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I opened the door to the ornate log house I’d grown up in and silently peeked my nose in to make sure I was alone. My Prius

was parked out front, so I knew Dad was home. He’d been insisting on driving my car and sending me with Beulah all winter

long because he “valued the better gas mileage.” (Yes, of course. That made total sense, considering the two miles he drove

every day, and had nothing whatsoever to do with Beulah being a more reliable vehicle in winter driving conditions and his

desire to keep me encased in Bubble Wrap straight on through my AARP years.) But if he was asleep, I was as good as alone.

I was greeted by the creaks and pops that accompanied the ticking of the clock in the kitchen and a fire burning in the woodstove,

but otherwise... silence. I shut and locked the door behind me (Dad insisted the locking was unnecessary, and I knew he

was probably right, but I’d seen too much of the world to ever return to those Adelaide Springs sensibilities) and hung my

coat on the hook by the door. Then I tiptoed in, silently begging the old hickory beneath my feet to vocalize its age just

a little bit less.

“I don’t think I’ve caught you sneaking in after curfew since you were a teenager.”

I gasped in response to my dad’s greeting from the upstairs banister.

Well, so much for that.

“Could that be because I haven’t had a curfew since I was a teenager?”

“Maybe that has something to do with it.” He smiled at me. “How are the roads?”

“Awful, and it’s not looking like we’ll get above freezing tomorrow. And then did I hear another storm is blowing in?”

“That’s what Fenton says, so I doubt it.”

I laughed and blew a kiss up to him. “See you in the morning.” I began walking down the hallway to my room, but I didn’t get

very far.

“Adelaide Pearl Atwater, you stop right there.”

I stopped dead in my tracks, a shiver of ridiculous, unfounded good-girl angst running down my spine. My dad had always been

soft-spoken. Gentle. But there was an unmistakable authority that shot through the center of his words like a steel rod whenever

he meant business. Not to mention when he used my middle name, of course. I took a step backward, then another, and looked

up at him again. “Yes, sir?”

“Sorry. Elwyn,” he backpedaled with a smile, dissipating all the seriousness like a gust of wind across a field of dandelion

puffs.

“That’s more like it. Atwater-Elwyn is also acceptable.”

He shook his head. “No, that won’t work. That’s your professional name, and on a professional level, you outrank me.” He made

his way down the stairs, the audible creaks of the wood coming across like a dubbed soundtrack of his joints until they warmed

up and loosened about the time he got to the downstairs landing. “I can’t lecture you if you outrank me.”

“Oh, I’m about to get a lecture, am I?”

“I suppose that’s up to you.” He kissed the top of my head as I leaned on the railing and looked up at him. “Could just be

a conversation if you weren’t doing all you could to avoid me—”

“I’m not avoiding you!”

That might not have been entirely true. I thought back to this morning and how I’d been in such a hurry to get out of the house before my dad woke up that I’d forgotten my gloves.

Then there were the new gloves I had purchased rather than swing back by the house in the light of day and risk seeing him.

And even, I supposed, the fact that I had used a little bit of secret-agent voodoo to convince my friends to host Wes and me at their restaurant on what had been planned as a rare night off for them.

(Secret-agent voodoo, if you’re wondering, looked a lot like me saying, “I’m not sure where to take Wes for dinner tonight,” and Laila saying, “You guys should come to Milo’s!

Cole will cook. It’s settled.”) However it ended up happening, let’s just say I didn’t not know that my dad would be eating at Cassidy’s, the only other dinnertime restaurant in town.

Dad cocked one eyebrow as he passed by me and then spent a few seconds stoking the fire. When he was satisfied with his work,

he sat down on the couch.

“Do you miss flying?” he asked, surprising me with the abrupt subject change. What was with people this evening asking me

if I missed my past?

At least this answer was a lot simpler.

I sat on the other end of the couch, slipped my shoes off, and pulled my legs up under me, facing him. “I really don’t.” Flying. I hadn’t spent time consciously dwelling on memories of flying in years. “I dream about it sometimes. The good and the bad.

Sometimes I’m trying to survive maneuvers or my throttle freezes up or I’m surrounded by lightning. But usually I’m just soaring

out over a peaceful body of water, like I’m Meryl Streep in Out of Africa .”

“Gazelles and elephants and all?”

