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Page 11
The cabin had been his haven for years. Previously he had come for a week or two to escape, now and then, what his life had become. This time he had planned to stay as long as it took to escape his life's most bitter irony. But he had learned here instead that the old maxim was true: you could escape nothing when what you ran from was yourself.
Should he go back? Not yet. If he found no peace here, he certainly would find none back home.
Heading toward the cabin, he sighed aloud, a near-moan escaping his lips. Before he reached the door, an unnatural hush settled over the desert.
Startled, he turned. As if a voice commanded him, he looked up. A countless array of stars speckled the sky. While he watched, the stars seemed to rearrange themselves in a slightly different configuration, the change so minor that he half believed he was dreaming it. Surely it was an illusionlike the peacefulness here in the desert.
But he was awake, and there was more.
Somehow he felt he was watching the heavens through someone else's eyes. His throat ached suddenly with a terrible dryness, and he sensed someone else's yearningsfor peace, like him, and something beyond. There was a sadness, a loneliness, a longing, all of which he himself had experienced over and over, yet now they were not his own.
Impossible . . . ridiculous . . . but Mike could

 
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