Anne moved the chair over next to her husband George. From her purse she took a thick paperback; bought just over a week before. Putting on her glasses, she read the back cover and shook her head. “I never did see why you read these kinds of stories.” She opened to the receipt used as a bookmark and said, “You only had forty-some pages left.”

Without knowing anything about the characters or plot, she began reading the end of the story to her husband as he lay silently in his best suit.