... relaxed and happy—didnot. On this stern-faced woman and her opinion of my work, my livelihood depended. And now she wanted my opinion of something she’d written?Umm, maybe, I ventured, there ... past the point where I paid it any mind. So I sat and waitedwhile she finished.Finally, she pulled out the page, gathered it togetherwith one or two others and, still not looking up, passedthem ... this transition? And this word, here, perhaps itwasn’t exactly what she meant?Elise took back the manuscript and looked at it, hard, the way she always did—no knitted brows, just the blank screen...