For the last 20 years, I have lived a quiet life.
That is what I tell people when they ask about me, though hardly anyone does. I run a small bookstore on the corner of Maple and Fifth, the kind of place with creaky wooden floors, a bell above the door, and regular customers who know where the mystery novels are better than I do.
I have a rescue dog named Biscuit, a one-eyed terrier with a crooked tail and a suspicious attitude toward delivery men. Every morning, he follows me to the shop, curls beneath the front counter, and growls softly at anyone who talks too loudly.
It is not a grand life, but it is mine.
No husband. No children. No family photos on the walls. No ties to my past.
People think that makes me lonely. They are wrong. Loneliness is not the absence of noise. Sometimes, silence is the only thing that keeps you alive.
Twenty-five years ago, my life was a living nightmare.