The spider was gone the next morning.

Emma lay in the same narrow bed of the hotel room, one arm over her eyes, trying to convince herself that its absence was a good omen. Maybe it had crawled out through a crack in the ceiling, or maybe housekeeping had found it and flushed it down the drain. But she couldn’t shake the ridiculous notion that even the spider had sensed how temporary this stop in her life was. That nothing stayed in place around her for long.

She had thought running would be ...