The Half Life

Piper DeWitt is forty and waiting in the crowded International Terminal of the Philadelphia airport, about to leave on a business trip to Paris. Her marriage has just ended. Her husband, Tosh, loaded his suitcase into a taxi the day before, and after months of hearing that he was unhappy, she can no longer treat it as a phase.

A call to her mother from the Admiral's Club confirms it: Tosh has moved out and left their four-year-old daughter in her mother's care. Piper met him at twenty-two, when she was not looking for anyone, and she now asks how the two of them reached this point.

Then her flight is canceled because volcanic ash from Iceland is spreading across Europe. A handsome stranger invites her to share a cab, and the delay gives her an unplanned day away from the life that has just fallen apart. She spends it as a tourist in her own city.

This is a short story, part of Redbook's Red-Hot Read series. It is contemporary women's fiction told in close third person, with a wry, rueful tone. It covers a single day, and the question running through it is whether Piper can find her way back home afterward.