If I were the heroine of a novel, I would have felt my heart clutch, the misery of what happened all those miles away causing me to freeze, perhaps closed my eyes tightly, hands shaking, feeling all the difficult corners of loss. But I am not the heroine of a novel. I am flesh, blood—interesting enough on occasion, with dull edges here and there, living a life of the expected and the unexpected, the wanted and the worst of the unwanted.
