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Wes had long ago stopped trying to feel things, instead spending his energy on doing things.

Doing didn’t always turn out the way he hoped, but it usually didn’t destroy him as much as feeling did.

But as he watched the last of that morning’s sunrise—overturned in a snowy ditch on the side of a mountain and undeniably

stuck in a position where there was very little he could do—he allowed himself to grab onto the feeling of peace that was

overtaking him.

He saw the sunrise all the time, of course. Nearly every day, he supposed. He walked past or jogged past or drove past or

flew past it, but anymore it seemed like wherever he was, he was always on his way to somewhere else.

There were all sorts of things he hadn’t ever felt as strongly outside of his hometown. Why shouldn’t the peace and comfort

that accompanied taking the time to watch the sun do its thing be among them? Of course, now that the moment had passed, he

was filled with that same stupid gnawing in his gut. Even when there was literally nowhere he could go and nothing he could

do. Would he ever remember how to watch a sunrise or a sunset, or even the second-by-second ticking of the clock, without

an overwhelming sensation of guilt?

Probably not. That was what his father had instilled in him, right?

“Rest is a weak man’s most reliable friend.”

“Celebrations are reserved for those who are happy staying right where they are.”

“The only thing standing between where you are now and where you want to be is a preference for contentment.”

Governor McNeese had a million such nuggets, and he had never been shy about sharing them—with his son, with his constituents,

with unhoused citizens standing in line outside a soup kitchen. And they loved him for it.

Why had they loved him for it?

Why did I love him for it?

He had asked himself that question so many times in the year his father had been gone, and even more in the eighteen months

or so prior to his passing as Alzheimer’s yanked away the suave, charismatic cushion that had always softened the blow of

the governor’s painful words.

“He can’t help it.” His stepmother and Phil and his father’s doctors had all said those words to him more times than he could

keep track of. And Wes knew they were right. Alzheimer’s was a cruel, unfair, devastating disease that took no prisoners and

yet, simultaneously, created prisoners of them all.

He could never—he would never—blame his father for the pain inflicted as the disease waged war with the once-brilliant man’s brain.

But “ He can’t help it ” hadn’t been the oft-repeated cliché that caused him, for the first time, to start taking a long, hard look at who he had

become under his father’s tutelage. It was that other one.

“You know that’s not who he really is.”

Alzheimer’s may have removed the cushion of well-crafted words and yanked away the veil of emotional intelligence and social decorum, but it hadn’t made his father mean and spiteful and narcissistic.

That was, in fact, who he really was. That was who he had always been.

And once Wes began acknowledging that to himself and, over time, talking through it with Wray and his therapist to the point of fully accepting its truth, that had been the question he’d been left with.

Why did I love him for it?

Not that he’d questioned why he’d loved him. No, he was his father. He’d spent eighteen years of his life not knowing the

man, and even then, he’d loved him. When his mother tried to discourage him from learning about him, and when she warned him

no good would come from whatever he discovered... When she cautioned him that he would only get hurt... When she’d point-blank

told Wes that his father was a man incapable of actual human emotions... Still, he’d loved him. Maybe this man—whoever

he was—had not done right by his mom, but it would be different for him. Somewhere out there, a father was desperate to know

his son. Somewhere out there was a man who had changed and grown and who wanted nothing more than to make up for lost time.

Wes couldn’t accept any other reality. So he loved him. And then he found him, and he loved him even more.

And the more the governor fed him fatherly wisdom like “ Love is defeatist ” and “ I’ll be proud of you when I can’t differentiate between you and my own reflection ,” the more Wes loved him (but not really, of course, because love was defeatist). He emulated him. Practically worshipped

him. And it wasn’t very long until those things became interchangeable with love. Maybe even preferable to love. And then

it wasn’t very long until he realized how much of his life he’d wasted on love. No wonder he’d always been such a loser.

An icy gust from the east stung his eyes, and he pulled his Persol sunglasses down from his head. That was probably past due

anyway, considering the sun was fully over the mountaintop now and illuminating the last sliver of blue in a sky quickly being

overrun by gray.

