The Threadbare Heart

A photo of her sons. A doormat from Target. Twenty-three tubs of fabric. Somehow it comforts Lily to list the things she lost when a wildfire engulfed the Santa Barbara avocado ranch she shared with her husband, Tom. He didn't make it out either. His last act was to save her grandmother's lace from the flames-an heirloom she has never been able to take scissors to, that she was saving for someday...

As she negotiates her way through her grief, mourning both the tangible and intangible, Lily wonders about her long marriage. Was it worth all the work, the self-denial? Did she stay with Tom just to avoid loneliness? Should she have been more like her mother, Eileen-thrice-married and even now, approaching eighty, cavalier about men and, it seems, even her daughter's emotions?

It's up to Lily to understand what she could still gain even when it seems that everything is lost. Someday has arrived...