He couldn't be. He had opened the slider and was staring at me, a shit eating grin on his face as I wondered if he was flirting with me. I closed the ...hed and made my way to the house.***My stomach was in knots. I had spent half of my life married to one man and now he was gone. I made Jeff's sandwich as he sat at the table, his back against the chair, one arm thrown over the table and his legs spread. I won't lie, I tried to see if I could look up his shorts. Any woman who says she would never. And that I’d also left my fucking phone back at the house and couldn’t call the cops!It almost goes without saying that there has hardly been a day in my life that I haven’t had some incredibly dumb idea pop into my thick skull. Today would be no different. I decided I would try to quietly open the door, go in, surprise the burglars and scare them off. Damn, I wished that strapping stud foreman, Buks Nell, was here to back me up.First, I tested the door and found it was unlocked. I pushed it. Please don't cheapen Ron's sacrifice by rewording it out of existence. -- "Second, I have not thanked him for returning my life to me because I can't communicate with God, and even if I could, it's pretty obvious that He's not interested in chatting with individual people. He's interested in humanity as a whole over periods of thousands of years. And for the sake of completeness, let me add that I also haven't thanked the Devil, any aliens, or Elvis." Why don't you communicate with God?" I. Then before leaving the apartment they embraced and kissed one last time. Then Iliafray lead Sophia out to meet the merchants who would be escorting her to the surface.Interlude 7 Sophia SurfacesThe journey to the surface was the most unpleasant thing Sophia had experienced since being bought by Iliafray. The first problem was that she had no idea how to ride a pack lizard comfortably and was not fit enough to walk alongside the caravan all the time having spent several years living in an.