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I’d lost my mind. It was an indisputable fact that if I really, truly had just agreed to have dinner with Wes—as it seemed

I had—then I had completely lost my mind.

The bell over the door jingled as I entered Elevate, the cute little boutique Laila had opened a year or so ago. I’d only

been in there once or twice and I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing there now. All I knew for sure was that I needed to talk

to someone, and grown-up Addie didn’t have a person she went to when she needed to talk. Not about stuff like this. Whatever

“stuff like this” was . But for the first eighteen years of my life, someone had always been Laila and Brynn. Back in those days I used to lose my mind over him in very different ways, but still...

there was no one in town with more experience than Laila at helping me sort through a little Wes Hobbes freak-out.

“Hey, you,” she greeted me, stepping behind the counter from the back room. “This is a nice surprise.”

Brynn and Sebastian may have been the power couple who put Adelaide Springs on the map, but Cole and Laila were the ones keeping it alive and thriving from day to day.

In addition to stepping in at the Bean Franklin on the other end of Main Street, Laila had Elevate, which was right next door to Milo’s Steakhouse, owned and operated by Cole.

Between Laila’s boho-chic designs and Cole’s talent in the kitchen, they had already begun drawing in tourists from miles around.

I had no idea what else they had in store for the few remaining vacant storefronts they had taken ownership of following the death of Cole’s grandfather a year or two prior, but it was easy to tell they were just getting started.

“I need to talk to you. Do you have a few minutes?”

“Of course. What’s up?”

I stood along the wall and combed my fingers through a display of silky scarves. “Wes is here.”

The only sound in the store was Taylor Swift playing on the little Bluetooth speaker in the corner. And I didn’t rush things.

I knew she would have her own thoughts and emotions to process. It hadn’t been just me he had walked out on that day, after

all.

I pulled a pair of khakis with extra pockets off the shelf and held them at my waist in front of me. I hadn’t gone in there

to shop, certainly, but those pants were supercute.

When was the last time I bought clothes because they were cute?

Actually, I realized, I hadn’t bought any new clothes for any reason since Joel died. I guess I hadn’t seen the point.

“What do you mean Wes is here? Where?”

“Here. Adelaide Springs. I just left him about ten minutes ago.”

“ Left him? What do you mean you just left him? Left him where? Why were you with him? What is he... What? ”

I finally looked at her and realized I may have been a bit too nonchalant in my delivery. This was not nonchalant news to

Laila. The color had drained from her cheeks, which were shiny due to the tears suddenly running down them.

“Oh, Lai, I’m sorry.” I set the khakis down on the counter and crossed behind to grab her hands in mine. “I didn’t deliver

this news very well, did I?” I spotted a stool in the corner by the closed-circuit security feed and pulled it over for her.

As she sat, she asked, “How are you so calm about this? Are you okay?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, I am. I’m fine.”

“This is the first time you’ve seen him, right?”

“Well, no, actually. I picked him up at the airport last night.”

“Last night?!”

I chuckled. “Yeah. But I meant for Valet Forge. Not because I’m his person who picks him up at the airport or anything.”

She brushed the tears from her cheeks and took a deep breath. “Okay, Addie, I actually was asking if this is the first time

you’ve seen him since 2003.”

“Oh yeah, for sure.”

“And you picked him up at the airport last night?”

I nodded. “Yes. And then this morning he got stuck in a ditch on Banyon—”

“I heard about that!” Her eyes were so wide they practically swallowed her other facial features. “That was Wes ?”

I didn’t have to ask what she’d heard or how she’d heard it. I could imagine the churning sound as the Adelaide Springs gossip

mill sprang to life with the simple news bulletin that some idiot had flipped a previously-thought-nearly-unflippable UTV.

It was shocking to me, actually, that the mill hadn’t already been hard at work distributing the news that Wes was in town.

Despite being someone we all trusted with our lives, Josephine Stoddard was also a bit of a harmless busybody who rarely missed

an opportunity to make sure everyone knew what she knew. Was Jo Stoddard actually keeping juicy gossip to herself? That was

new.

“That was Wes,” I answered Laila, but apart from that, my old friend had lost my focus for the time being.

Wes was staying at the inn, of course, and there was no reason to suspect there was more to that story. There was nowhere

else in town to stay. But letting him borrow her UTV? Okay, sure, he’d plowed the driveway for her. Great. But this was the

woman who used to write “Property of J. Stoddard” on the sides of all the No. 2 pencils in her classroom and make us sign

a “contract of mutual respect” when we borrowed one.

“Why is he here, Addie?”

I blinked back into focus and turned to her. “I’m not sure, exactly.” I wouldn’t reveal anything he had told me in confidence,

of course, but I didn’t see any harm in sharing theories I had basically (eventually) constructed on my own. “I’m pretty sure

he’s hoping to talk to Sebastian—”

“That makes sense, I guess.”

“—but I know there’s got to be more to it than that.”

There had to be a scandal lurking in the shadows, right?

Of course it remained to be seen if the rules were different for our first widowed presidential front-runner in a couple of

centuries. Wray had been gone for, what, a year and a half already? Wes was a single man. Presumably it would take a different

sort of scandal from the type my mind went to first to bring his candidacy to a halt.

