he night before Clare’s wedding, the four friends got together at Maddie’s house in Boise. They sat in Maddie’s living room in front of a big fireplace made of river rock. The house in Boise was furnished in brown and beige tones, and moments earlier Maddie had cracked open a bottle of Moët. The four women raised their champagne glasses and toasted Clare’s future happiness with her fiancé Sebastian Vaughan.

A little over a year ago, all four women had been single. Now Lucy was married and Clare was about to get married. Adele continued to believe she was cursed with bad dates, and Maddie had fallen in love and gotten her heart broken. Adele was the only one out of the four whose life hadn’t drastically changed. Although Maddie had yet to confide to her friends about her feelings for Mick. This was Clare’s night. Not a pity party for Maddie. It had been a week since she’d seen Mick in the park with Tanya, and the image still made her sick.

“My mother has invited half of Boise to the wedding. She has been in her…” Clare paused and leaned to the left to look behind Maddie’s chair. “There’s a cat in your house.”

Maddie turned around and looked at Snowball, flagrantly disregarding the rules as she climbed up the satin drapes. Maddie clapped her hands and stood. “Snowball.” The cat looked over at Maddie and dropped to the floor.

“Do you know that cat?” Adele asked.

“I kind of adopted it.”

“Kind of?”

Lucy leaned forward. “You hate cats.”

“I know.”

Clare covered her lips with two fingers. “You named your cat Snowball. That’s so cute.”

“So unlike you,” Lucy added.

Adele tilted her head to one side and looked concerned. “Are you all right? You go away for a few months and come back with a cat. What else have you been doing up there in Truly that we don’t know about?”

Maddie lifted her glass and finished off the champagne. “Nothing.”

Lucy raised a suspicious brow. “How’s the book?”

“Actually, it’s going fairly well,” she answered truthfully. “I’m a little over halfway finished.” The next half was going to be the rough part. The part where she would have to write about the night her mother died.

“How’s Mick Hennessy?” Adele asked.

Maddie rose and moved to the coffee table. “I don’t know.” She poured herself more champagne. “He won’t talk to me.”

“Did you finally tell him who you really are?”

Maddie nodded and refilled her friends’ glasses. “Yes, I told him, and he didn’t take it very well.”

“At least you didn’t sleep with him.”

Maddie looked away and took a drink from her glass.

“Oh, my God!” Clare gasped. “You fell off the wagon with Mick Hennessy?”

Maddie shrugged and took her seat. “I couldn’t help myself.”

Adele nodded. “He’s hot.”

“A lot of men are hot.” Lucy took a sip as she studied Maddie. Her brows shot up her forehead. “You’re in love with him.”

“It doesn’t matter. He hates me.”

Clare, the most kindhearted of the four, said, “I’m sure that’s not true. No one can hate you.”

That was so blatantly untrue, Maddie couldn’t help a smile, while Lucy coughed on her champagne.

Adele sat back and laughed. “Maddie Jones got a cat and fell in love. Hell has officially frozen over.”

The day after Clare’s wedding, Maddie packed up her cat and headed to Truly. The wedding had been beautiful, of course. And at the reception, Maddie had partied and danced the night away. Several of the men she’d danced with had been good-looking and single, and she wondered if she’d ever get to a point in her life when she would not compare every man she met to Mick Hennessy.

She spent the rest of September writing and reliving the days before her mother’s death. She inserted parts of interviews and diary entries, including the very last:

My baby will turn six next year and will go to first grade. I can’t believe how big she is. I wish I could give her more. Maybe I can. Loch said that he loves me. I’ve heard that before. He says he’s going to leave his wife and be with me. He says he doesn’t love Rose, and he’s going to tell her that he doesn’t want to live with her anymore. I’ve heard that before too. I want to believe him. No, I do believe him!! I just hope he isn’t lying. I know he loves his children. He talks about them a lot. He worries that when he tells his wife he wants a divorce his kids will have to witness a big scene. He’s afraid she’ll throw things or do something really crazy like start his car on fire. I worry that she will hurt Loch and I told him so. He just laughed and said Rose would never hurt anyone.

The hardest part of the book hadn’t been reliving the death of her mother moment by moment, as she’d always thought. That had been hard, to be sure, but the most difficult part had been writing the end and saying good-bye. In writing the book, she realized that she’d never said good-bye to her mother. Never had any sort of closure. Now she did, and it felt as if one part of her life had ended.

When she was through with the book, it was mid-October and she was physically and emotionally drained. She fell into bed and slept for almost twenty hours. When she woke, she felt as if a thorn had been taken from her chest. A thorn that she’d never even known was embedded there. She was free from the past and she hadn’t even known she’d needed freeing.

