Had he bought it simply because he guessed I would enjoy it?

If so, even that was an intelligent choice.

I turned the possibilities over in my mind.

Whatever the reason, he knew what had happened in my life. He knew about my parents’ sudden deaths. He had thought about what might improve my state of mind and had made a choice.

He knew where he could find me.

Could all of this have been nothing more than courtesy and respect for my parents?

Knowing the personality I had always associated with him, that was entirely possible.

If it was anything more than that, perhaps I was beginning to hope a little too much.

That night I stayed awake until morning reading the book.

It wasn’t that I had forgotten my parents’ deaths. The instinct to survive was simply doing its work.

His book had gently stirred the last of my vital energy.

Once again, I began thinking about what I should do.

What could I do with this new situation? What was waiting for me in the future?

This time, my motivations were different.

Once again, in some form, I needed the things that had been built inside me over thirty years of life. But I no longer needed to prove myself to anyone.

My parents’ income would continue to come to me until I married. It was enough for a very ordinary life, without too much extravagance.

There was no one left to judge me or stop me from doing—or not doing—something.

And yet I no longer wanted to do just anything.

The craziness had gone out of me.

Now I wanted security.

I wanted a warm presence beneath whose wings I could rest.

I needed to belong somewhere. To a group. A family. A companion.

If someone had told me just a year earlier that one day I would not want to drive faster than the legal speed limit, I would have laughed at them.

I would have said, “The day I drive at the speed limit is the day I die.”

But now, to my own surprise, I no longer wanted to do something extraordinary just so everyone would applaud me.

Sometimes, when I saw a couple outside with a small child, I would fall into thought.

I would tell myself: You haven’t done anything extraordinary. You don’t even have an ordinary life.

I don’t know whether weakness and depression had finally put me on the straight and narrow, or whether life itself had taught me some lessons.

I had once made decisions in the blink of an eye and immediately put them into action. After so many unfinished decisions and projects in my record, I no longer had the courage to do that.

I thought about Sina.

Unlike before, I now desperately wanted to know more about him.

But it was too late.

He had moved on with his life and showed no interest in starting over.

I had learned that he lived alone, but I didn’t know why or how.

The book he had brought me had made me think about my future, but it had not placed a solution in front of me.