Another soul I am there with you. My desire has become too strong. The withdrawal will be just as heart-wrenching as the longing has been, maybe worse. But to suffer with a memory of Heaven, that’s far better than not knowing it at all. I don’t make promises easily—variables often break them—but for you, I give my word; not another person will ever find out what we plan to do. ONE A woman, at the cusp of one career and the beginning of another stepped into Boehme’s dilapidated office. Paint peeled from walls that connected to decade-old carpet. Lindsay wondered why life had spiraled so awkwardly out of control. Yet, something about this place beckoned, as if her visit there was more integral to fate than everything else had been before. Not long after Lindsay crossed the threshold, a willful-looking woman cut down the hallway. Her green eyes turned to slits, accentuating her short hair and apparent need to bully everyone. “You’re here for an interview?” It was rhetorical. “Follow me!” Lindsay nearly sprinted after Casey, wondering with each step about the diverging twists of life. The woman glanced at her judgmentally at one point as every action proved her dominance. Lindsay had come for the role’s base wage—twice what she’d earned previously—and that alone kept her there after seeing the interviewer and Boehme’s rundown building. Before Lindsay slipped into Casey’s office, she noticed a man somberly facing a computer. He wore small glasses, not the kind to hide most of his face, but rather the small-rimmed spectacles a professor might don. His glasses didn’t garner most of her attention though, for the man also wore a sober countenance that stirred curiosities. He looked up, momentarily surprised by Lindsay. She tried to break eye contact but faltered due to the irony of a striking man working in such a filthy place; she longed to interrogate him as he grinned mischievously, and a strand of brown hair fell next to his cheek. “Come in! Come in!” Casey bellowed from the office. “And Thane, I need those designs on my desk within the next thirty minutes!” Lindsay shook herself from previous thoughts and stepped toward the interim manager who obviously hated even remote signs of weakness. *** Days passed into weeks; weeks became months. Lindsay managed at the local Boehme site well, but still, the check printing industry slowly collapsed, eaten away by people’s need for credit cards and electronic transfers. Despite problems with revenue, the corporate office generously gave Lindsay a raise—her first real taste of wealth and the kind of shackle that inevitably cages men and women alike. She never wanted to be poor again, and as a countermeasure, began investing all extra funds into a start-up furniture business with her boyfriend, Logan. “We’re making enough now,” Logan said, after closing out another successful month of furniture sales. “You’re working too many hours at that stupid job, and I never see you…” He ended up begging Lindsay: “We can work…