“Oh, good grief. What are you wearing?” I muttered as I watched him wave to me from the porch of the Inn Between, button up

his coat, and begin carefully making his way down the steps, keeping an eye out for icy patches.

“Hey.” He smiled and climbed up into the truck beside me.

“You look nice.”

“Oh, thanks.” He buckled his seat belt, faced me, and did a quick survey from head to toe and back again. There he was looking

like he’d just come from Forbes magazine’s “Most Eligible Senators” photo shoot while I was trying to recall if I had remembered to put on deodorant. Heat

rose in my cheeks, and I involuntarily held in my stomach—not that he would be able to detect my actual body hidden beneath

my oldest pair of jeans, my favorite baggy sweater of Joel’s, and my parka built for function, not form—as he replied, “You

too.”

I didn’t recognize my body in the mirror lately.

That’d been something I was coming to terms with even before having to face the perceived image of myself through the eyes of someone who had last seen me when my metabolism burned off food faster than I could eat it and my lungs had only ever known how to function with reduced oxygen at high elevation.

Years spent at sea level had combined with grief and depression and poor choices to turn me into a woman who couldn’t drop the extra fifteen pounds no matter what she tried, and who honestly hadn’t tried very hard at all.

Adelaide Springs didn’t have a gym, and I just couldn’t get myself excited about running down the street, on display for all to see, while I dripped sweat and gasped for air like my tank supply had reached critical levels in a space movie.

“I’m overdressed, aren’t I?” Wes asked, chuckling softly.

I laughed and shifted the ’76 Chevy into gear after stealing one more glance at his blushing face. “But you really do look

nice. You know, if we’re heading to dinner at Pineapple and Pearls.”

He stopped laughing, and his eyes snapped in my direction. “You know Pineapple and Pearls? I love Pineapple and Pearls.”

I hadn’t really intended to hint at any details about my life, but then again, I also hadn’t intended to be hanging out with

him like we were just normal, unscarred-by-past-trauma old friends either. What could it hurt to let him in on the secret

that I was aware of—and extremely judgmental of—the upscale, pretentious Capitol Hill establishment that he apparently loved ?

“Of course you do,” I muttered and pulled out onto the county road.

“Have you been there?”

I guffawed at the thought. The thought of spending five hundred dollars for dinner, yes, but mostly the thought of the running

commentary Joel Elwyn would have provided at a place where the dress code encourages emerald-green tuxedo dinner jackets and

gold-sequin dresses.

“Um, no. Joel, my husband, um... He was more the twelve-dollar pizza at home, watching television, maybe drinking a beer

type.” That overly simplified description felt wrong. “He just... Well, we both had pretty stressful jobs. Him especially.

Schedules were crazy, and if we actually got the chance to both be home in the evening, there was no chance we were going

to waste it bottlenecked on the Beltway.”

“Hang on. You lived in DC?”

“Bethesda, but yeah. I told you I was CIA.”

“Well, yeah, but...” He scoffed and lifted his hands in front of him. “I don’t know. I guess it just didn’t click. I mean,

I live in DC—part-time, anyway.”

“Yes. I’m aware. Last I checked, that was sort of home-base operations for the United States Senate, right? I did sort of

assume you spent some time there.”

He chuckled and covered his face with a hand. “Sorry. I’m dumb.”

“You’re not dumb. I’m just giving you a hard time.” I turned onto Main and slowed down to better maneuver the icy, narrower

street. “My job was a little lower profile by design, so I know this is new information you’re processing. I, on the other

hand, couldn’t have avoided news of you even if I wanted to.”

“And?”

“And I really would have liked to, yes.” I pulled into a diagonal parking space in front of the Bean Franklin and shifted

the truck into Park. “So look, before we head over to the restaurant—”

“Oh, is this not where we’re eating...?” His voice trailed off as he pulled his vision away from me and looked out the

front window instead. “Wow. Okay. That’s... Huh. That’s weird.”

I glanced from him to the storefront to see what he was looking at, and by the time my eyes made it back to him, his eyes

were shimmering under the bright moon and the streetlights. In an instant I realized what I had carelessly and flippantly

subjected him to.

“Oh, Wes, I’m sorry. I just wanted to park and talk for a second. I didn’t even think—”

His hand landed on mine, and our eyes locked as I prepared to shift into Reverse. “No, it’s fine. It’s good. It’s...” He

released my hand, but my eyes were still held captive. “I miss her.”

