Mitch Montgomery had been dead for nearly nine months.

Those well-meaning souls who’d offered advice after my fiancé’s murder had said that, in time, I would move on with my life. Right now, all I could fathom for my future was joining him.

I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful.

It is mine, I tell you. My own. My precious. Yes, my precious.

No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam.

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives... not looking for flaws, but for potential.

The staff was very curious, but they thought it was really neat. I think we are going to work with them again, but we're not sure about the topic or the time.