Maddie fed Snowball, then jumped in the shower. Her cat had yet to sleep in the bed Maddie had bought for her. She liked the video, and the carrier not at all. Maddie had given up on any sort of rules. Snowball liked to spend most of her time lying on the windowsill or in Maddie’s lap.

Maddie washed her hair and scrubbed her body with watermelon-scented sugar scrub and wondered what she was going to do with her life. Which was such an odd question, really, when she thought about it. Until she’d finished the book, she hadn’t realized how much of her life had been wrapped up in the past. It had dictated her future without her even knowing it.

Maybe she’d take a vacation. Someplace warm. Just pack a swimsuit and a pair of flip-flops and hit a nice beach. Maybe Adele needed a break from her cycle of cursed dating.

As Maddie toweled herself dry, she thought of Mick. She was thirty-four, and he was her first real love. She would always love him even though he could never love her back. But perhaps there was something she could do for him. She could give him the same gift that she’d given herself.

Mick’s gaze rose from the bottle in his hand to the woman walking in the front door. He set the Corona on the bar and watched her as she moved between the tables. Mort’s was slow, even for a Monday night.

Her hair curled about her shoulders like the first time he’d seen her, and she wore a black bulky sweater that hid the wonders of her body. She carried a box beneath one arm. He hadn’t seen her since Founders Day when she’d told him that he couldn’t handle the truth about her. She’d been right. He couldn’t, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t missed her every damn day. Didn’t mean that his gaze didn’t drink up everything about her. Trying to forget about her hadn’t worked. Nothing had worked.

Above Trace Adkins on the jukebox, she said, “Hello, Mick.” Her voice poured through him like warmed brandy.

“Maddie.”

“May I talk to you somewhere private?”

He wondered if she’d come to tell him good-bye and how he’d feel about that. He nodded and the two of them moved to his office. Her shoulder touched his, adding need to the warm mix spreading across his flesh. He wanted Maddie Jones. Wanted her like he was starving, wanted to jump on her and eat her up. She shut the door, and the urge got stronger. He moved behind his desk, as far away from her as possible. “Maybe you should leave the—”

“Please let me talk,” she interrupted and held up a hand. “I have something to say and then I’ll leave.” She swallowed hard and stared directly into his eyes. “The first time I recall being afraid, I was five. I’m not talking about Halloween and boogeyman afraid. I am talking sick-to-my-stomach afraid.

“A sheriff ’s deputy woke me up to tell me my great-aunt was coming to get me and that my mother was dead. I didn’t understand what had happened. I didn’t understand why my mother had gone away, but I knew she was never coming back. I cried so hard I threw up all over the backseat of my great-aunt Martha’s Cadillac.”

He remembered that night too. Remembered the backseat of the cop car and Meg sobbing beside him. What was the point of remembering?

“When I met you,” she continued, “I didn’t expect to like you, but I did. I certainly didn’t expect to like you so much that I ended up in bed with you, but I did. I didn’t expect to fall in love with you, but I did that too. From the beginning, I knew I should have told you who I was. I knew I should have told you a hundred different times. I knew it was the right thing to do, but I also knew that I’d lose you if I did. I knew when I told you, you’d leave and never come back. And that’s what happened.”

She set a Xerox copier-paper box on his desk. “I want you to have this. It’s the book I moved here to write, and I want you to read it. Please.” She looked down at the box. “The disk is with it, and I’ve deleted it from my computer. This is the only copy. Do what you want with both. Throw them away, run over them with your truck, or have a bonfire. It’s up to you.”

She looked back at him. Her brown eyes steady, calm. “I hope that someday you can forgive me. Not because I personally need your forgiveness. I don’t. But I’ve learned something in the past few months, and that is just because you refuse to acknowledge something, refuse to look at it or think about it, doesn’t mean it’s not there, that it doesn’t affect you and the choices you make in your life.”

She licked her lips. “I forgive your mother. Not because the Bible tells me I should forgive. I guess I’m not that good a Christian, because I’m just not that magnanimous. I forgive her because, in forgiving her, I am free of all the anger and bitterness of the past, and that is what I want for you too.

“I’ve thought about what I’ve done since I moved to Truly, and I’m sorry that I hurt you, Mick. But I’m not sorry that I met you and fell in love with you. Loving you has broken my heart and caused me pain, but it made me a better person. I love you, Mick, and I hope that someday you find someone you can love. You deserve more in life than a string of women you don’t really care about and who don’t care all that much for you. Loving you taught me that. It taught me how it feels to love a man, and I hope that someday I can find someone who will love me the way that you can’t. Because I deserve more than a string of men who don’t really care about me.” Her gaze moved over his face, then returned to his eyes. “I came here tonight to give you the book and because I wanted to say good-bye.”

