The summer stretched before Amelia, a vast, blank canvas of time and silence. The writer's residency was a small, cedar-shingled cabin perched on the edge of a deep, glacial lake, miles from the nearest town. There was no internet, no cell service, just a landline for emergencies that hung on the kitchen wall like a relic from another century. The world of scandals and headlines, of universities and garages, felt a million miles away.
For the first week, the silence was deafening. She was alone with the rustle of pine needles, the cry of loons, and the relentless, accusing blankness of the page in her typewriter. The fellowship manuscript was due at the end of the summer, a collection that would launch her career. The pressure was immense. Every false start, every clichéd sentence, felt like a betrayal of the second chance she'd been given.