There was no way to say it without sounding cold and heartless, but the fact was Wray’s death had been the development to

launch Senator Hobbes into the untouchable political stratosphere. I’d done a little bit of research into his polling trajectory

last night after getting home, trying to make sense of how he thought a trip to Adelaide Springs could possibly benefit his

race, and his campaign really was a fascinating study. His approval ratings in Connecticut had been hovering around 70 percent

for a long time, but Wray’s numbers, as the senator’s stylish and charming wife who championed literacy and child hunger causes,

had been closer to 90. When news of her breast cancer diagnosis broke a few months after he was elected to his second Senate

term, and just weeks after the two of them stood on the steps of their white colonial in New Canaan and declared his candidacy

for president, they both checked their “mere mortal” status at the door—as far as the citizens of Connecticut seemed to be

concerned, anyway.

No, he wouldn’t pause his campaign. The future of our nation was at stake.

No, he wasn’t stepping down from the Senate. Their love for the people of Connecticut was what kept them going in the darkest

moments.

No, the death of his beloved wife didn’t change everything. She’d never forgive him if he quit now.

Each sound bite was more heartrending than the last, but the young, handsome political superstar—the only son of the most

popular governor in Connecticut history, whose own devastating battle with Alzheimer’s had taken a severe turn for the worse

in roughly the same time frame as Wray lost her health battle—refused to turn his back on his family, his state, or his country.

And the entire world seemed to love him for it.

Or, as was actually the case—since politics is just an art form centered around knowing when and how to appropriately express

your displeasure—his detractors and opponents had been put in the impossible position of not being able to speak out against

him without appearing cold, callous, and petty. By the time an acceptable period of mourning passed, it was too late. The

damage had been done to every other campaign. Would-be candidates dropped out before they began, and Wes had only to avoid

shooting himself in the foot before Election Day.

So I guess it did make sense, actually. If a super PAC for the other side discovered, for instance, that he’d once stepped

out on Wray—a woman who had seemingly been elevated to sainthood upon her death—or maybe if he’d moved on too soon with a

pretty young girlfriend, they’d finally have some ammunition. If he got out ahead of it now, he could run again in four years.

Eight, maybe. Maybe that was his plan. He’d still be in his forties, still be that picture of robust health and energy that

stood in such stark contrast to so many others vying for the top office, and he could reinvent himself as the man who carried

on and thrived after tragedy.

“Do you think someone found out about you?” Laila asked after we were each lost in our thoughts for I’m not quite sure how

long.

My brain reflexively ran an inventory of the not insubstantial list of hidden things that might be worth finding out about

me—and then I remembered Laila wasn’t aware of any of those things.

“What do you mean? Found out what about me?”

“You know...” She stood from her stool and folded the khakis I had carelessly set on the counter. “Do you think they found

out about how he skipped town? I know it was a long time ago, but it still doesn’t look good, I wouldn’t think. If somebody

wanted to use it—make him look like a jerk who doesn’t treat women well, or show that he’s not so loyal and committed after

all...”

Well, huh. That little secret about me—which was actually about Wes—had been left off my hastily compiled list a moment ago.

“I don’t know.” Laila brushed her hand across the air in front of her face. “That’s probably stupid. I don’t know anything

about political stuff.”

No. It couldn’t be. Could it? It wasn’t possible. I mean, it wasn’t even a story. Yes, for me it had been a seismic incident of epic proportions that had

split me right down the middle, but we were kids. It was an awful thing he did. Truly horrible. But if we were all judged

for the rest of our lives for the mistakes we made when we were eighteen years old, no one would ever even consider running

for office. Heck, no one would ever get out of bed in the mornings. No... it couldn’t be that.

“I’m not looking for sympathy for myself. I’m really not .”

Was he hoping Sebastian would be sympathetic toward me ?

That didn’t make any sense. There wasn’t a potential telling of the story, as far as I could come up with, that wouldn’t be sympathetic toward me.

I had been the one sitting under that tree in my wedding dress as the evening rain began to fall

and the dirt under me turned to mud. I was the one who refused to leave that spot because I still believed he would show up.

No matter who told the story, I was pretty sure there would not be a lack of sympathy for me .

Unless, of course, Wes was hoping the husband of our childhood friend would be sympathetic enough to give him a platform to

drop out of the race without ever bringing me into the story at all.

“What’s wrong?”

I startled at her voice, and the slight shake of my head caused a salty tear to break free and land on my lip. I rubbed my palm across my cheek and sniffed. “I have to go. Sorry. Can we talk more later?”

She was staring at me like I was Daryl Hannah in Splash and she was Eugene Levy regretting the role she had played in getting me put into a tank. “Addie, are you okay? What is it?

Did I say something wrong?”

“No. Of course not. Really, I’m fine. I’m just... thinking. Really, let’s talk more later, okay?”

She nodded. “Sure. Whatever you need.”

I hurried to the door, turning back to wave as I reached it. “Thanks, Lai. I’ll, um... I want to buy those pants later,

okay?”

She grabbed them off the counter and walked toward me. “Here. Take them.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“Really, it’s fine. Pay me later. Whatever. Just take them.”

Warmth for her eased its way up through my chest, and another tear fell. I really did not understand what was happening. “Thanks.”

I reached out and placed my hand on the pants but hesitated when my eyes caught a display on the wall. “Actually, if it’s

not too much trouble, could I grab a couple pairs of gloves too?”