“You’re leaving?” He didn’t have to wonder how he’d feel about her good-bye.

“Yes. I have to.”

Her leaving was best, no matter that it felt like she was reaching into his chest and ripping out his heart all over again. “When?”

She shrugged and walked to the door. “I don’t know. Soon.” She looked over her shoulder one last time and said, “Good-bye, Mick. Have a good life.” Then she was gone and he was left with the scent of her skin in the air and a big emptiness in his chest. The red sweater she’d worn the night she’d come into his office wearing a white halter dress still hung on a hook behind the door. He knew that it still smelled like strawberries.

He sat in his chair and leaned his head back. He thought of old drunk Reuben Sawyer spending three decades sitting on a barstool, sad and pathetic and unable to move beyond the pain of losing his wife. Mick wasn’t that pathetic, but he understood old Reuben in a way that he never had before he’d loved Maddie Jones. He hadn’t picked up the bottle. He owned two bars and knew where that path led, but he had gotten into a fight or two. A few days before he’d seen Maddie in the park, he’d kicked the Finley boys out of Mort’s. Usually he called the cops to deal with assorted assholes and numb nuts, but that night he’d taken on both Scoot and Wes. No one had ever accused the Finley boys of being smart, but they were fighters, and it had taken both Mick and his bartender to shove them out into the alley, where a knock-down free-for-all had ensued. The kind Mick hadn’t enjoyed since high school.

Mick raked his fingers through the sides of his hair and sat forward. Since the night he’d found out who Maddie really was, he’d been in hell and he didn’t know how to get out. His life seemed to be one miserable day after another. He thought things would get better, but his life wasn’t heading in the direction of better, and he didn’t know what to do about it. Maddie was who she was, and he was Mick Hennessy, and no matter how much he loved her, real life wasn’t a made-for-TV movie on that women’s channel Meg liked to watch.

He leaned forward and pulled the Xerox box toward him. He took off the top and looked inside at the orange disk and a stack of paper. In big type across the first page was written: Till Death Us Do Part.

Maddie said this was the only copy. Why would she give it to him? Why go to so much trouble and spend so much time doing something, only to give it to him when she was through?

He didn’t want to read it. He didn’t want to get sucked back in time. He didn’t want to read about his unfaithful father and his sick mother and the night she’d gone over the edge. He didn’t want to see the photographs or read the police reports. He’d lived through it once and didn’t feel like revisiting the past, but as he picked up the lid to replace it on the box, the first sentence caught his eye.

“I promise it’s going to be different this time, baby.” Alice Jones glanced at her young daughter, then returned her gaze to the road. “You’re going to like Truly. It’s a little like heaven, and it’s about damn time Jesus drop-kicked us into a better life.”

Baby didn’t say anything. She’d heard it before….

M addie plugged Snowball’s DVD into the player and sat her on the cat bed in front of the television. It wasn’t even ten a.m., and she’d had enough of Snowball. “If you don’t behave, I’m going to throw you in your carrier and toss you into the trunk of my car.”

“Meow.”

“I mean it.” Snowball was going through some sort of passive-aggressive phase. She meowed to go out. Meowed to come in, but when Maddie opened the door, she’d run the opposite way. You’d think the cat would be more grateful.

She pointed at her kitten’s nose. “I’m warning you. You’ve just gotten on my last nerve.” She rose and tiptoed away. Snowball didn’t follow, for the moment transfixed by the parakeets chirping on the screen.

The doorbell rang and Maddie moved to the front of the house and looked through the peephole. Last night when she’d said good-bye to Mick, she hadn’t expected to see him again. Now here he was, looking a bit rough. The lower half of his face was covered in stubble like all the times they’d stayed up late making love. She opened the door and saw the Xerox box in his hand. Her heart dropped. All that work and he hadn’t read it.

“Are you going to invite me in?”

She opened the door wider and shut it behind him. He wore a black North Face fleece jacket and, beneath the black stubble, his cheeks were pink from the cold morning chill. He followed her into the living room, bringing the scent of October air and of him into her house. She loved the way he smelled and had missed it.

“Is your cat watching television?” His voice was kind of rough too.

“For the moment.”

He set the box on her coffee table. “I read your book.”

She glanced at the clock above the television just to make sure of the time. She’d given it to him to read and destroy because she loved him, and he’d probably skimmed it. “That was fast.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Some people are just fast readers.”

He smiled, but it didn’t reach his blue eyes or bring out his dimples. “No. I’m sorry for what my mother did to yours. I don’t believe anyone in my family has ever apologized to you. We were all too wrapped up in what it did to us to even stop and think about what it did to you.”

