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"I still like you," he says,"but I will never forgive you.""That's fair," I say.

"It's really comin' down out there, time to time," Tom says. He takes his last gulp of coffee -- unsweetened, black Carrabassett Backdraft blend. "Ready for more coffee?"

"Stop here!" she said.

"Is it something I said?... What'd I do?"

"I've been alone a long time," he said, counting the years since Joanna had ... left him. "More years than I care to remember." Turning away.

The judge sat in the high-backed leather chair behind his desk in the den of his too-big house, staring into the glass of whiskey he held just below eye level, as if he expected the Bushmills 44 Year Old single malt to impart upon him the wisdom of the ages.

"Corn by any other name..." he thought, as he confronted yet another hedge wall, the fourth in the past twenty minutes.

"But you're not a bear," Jess said, not meaning to sound cruel, but unable to help herself. "You're my husband. A man! A human!"

The shooter turns toward me, but I'm too close. I push the barrel of his rifle away just as it discharges. He pulls the trigger again, but there is only a click. I grab the hot barrel and twist, wrenching the gun from his hands. I turn and run.

"The dead will walk again," said Jason. "You can count on that." Patting the sawed-off strapped to his hip.

Sitting at the Greyhound stop, Ian stared at the straggly man stumbling toward him down Storrs Avenue. Even from two hundred yards away, Ian could tell the guy was living in the street. He felt a pang of empathy."Not my problem," he thought, glancing at his phone. 1:47. "Five more minutes and I'm out of Middlebury forever."

He grabs a Red Bull from the fridge by the register at the BP in Camp Hill, Alabama, and adds it to the pork rinds and plain M&Ms he already has on the counter.

She makes eye contact with the bartender while pointing to the empty shot glass. "Another Johnnie Black," she says.

"I'm not scared. You're scared," he said with a half-smile, as they continued up the stairs. "And, anyway, I'm not the one with a handful of catnip in their pocket."

"Don't stare," he said. "He doesn't like it when people stare.""But it's right there, all over his face!" She turned away."He doesn't like it when people stare," he said.

"I'm over it," he said. The slamming door punctuated the statement's resolve.