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not just physically, not just from raising her kids in a different culture. Oh, yes. She was tired. But the weariness had settled into her mind and then traveled down into her heart, her very spirit. The fight had gone out of her. Maybe the faith too. Oh, how could she even tolerate such a thought!
    She didn’t have the strength to fight the nagging voice. She longed to go home, to the Georgia red clay, baked and cracking under the summer sky, and the music of the grasshoppers and katydids and the blinking of the lightning bugs on a muggy September evening. She wanted to sit on the porch, resting her head in her father’s lap, the feel of his warm hand seeping through her cotton shirt and onto her back. She wanted to be a little girl again.
    Life in this country had cost them too much. She and Brian had prepared for it, trained, spent their energy and zeal in the land, and now she was weary.
    She peeked in on Sandy and Luke, sleeping soundly, left the house, and made the mile walk to the graveyard alone. Her pilgrimage. She knelt by the grave, cleared away the wilting flowers, and replaced them with a potted bright red geranium.
    “I miss you,” she whispered.
    How in the world could she go home? Life here had cost her everything, but if she left, who would come to replace the flowers on the grave? Janelle trudged back toward the house. Go home .
    ________
    Ted Draper was going to make it big. The graph for the Dow Jones with its erratic ups and downs was like the machine in the hospital that registered heartbeat. His heartbeat was the stock market, and at the present time it was soaring. Company benefits! He checked his commission runs. Over 600,000 dollars in production credits by mid-September, with several of his biggest deals forthcoming. He would easily reach the million-dollar mark in commissions before the end of the year, qualifying him for the company trip to China.
    Lin Su had always begged him to make the trip again. Job pressures and little kids—and spending too much money on other things, he admitted to himself—had kept them so busy that they had put it off for way too long. But now it was going to happen. This, he thought to himself, made his hard work, his overwork, worthwhile. A trip with Lin Su and the kids to her homeland.
    “Hey, Ted, the line’s for you. The big client,” Janet, his secretary, whispered while holding her hand over the phone.
    “I’ll get it in my office,” he answered.
    The big client. The big break. He smiled, self-satisfied. With this conversation, China was sealed. Well, maybe that was a bit overly optimistic, but it wouldn’t be long.
    “Hello, Dr. Kaufman! Ted Draper here …” His voice oozed confidence and adrenaline. Ticker tape, the graph shooting skyward, Dow Jones over the top. He had made it.
    When Ted walked past the open cubicles of the younger brokers, the appropriate silence ensued. Awe. Yes, that was it. He was one of the firm’s top brokers. At the ripe old age of thirty-two he had already passed many of the older brokers.
    The year 1987 was turning into an amazingly profitable year, as had the preceding five years. It was the right time to get rich as a stockbroker. If you were willing to take risks, which Ted was, and if you were very bright, which he was, and if you could keep your cool while trading, which he could, then you were cut out for the brokerage business. In five years he had risen to the top ranks, and so, when he stepped into the room, the aura of awe followed him.
    “Hey, Ted!” a younger broker said. “What have we got today?”
    Ted shook hands, nodded eagerly, slapped a back. “We’ve got those three new junk bond issues coming out. Get on the phone and you can become a millionaire too!”
    Go, go, go, Ted! All the way to the top! And don’t you dare stop to look back!
    ________
    Katy Lynn Pendleton checked her face in the rearview mirror as she pulled into a parking space at the Capital City Country Club. She retrieved a tube