She blinked and managed a stunned, “Oh. You don’t have to apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He laughed without humor. “Don’t let me off the hook, Maddie. I’ve done a lot of things wrong.” He unzipped his jacket, and he wore the same Mort’s polo shirt he’d had on the night before. The man must have dozens of them. “Believing that just because I don’t think about what had happened in the past meant it doesn’t bother or affect me was not only wrong, it was stupid. If I’d truly gotten over it, who you are wouldn’t have mattered to me. It would have surprised me, maybe even shocked the shit out of me, but it wouldn’t matter.”

But it had mattered to him. So much so that he’d cut her out of his life.

“I’ve been up all night reading your book. At first I didn’t want to read it because I thought it would be a long laundry list of the things my parents had done, complete with grisly photos. But it wasn’t.”

She wanted to reach out and touch him. To run her hands up his chest and bury her face in his neck. “I tried to be fair.”

“You were surprisingly fair. If your mother had shot mine, I don’t know if I would have been as fair. I felt a kind of weird connection to my parents. To my life as a kid, and I understand how everything went so wrong. And I understand that you don’t always get a second chance to do it right.”

She wanted him to reach out and touch her. To put his hands on the sides of her face and lower his mouth to hers. Instead he stuck his fingers in the front pocket of his Levi’s.

“When I saw you in the park, I said I didn’t know you, but that was a lie. I know you. I know that you’re funny and smart and that you’re freezing when it’s seventy degrees outside. I know that you crave cheesecake but settle for cake-scented lotion instead. I know you have a problem with people telling you what to do. And I know that you want everyone to think you’re a hard-ass, but that you take in a bucktoothed cat and give her a home. Everything I know about you makes me want to know more.”

Her chest got that familiar ache, and she looked down at her feet, not trusting the emotion expanding in her chest.

“Since I moved back to Truly,” he said, “I’ve felt as if I were standing in one place, unable to move. But I wasn’t standing still. I was waiting. I think I was waiting for you.”

The backs of her eyes stung and she bit her bottom lip.

“When I’m with you, I feel a kind of calm I’ve never felt in my life. I’m tangled up in you and you’re tangled up in me and it feels right. Like it was meant to be. I love you, Maddie, and I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to say it to you again.”

She looked up at him and smiled. “I’ve missed you.”

He laughed, and his dimples finally dented his cheeks. “You haven’t missed me any more than I’ve missed you. I’ve been one miserable shithead.” He wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off the ground. “I’ve never believed that death happens for a reason,” he said as he looked up into her face. “But if our lives had been different, I wouldn’t have fallen in love with you.” Slowly she slid down his body until her pelvis fit his. He was ready for love, and his hands slipped beneath her shirt and caressed her bare back.

He lowered his head and kissed her. His mouth was warm and wet and so welcome. Later she would take his hand and take him to her room. For now, she just wanted to feel his kiss again, and it was like walking into the sun after a long cold winter. An ahh that felt good clear to the marrow of her bones.

He pulled back and pressed his forehead to hers. “Ever since that first night you came into Mort’s, my eyes have been on you,” he said. “You were the only thing I could see, even when I tried like hell to look someplace else.”

“Hmm. Look or touch? I saw you talking to Tanya in the park.”

“Just look. I don’t want anyone else.”

She put her arms around his back and locked her hands together. “What about Meg?”

He raised his head. “What about my sister?”

“What are you going to tell her? She hates me.”

“Actually, she’s been too busy with my friend Steve to think much about you.” He thought a moment, then said, “I don’t think she really hates you. She blames your mother for everything that happened, but she doesn’t know you.”

Maddie laughed. “Getting to know me isn’t a guarantee that she’ll like me.”

He shrugged. “I think she’ll get over it, because ultimately she does want me to be happy. She wants me to marry someone I love. To have a wife and a family. I never thought I wanted kids, but after I’ve seen the way you’ve raised your cat…” He paused to look over at Snowball, who was mesmerized by goldfish. “You’re a natural.” He looked back at her and smiled. “Let me know if any or all parts of that plan appeal to you. If not, we’ll make adjustments.”

“This sounds a lot like a white wedding, picket fence, baby maker plan.”

He chuckled. “Who would have thought?”

Certainly not her. She’d never thought she’d be some man’s wife or that she’d be thinking about having a family. Of course, she never thought she’d fall in love or be a cat owner either. Her life had drastically changed since she’d moved to Truly. She’d changed.

She took Mick’s hand and led him from the room. Maybe he was right. Maybe their lives had always been entwined and they were meant to be together. If that was the case, she’d happily spend the rest of her life tangled up in Mick Hennessy.