His pondering and reflection got pushed away as quickly as the storm blowing in when he heard a Boeing 757 landing directly

behind him. Oh, wait. It was only an old beat-up farm truck—

Hang on. He knew that old beat-up farm truck. He turned fully away from the sun as the blue Chevy rambled across the speed bumps created by the melted snow and slush that had frozen again overnight, and headed straight toward him.

“Crap!” he exclaimed to the vast isolation surrounding him before recovering as quickly as he could and attempting to plant

a smile on his face. A funny thing had happened over the course of the past months, though. He had become acutely aware of

the fact that he didn’t know how to smile. He’d forgotten how to do it naturally, in any sort of way that wasn’t accompanied

by “I hope I can count on your vote this November” subtext. And the more aware of it he’d become, the more awkward he felt

each time he tried to smile for real.

As the truck executed a perfect three-point turn and backed up in front of him, he looked around one more time and took in

his surroundings. Nothing about this morning was going the way he had intended, obviously, but Addie coming to his rescue

just took it all to new levels of failure and humiliation.

“Good morning!” Wes called to her as she hopped down from the cab of the truck. He waved and then crossed his arms and rested

them on the metal roll cage of the UTV’s open cab.

He’d recognized her instantly last night, but as he watched her grabbing equipment from the back of the truck, he was taken

aback by how little she resembled the girl he had almost married. Her face was turned away from him, but the line of her body

was on display—even beneath layers and a winter coat—as she stretched into the truck bed. Maybe he couldn’t really see the

shape of her figure, but the physical strength and assuredness with which she carried herself was foreign to him. The Addie

he’d known hadn’t been weak, physically or otherwise, but he remembered her being so delicate. There was nothing delicate

or fragile about the woman currently hoisting chains over her shoulder and striding confidently toward him through a couple

of feet of snow.

“Tell me right now,” she said to him in greeting, “was this a ploy to get me out here?”

Wes guffawed at the thought. “No.”

“What? Why’s that funny?” She clipped the chain to the front of the side-by-side.

He raised the sunglasses back to his head. “It’s not.” He glanced at the hot chocolate stains all down the front of him and

at his feet. Sopping wet, he precariously balanced on the highest metal pieces he could stand on without slipping. “It’s just

that if I were going to orchestrate something, it wouldn’t be this. I’m not exactly positioned to make a good impression here.

In fact, nothing personal, but when I called Valet Forge, I think I sought about five different levels of confirmation that

the guy on the phone would be the one coming.”

The corners of Addie’s lips twitched as she made eye contact with him for the first time. “Fair enough.” She pulled her hand

up to create a sun visor and squinted as she faced him. “This may be on me, now that you mention it.”

“How so?”

“Well, right back at you with the ‘nothing personal,’ but there were two calls for rides this morning, and I insisted I should

take this one because the other was a pickup at the inn—”

“Which you assumed was me?”

“Which I assumed was you.”

She looked tired. She looked tired in the ways you could never tell a woman she looked tired. Wray had taught him that lesson

very early in their marriage. Even when you had the best of intentions and just wanted to show concern and facilitate rest,

you always had to consider what it was that had made you realize she was tired. If she yawned, fine. You could talk about

her being tired if she yawned. But if your context clues involved puffiness or wrinkles or heavy lids, all of which Addie

currently sported, it was important that you kept your mouth shut. He might mean, Are you doing okay? but she would hear, You look so old! When did you get so old?

Addie didn’t look old. It wasn’t that. But there was no doubt she carried a weariness he’d never seen on her when they were

kids.

Obviously. Weariness and exhaustion were distinct pleasures of adulthood, weren’t they?

Wes wanted to roll his eyes at his internal Captain Obvious monologue, but Addie was still looking at him, and it was taking all his mental fortitude to try to remember how to smile like a normal human being.

“Who are we kidding, Addie?” He drew his eyes away from hers and chuckled. “I think, for both of us, it was pretty personal.”

He looked back up as her arm dropped to her side, a passing cloud taking over her hand’s sun protection responsibility. “But

I wasn’t wanting to avoid you, for the record. Not altogether, anyway. But in this particularly humiliating situation? Well,