Excerpt From a Novel-in-Progress by Peggy Rambach

She looked down at the cards. The backs were decorated with purple moons and stars and ringed planets, a pattern that would have made imaginative wallpaper for a children’s room. Will I meet someone, she thought? Is anyone out there who will love me? This was ridiculous. She felt like a twelve year-old. She shuffled the cards. The air they stirred disrupted the candle flame. The problem was that one question was too limited. Or maybe it was that it had to be a question. Because really, what was she doing but making a wish? The cards might as well have been birthday candles. And what were the wishes but whatever she thought would make her happy. No wonder in fairytales they usually got three. Because happiness, at least the kind she was looking for, was like the cataclysmic start to the universe or the division of the very first cell -- a singular and miraculous convergence of many things at once.
To hell with him. She wasn’t going to ask one question or any question at all. Instead, she just thought: love. That was it, just love. And then she cut the deck.
~ ~ ~ ~

Cameron sat in traffic as usual, just South of the entrance to route 128/95 North. He knew that once he was past the exit, things would ease up. Or he knew, maybe not. He knew you never knew what the traffic would be, driving into or out of Boston, just that you could count on it being irritating.
How long had he been staring at the same tire tread lying next to the dead grass of the median? He inched closer to the taillights of the pick-up in front of him, just to feel like he was going somewhere. He knew the back way, route 28, the original road that led North/South into and out of Boston. It paralleled the four-lane highway he sat on now, and eventually turned into his town’s Main Street. But then, there were the traffic lights. And anyway, route 28 wasn’t exactly a secret. Still, this commute was better than the one from west of Boston. He’d suffered that for five full years, and for every one of them, had begged Sarah to move. “I’m the one who pays the bills!” he’d said, “I’m the one who has to get into the car and go to work every day!”
“- and nights and weekends,” she screamed back, “like you’d want it any other way.”

She had a point there. Without his work, without his career, he’d have nothing to get up for, no reason to face rush hour no matter where he lived. Work was his solace, his shelter, his life-source, even if he felt, at times, it was no more than a glucose/saline drip and intubation on a ventilator, the bare minimum to keep his heart pumping.