“Me too.”

Once upon a time, I’d thought that taking over Marietta’s would maybe be our life.

As Wes’s mom got sicker and I spent more and more time there helping her out, and as she shared with me the intricacies of running the local dining institution—who was allergic to what and how each person in town liked their eggs and their coffee—I’d thought maybe Wes and I would carry on her legacy.

He wouldn’t hear of it, of course.

There were three types of people in Adelaide Springs: those who had never known anything else and had no desire to leave,

those who were desperate to get out, and those seeking a fresh start or a second chance. Marietta Hobbes fell firmly into

the third category, while her son was the textbook example of the second. I, meanwhile, had my own exclusive fourth category:

I would go anywhere or do anything if it meant I got to spend my life with Wes Hobbes.

“I can’t believe your dad still has this truck.”

I blinked in confusion at the startling non sequitur. “What?”

“What did he used to call it? Bertha? Gertrude?”

“Beulah! And that’s not what he ‘used’ to call ‘it.’ That is her name!”

“Of course. Forgive me.”

“I’m just saying, you need to watch yourself, Hobbes. Beulah is sacred. I learned to drive in Beulah—”

“ I learned to drive in Beulah,” he countered, throwing his head back and laughing.

“Did you?”

“Yes. Your dad would take me out driving while Mom was at chemotherapy.”

And just like that, the laughter was gone. He leaned forward and looked up at the awning. “I forced myself not to think too

much about her for a long time. It was easy enough, honestly, because I was busy thinking about you, and then I was always

focused on... well, on me . But I’ve been thinking about her a whole lot more lately. Since Wray got sick, really.”

I cleared my throat softly. “I’m sorry you had to go through that again. Losing someone to cancer, I mean.”

“I was determined to do it better with her.”

“Better? Better how?”

The breath I hadn’t realized was being held captive in my chest finally released as he pulled his eyes from mine and looked back toward the Bean Franklin with a sigh.

“I don’t know. I just wasn’t very present with Mom, I don’t think.”

“You were a kid. How many of us are ever actually present as kids? I think you did the best you could.”

He was still staring through the front windows and probably seeing straight into the past. Marietta sending the five of us

outside when our laughter got so loud she couldn’t hear customers’ breakfast orders. Marietta twirling from table to table,

kissing the tops of our heads or squeezing our cheeks as she passed. Marietta snapping her fingers at us when we got a little

too touchy-feely, practically sitting on top of each other in the corner booth. I’d worked so hard for so long to eliminate

my special goggles to the past—the ones that filtered out the present and could see only memories of Wes when they surveyed

the corners of this town—but now they were covering my eyes and seemingly taunting me with a refrain of “ As if you could ever really forget. ”

“Mostly I just think of how disappointed she’d be in me.”

Marietta Hobbes had been one of the quirkiest people I’d ever met in my life. The quirkiest and the kindest, and certainly

the funniest. It was Marietta who had loved puns and gone absolutely berserk with them in her naming of daily specials. It

was Marietta who helped me deal with my first period, when it was just a little too much for my normally unflappable but recently

widowed doctor dad. And it was Marietta who kept selling Mary Kay long after it had stopped being profitable for her to do

so, simply because Laila’s mom was distracted by a terrible marriage, Brynn’s mom was awful , and my mom was dead. Someone needed to teach us how to take care of our skin and apply makeup tastefully, so she gave us

lessons and all her product samples.

“‘There’s great allure in styles demure. But if you’re brazen, you’ll be a raisin.’”

Wes faced me with narrowed eyes. “I’m sorry?”

I laughed. “Something your mom taught us about applying makeup. She also said, and I quote, ‘In eras recent, we keep it decent. In days of yore, they played the whore.’”

Laughter burst from him, and he swiped at his eyes, destroying a tear I’d been keeping my eye on. “Yep. That sounds about

right.”

“She also taught me this acronym to use as a checklist to help determine if I was ready to have sex—”

“ ABSTINENCE VERSUS RESPONSIBILITY ?”

I slapped his arm in a fit of hysterics as he said the words.

“Yeah, I got that one too. I always figured she thought by the time I got through all the letters, I’d lose interest.”

We sat there laughing together and reminiscing about Marietta until Owen, the owner of Cassidy’s Bar & Grill, walked by on

the sidewalk in front of us. So much was suddenly happening in my brain. I was waving to Owen, and I was watching Wes to see