And anyway, once you allowed yourself to picture such a scenario, it couldn't happen. That was just the way life went.

Nothing had just happened to her, she had made a choice, and then she had made another and another after that. Taken together, the small choices anyone made added up to a life.

Old age had distilled her down to her essence.

If things had been different, she would be in Carolyn's place right now. She didn't want that sort of existence, but there was something so attractive about the security of feeling like you had stopped moving toward your life, and actually arrived.