But whatever peace I had managed to find fled last night as I did a final walk around our empty Evanston home. All of the turmoil I had originally felt, the turmoil that had gurgled and bubbled for months, boiled over and handily engulfed me. Everything was wrong. Everything.

I couldn’t believe I was actually leaving an associate position at Thompson & Klein in downtown Chicago. I could see the clouds from that office, the realization of my dreams. I could see future high-stakes litigation that would catapult me to higher echelons. I could see the federal bench from which I would one day rule. I could see the people before whom I would stand, graciously of course, with a fantastic, overwhelming, soul-satisfying smile of success that would say, “I told you so.”

I was leaving all of that and heading … nowhere. No, not nowhere. Heading to unemployment, which is a definite somewhere, a horrible somewhere. I had thought surely by moving day that I would have secured a fantastic position at a D.C. firm. That assurance had to be what buoyed me throughout the building process. But that very last day in Chicago, another three-line form letter had arrived from a top firm telling me that they were not hiring. The enormity of it all struck me as I stood in the middle of the kitchen floor. I couldn’t go without a desperate last stand.

“We can’t leave,” I said simply.

The car was loaded and Hezekiah had come to check on my whereabouts. Tired from cleaning the house and the garage, with a ten-hour drive in front of him, he simply looked at me, so I said it again. “We can’t leave.”

“Treva, we’ve gone over this a million times,” he said. “Our house is sold. The truck is packed. The car is running. Let’s go.”
 
“Hezekiah, it’s not too late. You know it isn’t. Northwestern would take you back as a professor in a minute and my firm would do the same for me. We could find a house to rent until the Maryland house sells, and it should sell fairly easily since we got one of the last lots. What do you think of that house for sale over on Sheridan?  It’s old but we could update it like we did this one, and we could—”

“Treva,” Hezekiah said calmly, “the girls are in the car. Take the time you need, then come on.”

I barely said a word the entire ten hours. If I wasn’t asleep, I was pretending to be asleep, the darkness a fitting serenade to my misery. By the time Hezekiah pulled into our new driveway, the sun had dawned bright and strong, but for me, it was still night.

I growl a sigh, unpack another plate, and sling it into the dishwasher, daring it to break. God, what am I doing here?  Why in the world did You let Hezekiah move us from Chicago?  I was blossoming there, on track with my life. And if I had to come back, I could have at least returned triumphantly. Why have I been uprooted and stuck in barren soil?  Nothing makes any—?