When he got home, he found a letter with three British stamps and a London return address. It was from Sarah, the girl who had stuck to her story about Mike, the cat burglar. She had married a Brit and had two children of her own. "I read your letter to my daughters and told them that parents sometimes make mistakes. I can remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday," she wrote. "I hope Mike has found another way to make a living. Please do thank him for being nice, if you should see him." The thought of Sarah reading his words to her children filled Joe with pleasure. He immediately wrote to Alison, thanking her for encouraging him to write and deliver the story. A week later, a square envelope arrived from Madison, Wisconsin. It was a wedding announcement. Oh Joe, how nice to hear from you! I was just thinking about you. I am marrying another Joe, Joe Jurgens, next month. He is a wonderful man who lost his wife two years ago. He has a fourteen year old son and a twelve year old daughter, so I have a lot to do. I think of you often. Keep writing. You have a lot to do, too. Love, Alison. Well! Joe knocked on his wooden table top and wished her luck. He sent her a lavish congratulations card. A month later Joe finished his last school assignment. "We're on our own, Batman," he said, carrying the packet for Roland out the door. He kept writing and submitted stories to The Paris Review, Manoa, Ploughshares, and The New Yorker. Things happened in each of them. He was making progress, but he wasn't satisfied. The stories were rejected with form letters, sometimes not even form letters, form scraps. Fortunately, there was more in the mail than rejection slips. Kate and Jackson found a house in the Ballard section of Seattle. Mo sent an invitation to an opening party for her new business. Max sent pictures of Stone Man watching over the valley. Joe taped the pictures on the wall near his father's painting. His steel company stock fell to .50, down by a third of his original investment. Buy more, he thought. But he was afraid of running out of money and being forced to sell at a loss. He kicked himself for buying so much at .75. If he'd bought half as much, he could have picked up some of these bargain shares. Remember that, he told himself, you don't have to buy it all at once.