The Gasp

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This is my husband, Mike. He laughs a lot and was especially tickled when this picture was taken last week. He’s more apt to laugh out loud than to smirk, sigh, cry, yawn, or gasp. So yesterday when we were watching TV, knitting (me), and reading (who watches TV only?), I didn’t think too much about Mike laughing out loud. But then he gasped. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, saying, “Do I even know you?” He was reading the first chapter of my new novel and speaking to me.

“What do you mean?” I said.

He ruffled the pages. “Sometimes I think that you spend all your time in a place I don't know with people I don’t even know.”

“Why, yes I do.” All of the delightfully crazy characters who reveal themselves to me on paper.

I can’t tell you how it pleases me to surprise him, although I almost never set out to do so.

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