses you. The Oregon Book Awards are in two weeks. You know you love that event. I just can’t imagine what you are doing out there.”

“Writing, all day, every day.” Lena explains.

It is late October, and Lena has been at the cabin, some twenty miles east of Lostine, since she and Tad arrived for their annual visit in August. With one notable exception. Her brief absence was when she’d gone back to Portland for Tad’s funeral. They went to sleep one starry night and only one of them woke up. For Lena, falling asleep with her best friend, her contrarian debate partner, her comedian, her lover, and waking up next to a cold, chalky slab was the most confounding experience in her 60 years. How could this happen to normal people? Where was the alarm bell, the five minute warning? The last call? Read more