Bryce was tiring, too, in a completely different way. Everything Lucas did still fascinated him, from the fact that he flossed his teeth every night (Dad had warned him about that—they couldn’t afford a dentist, so Lucas had been instructed to take damn good care of his teeth) to the fact that he knew how to cook a meal.

He tried to stay out of the way. Kept his head down, showered at night after the rest of them had gone to bed because Didi made comments about the hot water running out. He never asked for seconds and always made sure his room was neat. He worked to catch up in school and wrote to his father and Steph, because a cell phone wasn’t one of the items given to him. But he emailed from the library every day, sitting at the third computer in the second row. He also sent handwritten letters to Dad because Dad had said in one of their weekly phone calls (which Didi resented) that getting mail was really great. And he sure would love it if Lucas could visit.

Lucas asked. He waited until he could have a word alone with his uncle. “Sure, of course, I’ll see when we can make it,” Joe said, but nothing materialized. He asked again, and then again. Late at night at the end of his second month, he overheard Joe and Didi talking through the air-conditioning vent that made for excellent eavesdropping. “I think I’ll take Lucas to see my brother tomorrow,” Joe said affably, and Lucas actually jolted upright, his heart leaping in his chest.

Silence, then, “Excuse me?”

“It’d be good for him. He’s having a tough time.”

“Are you an idiot, Joe? You want to take a child to a prison? Can you imagine how that will impact your son? Lucas is a bad enough influence on him as it is. And I think I’ve bent over backward here, taking him in the way we’ve had to. This is not how I envisioned life, you know. Now you want to take him to see your criminal, drug-dealing brother?”

As usual, Didi got her way.

So the letters and emails had to suffice.

Then, after seven months, word came that Dan was being transferred. Overcrowding in Illinois prisons; Dad was going to a facility in Arizona next week. Joe broke the news at dinner, and Didi’s pinched face froze even harder.

“Do you think you can take me to see him this weekend?” Lucas asked, his fork was clenched in his hand.

“You bet, sport,” his uncle said.

“We’ll see,” Didi answered. “This is not really dinner conversation, though, is it?” She inclined her head toward Bryce, who was texting someone and smiling.

“Please, Aunt Didi.” He hated calling her aunt. She didn’t deserve the title, but maybe, please God, it would soften her up.

“I said, we’ll see, Lucas.”

That meant no.

Dad was being moved on Monday. It was already Wednesday.

That night, after the family had gone upstairs and no voices drifted down through the vents, Lucas packed his cheap backpack, made a couple of peanut butter sandwiches, taking care to wipe down the counter and put the knife in the dishwasher. Left the house, closing the door silently behind him.

His plan was pretty basic: he’d get to his sister’s place and get her to borrow her friend’s car. The prison was about three hours out of Chicago. If she couldn’t take him, Tommy O’Shea’s parents might. They’d liked him well enough back in the day. Once, Lucas had intervened in a fight on Tommy’s behalf and got a black eye for his trouble. Maybe it’d be enough to get a ride. Or he’d hitchhike.

He made it out of the development and walked about a mile to the train tracks. It’d be perfect if he could hop a freighter like the hobos of yore, but the trains on this track were commuter trains and flew by at this time of night. But the tracks did lead into Chicago, so Lucas walked along them, his heart both heavy and light.

It’d be good to see Dad again. But it would be terrible to see him, too, because this would be the last time for a long time. A really long time.

Arizona...that was two days of driving, and Lucas didn’t even have a learner’s permit.

He was about two miles out of town when he looked over his shoulder.

Shit.

Bryce was following him. His cousin raised his hand and trotted to close the distance between them.

“What are you doing?” Lucas said.

“Hey! I should ask you that, right? Where are you going? You running away?”

Lucas took a breath. “I’m going to say goodbye to my dad. Don’t follow me, okay? I’ll be back in a day or so.”

“No, it’s cool! I’ll come with you, in fact.”

“Bryce, if you come with me, your mom will have the state police out looking for you. Go home, buddy.”

