There were parts of college that had nothing to do with becoming anything.

Laura would understand this better years later, when memory had done its usual work of separating what lasted from what merely seemed important at the time. She would remember surprisingly little about some courses that had consumed entire semesters. Exams she had studied for until two in the morning would disappear completely. Papers that once seemed capable of determining her future would become titles she could barely recall.

But she would remember running in April.

She would remember leaving the residence hall early enough that the campus still belonged to groundskeepers and birds, when the sidewalks were damp from overnight rain and mist hung above the river. She usually ran alone, following a path behind the library before dropping toward the water and continuing until the buildings disappeared behind cottonwoods.

She had always liked what happened to her mind when her body was working hard.

Horses had given her that first. Riding required attention too complete for worry. A horse knew immediately when the person on its back was distracted, frightened, impatient, or pretending to be more confident than she was. Her father had taught her that without ever quite saying it. Sit straight. Keep your hands quiet. Look where you're going. Trust the animal, but don't ask it to make your decisions.

Running offered something similar without the horse.

After the first mile, whatever had seemed important when she left the dormitory usually became smaller. By the third, breathing and movement reduced the world to manageable dimensions. There was the path ahead, the rhythm of her feet, the cold air entering her lungs, and the river moving beside her.

She was good at it without being especially interested in being good at it.

That distinction mattered to her.

Music had always carried expectations. Grades carried expectations. Even horses had once come with lessons and competitions and adults watching from fences.

Running belonged entirely to her.

So did much of the life she had begun building away from home.

Her parents knew the broad outlines. They knew the names of her closest friends, which courses she liked, which professors she complained about, and approximately how much money remained in her checking account. What they could not know—and what no parent ever fully knows—was the ordinary private life their daughter had constructed between telephone calls home.

There were Friday nights when she went dancing.

There were crowded apartments where someone pushed furniture against the walls and played Talking Heads, U2, or R.E.M. louder than the speakers deserved. There were pitchers of beer shared by people who had little money and tremendous confidence that their lives would eventually work out. There were midnight pizzas, arguments about politics nobody resolved, and long conversations conducted on dormitory floors after everyone should have gone to bed.

She had dated.

Some men lasted one dinner.

Others lasted several months.

There had been one relationship serious enough that, for a while, she had allowed herself to imagine it continuing beyond college. They studied together, traveled home together once, and eventually became intimate with the earnestness and uncertainty of two young adults who cared for each other but knew considerably less about love than either wanted to admit.

She was not ashamed of it afterward.

Nor did she romanticize it.

The relationship ended for no dramatic reason. There was no betrayal, no terrible argument, no villain for either of them to blame. They simply discovered, slowly and reluctantly, that affection was not always enough to make two lives want the same things.

That lesson stayed with her longer than the heartbreak.

It was possible to care deeply for someone and still let him go.

By senior year, her social life had settled into something less frantic and more satisfying. She had a handful of friends who no longer needed entertainment in order to enjoy one another. Lisa Moreno, from Professor Bennett's business-law class, had gradually become one of them. Lisa possessed an irreverence Laura liked and a willingness to say what everyone else was politely avoiding.

It was Lisa who first persuaded her into the weight room.

"You run too much," she told her one afternoon as they crossed the student center.

Laura looked at her. "According to whom?"

"According to me."

"And your qualifications?"

"I've been lifting for three years."

"That wasn't my question."

Lisa laughed. "Come with me tomorrow."

Laura did.

The university weight room occupied a low-ceilinged space in the recreation building that smelled permanently of rubber mats, metal, and human effort. Most of the serious lifters were men, and several glanced toward the two women when they entered before returning to their routines.

Laura noticed.

Lisa noticed her noticing.

"They'll get over it."

Laura smiled. "I'm devastated."

Lisa showed her how to use the equipment properly, beginning with embarrassingly little weight and correcting her whenever enthusiasm exceeded technique. Laura discovered almost immediately that she liked it.

The attraction surprised her.

Running asked her to endure.

Weight training asked her to overcome.

There was something deeply satisfying about approaching a weight that had been difficult the week before and discovering that it no longer was. Progress could be measured without anyone's opinion. The iron did not care about talent or charm or whether she had slept badly or received an A on an examination. Either she could lift it or she couldn't.

Then she trained.

Eventually she could.

Within months the changes became visible. Her shoulders strengthened. Her legs, already conditioned by running and years around horses, became more powerful. She liked the way strength felt—not merely the way it looked, although she was honest enough to admit she liked that too.

One Saturday morning she stood before the bathroom mirror in shorts and a sleeveless shirt and flexed one arm experimentally.

Lisa, brushing her teeth beside her, caught the reflection.

"Oh, God."

Laura laughed. "What?"

"We've created a monster."

"I have a bicep."

"You've had a bicep your entire life."

"Not one you could see."

Lisa rinsed her toothbrush. "This is how it starts. Next you'll be eating raw eggs and oiling yourself."

"I'm not oiling anything."

"Give it a semester."

The joke followed them for weeks, but Laura kept lifting.

For a short while she even became curious about bodybuilding—not seriously enough to make it another ambition, but enough to read about training programs and experiment with exercises she had never tried. She enjoyed discovering what her body could do.

There was freedom in that too.

So much of a young woman's life seemed to involve being looked at, evaluated, compared, approved of, or found wanting. Strength gave her another way to inhabit her body. It became less an object to be judged than an instrument she could use.

The realization would matter later.

At twenty-one or twenty-two, she simply knew she felt good.

Spring moved toward summer. Graduation approached with the peculiar mixture of anticipation and dread that settled over seniors everywhere. Friends began receiving job offers. Apartments were discussed. Relationships were reconsidered according to geography. People who had spent four years insisting they couldn't wait to leave suddenly became sentimental about buildings they had complained about since freshman year.

Professor Bennett's question remained somewhere in Laura's mind.

Have you ever considered law school?

She had not done anything about it.

Not yet.

There were applications to consider, entrance examinations she knew almost nothing about, money she certainly did not have, and the much larger question of whether one professor's casual observation should be allowed to redirect her life.

For once, she resisted the urge to decide.

One evening after lifting, she left the recreation center and walked toward the residence hall. The sun remained above the mountains even though it was nearly eight, and students had spread blankets across the grass. Someone threw a Frisbee near the library. Music came through an open dormitory window. A couple lay together beneath one of the cottonwoods, her head resting against his chest, unconcerned with anyone passing by.

Laura slowed.

She thought about home and the horses standing near the fence at dusk. She thought about her mother's piano and Professor Bennett's classroom and the man she had once believed she might love forever. She thought about Daniel arguing over contracts, Lisa threatening to turn her into a bodybuilder, and the strange possibility of law school.

For months she had been trying to determine which of these things belonged to her real life.

It occurred to her that perhaps all of them did.

She continued across the lawn, feeling the pleasant heaviness in her legs from the afternoon's workout.

For the moment, the future could wait.

She was twenty-two years old.

There was still time.