There were access bars by the doors and a lingering scent of ammonia. In the halls her footsteps were silenced by institutional carpeting and smoked mirrors, and vases of plastic flowers. She was, up until that moment, the sole youthful occupant of the building by the lake, and she was fully aware that her life had become a sort of long, slow vanishing act in which the fiancé and the degree, the published papers and “taking time off to think” were bells and whistles to distract the crowd.

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