Runaway

by Alice Munro

Just enough to get your hopes up—the clouds whitening and thinning and letting through a diffuse brightness that never got around to being real sunshine, and was usually gone before supper.

She saw him as the architect of the life ahead of them, herself as captive, her submission both proper and exquisite.

It was as if she had a murderous needle somewhere in her lungs, and by breathing carefully, she could avoid feeling it. But every once in a while she had to take a deep breath, and it was still there.

Odd choices were simply easier for men, most of whom would find women glad to marry them. Not so the other way around.

Few people, very few, have a treasure, and if you do you must hang on to it. You must not let yourself be waylaid, and have it taken from you.

But occasionally— and now, especially, here at home, it was the fact of her unmarried state that gave her some flush of accomplishment, a silly surge of bliss.

If I’d sent her to Sunday school and taught her to say her prayers this probably wouldn’t have happened. I should have. I should have. It would have been like an inoculation.

She hopes as people who know better hope for undeserved blessings, spontaneous remissions, things of that sort.

Handsome, but with little pouches of boredom or disapproval hiding the corners of her mouth.

The thing about life, Harry had told Lauren, was to live in the world with interest. To keep your eyes open and see the possibilities—see the humanity—in everybody you met. To be aware. If he had anything at all to teach her it was that. Be aware.

said. “Yes” was