Chapter 3
The End
All stories end the same way: they stop. The characters go on living in the space after the last word, in the white margin below the final paragraph, in the reader's mind where they continue to make choices and grow older and sometimes, in the right light, seem almost real.
A Last Morning
She came down to the barn one final time. The horses were waiting.
“Where are you going?” asked the first.
“Forward,” she said. “The same as always.”
“And what will you find there?”
“The same thing everyone finds,” she said. “More road.”
—
She walked out through the gate and did not look back. This is not because she was not sad. She was. But some things require the whole of your attention to be facing forward, and this was one of them.
The horses watched her go. The field was very quiet. The morning continued on without her, as mornings do.