Page 122 of Head Room

We settled side by side on the outdoor Adirondack-style loveseat Iris and Zeb gave us as an early wedding present, watching Shadow explore the back yard.

My parents arrive tomorrow.

The drumbeat of that phrase in my head hadn’t let up all day.

Mom and Dad were flying this time.They’d pick up a rental car at the Billings Airport for mobility, then stay at the Wild Horses Bed and Breakfast.Tom’s parents were booked there, too, along with an aunt and cousins.

Several of my siblings and their families were driving from Illinois, with plans to visit Yellowstone afterward.They’d stay at Mike’s huge house.He was turning the whole thing over to them, while he stayed with a friend in town.

My friends, Les and Bonnie, were flying in from Philadelphia to Cody.They’d be staying in Diana’s bunkhouse that was more of a guest house.They, too, planned a post-wedding trip to Yellowstone.

We should have arranged a kickback from the National Park Service for all these visits.

My brother, Steve, had not RSVP’d.I heard from him now and then, but his only response to the invitation had been a message a couple weeks ago, saying only, “Hope you’re happy, kid.”

Tom shifted, tightening the arm he had around my shoulders.

Iris spotted this old loveseat and bought itfor a songlast year at the neighborhood’s annual end-of-summer mega yard sale.Zeb restored it in their garage, over more hours than I could imagine.

“When you’re old married folks like us, you can have separate chairs,” Iris declared when they presented it to us, “but when you’re starting out your married life, you shouldn’t have chair arms or anything else between you.”

Feeling the warm contact of Tom’s side against mine, as well as his arm around my shoulders, I appreciated that.

Without facing me, he said, “You worrying about the wedding or what you’re looking into for the colonel?”

I looked at him, specifically at the cowboy hat he wore.

In the early days after we’d met, he’d used that hat and the shade of its brim as a barrier, maybe as a weapon.

Not anymore.

“Both, I suppose.”I streamed out a breath.“It feels useless to put away a single murderer.

“I mean, I know a murderer is despicable and must be put away.But when there are people doing so much harm to so many people in so many places...When they sow disinformation to prey on those who don’t question, who don’t exercise critical thinking — and let’s face it, some whowantto believe disinformation.Sow disinformation and dissatisfaction and distrust and a hundred other dis-es that shred the fabric of lives.And they get away with it—”

“Elizabeth—”

“I know what you’re going to say.That catching a murderer is important and I can’t do everything and you’ve talked to my father on the phone so he’s told you — because he always tells people the story when he’s trying to be wise — about the Baltimore Orioles relief pitcher in the 1990s—”

“Randy Myers.”

No way Tom knew that without hearing it from my father.

“—who had this amazing game, then you’re also going to say that afterward Myers was asked how he did it and he said,All you can ever do is your best.You can’t do more than your best.So, you do that.It’s very simple.”

He used the hold on my shoulders to draw me into the shadowed shelter of his hat.

“That’s exactly what I’d say — all of it.Along with that Randy Myers said it was simple, but he never said it was easy.”

Hehadbeen talking to Dad.

He kissed me on my temple, pushed back my hair with his lips to kiss higher.

“And neither are you,” he added.

“Which one?Simple or easy?”

“Either.”