Editor’s Note: Mary Jane Clark is a former CBS News producer and The New York Times bestselling author of twelve novels. Her newest book, Dying for Mercy will be published July 28. Visit the author’s website at maryjaneclark.com. To take a peek inside Dying for Mercy, click here.

It was a sunny, clear afternoon and I was walking along the shoreline, forcing it. Sadness over a chronic personal situation had, frankly, left me feeling sorry for myself, but I knew that exercise would help me feel better.

Taking long strides and deep breaths, I traveled up and down the beach, estimating that 12 laps would equal two miles. At lap eight, it happened.

"I used to be able to walk like that."

Turning toward the sound of the voice, I saw a blonde, tanned woman wearing a hot-pink, form-fitting bathing suit and a wide-brimmed straw hat. I estimated she was in her 80s, but this was no frail and elderly female. She stood erect, proud and smiling.

She pulled her knee up toward her chest, trying to work out the stiffness in the joint. "I used to take long, quick steps like you," she said. "But these legs don’t do that anymore."

I smiled, though my first thought was keep going, keep going. You haven’t reached the two-mile mark. Yet, I stopped, readjusted my gait and began to walk along beside her. It turned out she was from the New York area too, and when she heard that I had worked at CBS News her face lit up.

"On 57th Street?" she asked with a delighted smile. "My dentist was on 57th Street."

I didn’t quite get why she would be so happy at making the connection with her dentist, but more conversation revealed that her dentist had introduced her to his best friend from dental school, the man who became her husband.

"We had a wonderful life together," she said.

"Children?" I asked.

"One son. You?"

"Two. Grown. My daughter is an actress living in Manhattan and my son is away at school."

"He’s at university?"

"No, David is mentally impaired. It’s a boarding school for people with disabilities. But he thinks he’s going to college, just like his sister did."

She looked puzzled. "Well, if he’s in college, he must be all right," she said.

"No, he thinks his school is college. He doesn’t read or write."

"Oh." She nodded with understanding. "That’s very difficult for the mother," she said.

"Yes."

We continued strolling, our feet making tracks in the sand. She shared that she had lost her husband seven months before.

"We were married for 52 years," she said, her face registering pure pleasure at the thought. "We had a wonderful life together."

"Oh, I’m so sorry. It must be very hard for you now without him."

"I miss him, but his last few years were quite difficult. Alzheimer’s."

"That’s rough, really rough," I said.

"Yes, but what are you going to do? I know I have to keep going."

There was no self-pity in her voice. She was just stating the fact.

We had immediately gotten to the point where we were revealing personal information, the way you do sometimes with a stranger sitting beside you on a plane. We didn’t even know one another’s names yet we were recounting private things.

"Where did you live before you came to the United States?" I asked. Her accent was slight, but detectable.

"In what we called the border region," she said. "Where Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Austria met."

"Did you come to America before or after World War ll?"

"After."

"And where were you during the war?" I asked.

She stopped walking and hesitated before speaking. Finally, she said, "In the most horrible place."