I shook my head. “No, sadly. Robert Redford isn’t even there. Just... flying. Pretty boring, really.”

“I think that sounds pretty great.”

I wrapped my arms around my knees and tried to guess what was behind this topic of conversation. So far I had no insight,

but I knew my dad was a man of few words, and the ones he spoke were almost always intentional and meaningful.

“Do you miss it?”

He nodded slowly and stared at the fire. “I do. I don’t know why, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.”

The air force was, I guess, one of the things we most had in common, and it was also one of the many things we never talked

about. I wasn’t sure why we never talked about it, but I couldn’t even remember the last time it had come up between us. It

had been years, probably.

“I don’t know,” he continued with a sigh. “Maybe it’s just because I’m getting old and the clock seems to be speeding up.

Makes you nostalgic for the periods of life when you thought you might live forever.”

I scooted over to the middle cushion and snuggled under his arm as he lifted it to welcome me. “Flying was just a means to

an end for me, I think. I got my hours, did what I needed to do, and then got a desk job the very first chance I got. To tell

you the truth, I don’t think I ever stopped being scared half to death every time I went up.”

He pulled away slightly and looked down at me. “You never told me that.”

“Of course I didn’t, Sergeant Atwater.” I lifted my left hand and saluted him very half-heartedly, causing him to chuckle.

“I remember when I was little, Mom was always telling me these stories about how heroic you were in Vietnam. She showed me

letters you wrote to her and to Grandma, and everything was epic. How could I possibly tell you that before my first solo

flight I threw up for six hours straight, and then by the time I got back on land, I had to be hooked up to an IV and a medic

had to babysit me because I kept passing out?” I covered my face in still-fresh humiliation. “I’m not sure who it was, but

while I was recovering, I heard someone say the words, ‘This one may not be cut out for the air.’ In the United States Air

Force. Seriously, how could I have told you that?”

“Well, Lieutenant Atwater-Elwyn.” He copied my half-hearted salute.

“You could have realized that I’m your father first. Besides, I wasn’t actually all that accomplished or heroic.

Your mother lied a lot.” I laughed as he looked down at me again and winked.

“No... ,” he tagged on softly, settling farther into the couch. “I suppose I did okay.”

“Yeah. Pretty okay. I’m fully aware I only outrank you because of the nonflying stuff. If I hadn’t walked through a few well-timed

open doors and been freakishly good at the boring paperwork everyone else hated, I probably would have retired airman first

class—if first class isn’t pushing it a bit.”

“At any rate, I’m sorry we didn’t talk about it more.” He took a deep breath and paused in that way he always did that I had

come to understand meant he was taking the time to carefully choose the next words out of his mouth. “Are there other things

we should have talked about more?”

Doc Atwater was more sensitive than many men of his generation, but I knew certain things weren’t easy. Certain things had

never been easy. He’d raised me alone from the time I was eleven, and for a bristly retired air force medic, he’d handled

the “girl stuff” pretty well. Of course, if we’re being honest, I’d made it pretty easy, all things considered. I’d never

rebelled, really, because I didn’t want to disappoint him. I’d been a good student, had helped him in the clinic, had handled

most of the cooking and household chores, and even managed to have a group of friends who did all they could to help too.

Not that I could take any credit for that. We’d been a good group of kids who loved one another pretty much from the time

we were born, and they’d also all happened to love my parents.

Basically, the theme of my childhood after Mom died was that my dad and I were a team, in it together. From day one. And no

matter the pain we were each dealing with, we looked out for each other.

“Like what?”

I rolled my eyes at myself as soon as I asked the question. “Like what?” Yeah, great question. Whatever could he be referring to? The fact that in the last twenty-two years, I was pretty sure Wes’s

name had been said between just the two of us approximately.

.. let’s see here... oh yeah, never ?

Or maybe he thought that after avoiding his calls for eight months (when Joel was dead and I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone), then suddenly calling to tell him my husband had died (once I got the all-clear and the fully vetted cover story from the agency), then avoiding his calls for another three months (when I was spiraling out of control), then showing up on his doorstep with assurances I was fine and healthy

and just looking for a change of scenery, I had left some things unsaid. Hard to tell, really. “Like what?” Yeah, I wonder.

“I’m not sure I did what I should have done to support you when you got back,” he said. “I should have done more.”