Off Course (36 page)

Cress threw the covers off her shoulders, kicked at the tightness of the sheet down by her feet. Mimi, the cause of that tightness, raised her fluffy head, then decamped to the carpet.

Cress did have three stepchildren, two of them married and poised to reproduce. (So smart, Tillie said, to go straight for grandkids.)

Cress curled on her side. Eamon, possibly still asleep, sent a hand to her hip.

Their love was quieter, sturdier, nondizzying. Much more friendly and reliable. With a lot more laughter. But she rarely trembled. Nor did she wish to anymore.

*   *   *

In the morning, Cress plucked the donkey off her dresser. She wrapped it in tissue paper, then in bubble wrap; she sealed it in a padded envelope and mailed it on her way to work, to Quinn Morrow / Sawyer, California, with no note, no return address.

 

Acknowledgments

Friends give us the courage to go on, and I couldn't have written
Off Course
without Mona Simpson's conversation and hands-on writing help. Laurie Winer, Mary Corey, and Lily Tuck also read the novel in draft. I am deeply grateful.

The economists Cora and Jim Moyers, Julie A. Nelson, and Mark Maier graciously took the time to talk to me; particularly helpful was Julie A. Nelson's brave and clarifying book
Economics for Humans
.

Publication is a long collaboration; I am grateful to all who have helped
Off Course
along the way: agents Scott Moyers, Jin Auh, and Sarah Burnes; the team at FSG, including Dan Piepenbring, Oliver Munday, Jonathan Lippincott, Tobi Haslett, Rodrigo Corral, and especially my editor, Sarah Crichton.

I've benefitted immeasurably from Jim Potter's intelligence, patience, and steadying love. If he ever thought marrying a novelist was romantic, I have by now roundly disabused him of that notion.

 

ALSO BY MICHELLE HUNEVEN

Blame

Jamesland

Round Rock

 

A Note About the Author

Michelle Huneven is the author of three previous novels—
Blame
, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award;
Jamesland
; and
Round Rock
. She lives in Altadena, California, with her husband, Jim Potter.

 

Sarah Crichton Books

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Copyright © 2014 by Michelle Huneven

All rights reserved

First edition, 2014

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Huneven, Michelle, 1953–

    Off course: a novel / Michelle Huneven. — First edition.

        pages  cm

    ISBN 978-0-374-22447-9 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-374-71053-8 (ebook)

    1.  Doctoral students—Fiction.   2.  Single women—Fiction.   3.  Man-woman relationships—Fiction.   4.  Mountain life—Fiction.   I.  Title.

PS3558 . U4662 038 2014

813'.54—dc23

2013036858

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

eISBN 9780374710538