“Why? It’ll be fun! The two of us, together!”

“No. You can’t come.”

“Well, I’m not going back.” Bryce grinned, but there was a hardness there, the stubborn tone of a kid who was used to getting his way. “He’s my uncle. I wanna say goodbye, too.”

“Then go back home and ask your mother to take you.”

“Yeah, right. She’d never let me go to a prison.”

“Exactly. What do you think she’s gonna do when you don’t come down for breakfast?”

Bryce shrugged. In the distance, a train whistle sounded, as lonely and sad as the call of a wolf at this late hour.

Lucas turned his back and kept walking. Bryce fell in step beside him. “This’ll be great. We’ll go see Uncle Dan then maybe hitchhike back or something. Maybe we can stop at your old place and hang out.”

For a flash, Lucas could feel how good it would be to punch Bryce. Hard. Hard enough to knock him down. To tell him to get his head out of his ass, to see things from someone else’s point of view, just once, and not be such an idiot. To go home and enjoy his status as Perfect and Adored Son and not co-opt this one thing, this goodbye to his father. To acknowledge that the loss of his mother and father hurt, goddamn it. To recognize that this wasn’t some sort of cousins-ho! adventure. It was Lucas’s chance to say goodbye to his father, who’d worked so hard and been so stupid and wrong and was such a good guy even so.

“This is fun,” Bryce said now. “I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever been out this late at night.” He smiled.

“Yeah,” Lucas said.

The train whistle sounded again, and Lucas put his foot on the rail. A faint vibration hummed through it.

In a flash, he saw how he could lose Bryce. He could cross the tracks at the last minute; Bryce wouldn’t follow him because he’d be scared of getting hurt. When they were little, he never tried the stunts Lucas could pull on his bike, wheelies and jumps and spins. He wouldn’t even dive off the dock at the lake where Joe had taken them last month.

So Lucas could sprint across the tracks, and Bryce wouldn’t follow. The train would come, and it was a long one from the sound of it; Lucas hadn’t grown up two blocks from the tracks for nothing. Then he’d run ahead as fast and far as he could, hidden by the train, and duck out of sight. Bryce would give up and go home, and Lucas could make it up to him when he got back. He just had to wait until the train got close enough, so Bryce wouldn’t dare follow.

It almost worked.

When he estimated that he had four seconds until the train passed, he bolted onto the tracks.

But instead of being on the other side, he jerked to a stop right in the middle. You’re supposed to be across by now, a quiet part of his brain calmly informed him.

One Mississippi.

His foot was stuck. Wedged tight between two cross ties. He wore Converse high-tops, the kind that went up to the ankle. Laced up tight because Didi had fits if either boy had untied shoes. Which meant he couldn’t just pull his foot out, and wouldn’t have time to untie it. The laces were double-knotted.

Two Mississippi.

He yanked and yanked, and time froze, and thoughts flew through his head, as clear and cold as a January night on the plains.

At least it’ll be fast.

Bryce is gonna freak.

Poor Steph, hope the kids will do okay.

All the while, he lunged with his entire being, but the shoe didn’t budge.

Three Mississippi.

The light washed over him, blinding him, and the train whistle was screaming—sorry, conductor, not your fault—and he looked at it, all that whiteness and noise and figured this was it, it’d be okay, Mom would be there, and—

And then something crashed into him, and he landed hard and was rolling on the gravel and dirt and the train was roaring past, shaking the earth.

Four Mississippi.

When the train finally passed, the quiet took a minute to return. The sound of hard breathing filled the air.

“Jesus,” Bryce said faintly, looking at him. A smile crept on to his face. “Jesus Christ, we’re still alive, thank you, God!”

Bryce had saved him. Bryce had risked his own life to save him, had hurtled across the tracks, tackled him and knocked him free.

The kid had come through.

And even though he was glad not to be a stain on the tracks and the conductor’s conscience, Lucas felt his heart slide down a little. “Thanks,” he said.

“Are you kidding? I wasn’t just gonna let you die! That was unbelievable!”

