New York (State) -- fiction

It happened again. The walls shook very hard and the singing bowls sounded on their own—as a warning or a meditation? Small earthquakes were normal in this part of Japan, but Lucy Jarrett never could get used to them. She had come to live in the village with her love Yoshi a few years ago. They had fallen for each other during a monsoon in another country, two very different people determined to make a private country of their own.

But things are changing now. Lucy can not find a job in her field of hydrology, and Yoshi is preoccupied with his corporate work. He looks at her closely one day and says she seems to be a very lonely person… and she realizes that she is.