"They really do," Julia agrees, earnest and without hesitation. "It's the first thing that sort of... pulled me out of the slump I'd been in. Got me living again." She'd been getting by, before Donny came along with his talk of a band and going to New York and making it big, but that was all. Drifting, going through the motions, isn't the same as really having a life. Of course, showing up here, she's wound up back where she started in a lot of ways, but it feels safer for now, when she's lost everything she'd finally managed to rebuild.

"Funny. That feels like so much longer ago than it actually was."