Page 9 of Wes and Addie Had Their Chance

the topic. And she knew never to utter the names of any of the people who truly mattered. Or who had once mattered, rather.

It was just part of the unspoken solidarity between them.

Then Brynn Cornell took the world by storm. Brynn certainly never talked about Adelaide Springs in her early days on Sunup , but it was still disconcerting to be assaulted by the appearance of a woman who had once been among his closest friends

nearly every time he turned on the television or walked past a newsstand. The extent of his discussions with his wife about

the development never went beyond “Was she always a brunette?” or “Do you think she’s had any work done?” until one day he

walked into the living room and found Wray weeping on the sofa while watching his former friend apologize in front of a mountain.

A week earlier Brynn had bad-mouthed their hometown on a hot mic, and the world had talked about little else ever since.

Wray and Wes, meanwhile, hadn’t said one word about it to each other—no matter how obsessively they were each following along with Brynn’s career-threatening developments.

But suddenly, there she was, back on Sunup , live from Adelaide Gulch.

The same Adelaide Gulch where they’d all sledded on inner tubes as kids. The same Adelaide Gulch

where Wes had gotten at least half of the cuts and scratches that he still carried with him as scars.

The same Adelaide Gulch that, as Wes and Wray and maybe even Brynn all seemed to realize in near unison, wasn’t the cause

of any of their multitudes of emotional scars.

From that point on Wes and Wray seemed to talk about Adelaide Springs all the time. Memories that had for so long been treated

as a toxin they couldn’t allow into their bloodstreams suddenly took on new life as the antidote to their self-inflicted misery.

Of course by then Wray was already sick, and some antidotes would prove to be more successful than others.

Wes set his coffee on the table once again and stayed leaned over his knees as he asked, “How is she? Is she okay? Did she

and her husband move here or—”

“She left the CIA—”

“Hang on. Addie? Addie was in the CIA?”

“I’ve already said too much.” Jo shook her head slowly. “But no. Her husband died. And I don’t think she’s okay at all.”

In his year of FaceTime with Jo, he’d never once asked how anyone was doing. Especially not Addie. It wasn’t that he hadn’t

wondered, but Jo had made it clear from their very first phone call that he was and probably forevermore would be a persona

non grata in Adelaide Springs, and that she would most likely be viewed as a traitor for even talking to him. Once, about

seven months ago, she had flippantly made mention of Jake and Lucinda Morissey, members of a younger generation he barely

remembered, having another child, then immediately hung up in a panic as if she had accidentally muttered every digit of the

nuclear codes over the PA system at a mall. She didn’t answer his calls for six weeks after that.

So they talked about him. He talked about himself, to be more precise.

And Wray. It was nice to talk with someone who had memories of her from before.

She was three years younger than he was, but of course they’d still grown up together.

And yet they’d lived completely different lives—until they intersected at Yale.

He’d asked Wray about Addie once. Right in the beginning. That was the only time. “Just tell me if she’s okay.” Wray told him she had moved away for college and that she assumed she was fine, and that was that. He didn’t want to know

anything else. There was nothing he could do about any of it, but from that point on he could rest in the knowledge that Addie’s

life had gone on.

After that he didn’t hear her name again for nine years, until Wray asked him, “If Addie got married, would you want to know?”

He’d been running for House reelection, and they’d been on a campaign bus heading back to Hartford. He hadn’t even looked

up from his phone. “You can never have too much knowledge, I guess,” he’d said with a shrug. And then Wray had spread out

on the couch on the bus, laid her head down on a pillow, and said, “Last weekend, apparently.” Then she called out for her

personal assistant to wake her when they were ten minutes away from home.

“What do you mean she’s not okay?” Wes asked Jo, not at all sure of what to do with this new knowledge. “How long ago did

he die?”

Jo sighed and stood, sticking out her hand for his empty coffee cup, which he obligingly gave her. “Ask her if you really want to know.”

Huh. Yeah. That was a nice idea—a nice but terrifying idea—but talking to her hadn’t gone very well so far.

Wes stood and followed Jo into the kitchen. “She didn’t seem too keen on having a heartfelt conversation with me,” he stated

mildly, choosing not to share the part where he barely got his toes out of the way before her massive snow tires ran over

them. “Any advice on how I should navigate—”

“I don’t know. Good grief. You’re a grown man. I am no longer responsible for being your emotional compass.”

“I know, Jo, but—”

“No but s.” She set the cups in the sink and turned to face him. “It was your choice to come back, and you’re the one who has to deal with the consequences. And let’s face it. There’s a backlog of consequences you haven’t faced yet, for a backlog of choices.”

“I know.”

“It’s time to either confront all of that or—”

“I said I know, Jo. That’s why I’m here.” Wes’s eyes began to sting, and everything in him wanted to pull his gaze away from

her. Retreat. Retreat! But he couldn’t. “At least I think so. I don’t know anything, Jo. I really... I just don’t know anything anymore.”

“Oh, you poor kid,” she muttered under her breath before opening her arms to him and finally giving him the hug she’d denied

him earlier—and that life had been denying him for the last twenty-two years.