Between Two Kingdoms

Suleika receives advice from Isaac whom she meets in Seattle: “Forgiveness is a refusal to armor your own heart […] Living with that openness means feeling pain. It’s not pretty, but the alternative is to feel nothing at all” (302). Rich, a sculptor in Northern California, tells Suleika his theory about travel: “When we travel, we actually take three trips. There’s the first trip of preparation and anticipation, packing and daydreaming. There’s the trip you’re actually on. And then, there’s the trip you remember” (303). He tells her to be present wherever you are now. She realizes, recalling Isaac and Rich’s advice, that she can’t alter the past. If she could go back, she would wait to date Jon until she had more distance from Will. She texts Jon to talk, planning to break up with him, and they decide to talk over the weekend.

Suleika visits Katherine, whose son Brooke committed suicide. Katherine wrote to Suleika in response to a column: “The power of a story is to heal and to sustain, she wrote, And if we are brave enough to tell our own story, we realize we’re not alone, again and again” (307).