Lucas’s ankle was starting to swell from the force of being ripped out the shoe, which remained unharmed on the track. He tried to stand, but white-hot fire flashed up his leg.

“It’s okay, I’ll help you,” Bryce said.

And he did. Three miles back to the house, Bryce kept hold of him, carried his backpack, never grew tired. Got an ice pack and an Ace bandage and some Motrin. He suggested they not tell anyone about this, and Lucas agreed. They told Didi and Joe he’d tripped, and when he still couldn’t walk without pain a week later, Joe took him to the E.R., where the doctor told him he’d torn a ligament. Crutches for a month, physical therapy for two.

He never did get to see his father again.

Dan Campbell died nineteen months later, stabbed in the laundry room of his prison which, he’d said in his letters to Lucas, was much nicer than the one he’d left.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“SO WE NEED a plan,” Colleen said, scrubbing a countertop with Clorox Clean-Up. They were at Faith’s new house, a snug little Craftsman bungalow two blocks off the town green. “A safety net. I need a man, Faith.”

“I’m totally on board,” Faith said.

“As you should be, since I’m your best friend and have been your maid of honor twice.”

“And I appreciate it. Leave those counters alone, Coll. God, he really freaked you out, didn’t he?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Faith rolled her eyes.

Yeah, okay. Stress-cleaning. Colleen set down the sponge, took off her rubber gloves and turned her attention to unpacking a box full of photos. Here was one from Faith’s sister’s wedding, when Faith had been about ten. Gorgeous, all of those Hollands. The perfect family, unlike her own mess.

“About my new man,” she said. “I need someone hot and romantic and intelligent with a great sense of humor who can cook and is also a cowboy or a firefighter.”

Faith snorted. “Okay, I’m thinking...uh...cowboys are pretty scarce. And for hot firefighters, we only have Gerard.”

“You know what would be great? A tragic widower type, like Jude Law in The Holiday. Definitely my type. Or Hugh Jackman in Les Mis. Le sigh!”

“Right, right. Impoverished fugitives who burst into song. Coming up empty, Coll.”

Colleen flopped onto the couch. “That’s the entire problem with living in this tiny town. Fine. Will Jack date me? Can you make him?”

“Of course I can.” Faith took the photo and put it on the mantel. “But you do really want to settle down, right?” Faith said. “I don’t want you to break my brother’s heart.”

“Of course I want to settle down! This whole domestic bliss thing you and Levi have going...I’m burning with jealousy. In a loving, supportive way.”

It was true. Levi was hot and grouchy and wonderful, and whenever Colleen saw the way he looked at Faith—that protective, alpha thing, my woman, people, and yes, I have been banging her silly...well, sure. She wanted that. Plus, she hadn’t been banged silly in ages.

“Faith, what’s wrong with me? How come I never found anyone? Anyone real, that is?”

“Huh. Let me think about that for a second. Plus, I’m starving.”

“Eating for two?”

“It’s not official yet, so don’t say anything, and yes, of course you’re godmother. Even if Pru and Honor will kill me for it.”

“I hope they do kill you. Then I get your baby.”

“I think Levi would have something to say about that.” Her hand went to her belly in that primal, beautiful way.

“I can handle Levi,” Colleen said. “Come on. I brought you a salad. All that nice spinach is good for my godchild. And it’s loaded with bacon for you.”

They sat at the kitchen table and ate. Not only had Colleen brought the salad, courtesy of her brother, but also some whole-grain artisanal bread from Lorelei’s Sunrise Bakery, sparkling water and Lorelei’s famous carrot cupcakes for dessert.

The breeze came through the open windows that overlooked the small, precious backyard. Soon there’d be a little kid toddling around out there. It was nice to picture.

“I think the reason you haven’t found anyone,” Faith said carefully, “is that men are scared of you. They want you, of course, because come on. Look at this.” She waved her hand in front of Colleen. “Beautiful. But it’s intimidating. You have a smart mouth, you’re successful and you know everyone’s secrets. It’s a lot. And then there’s Connor.”