Kat ripped the check from the checkbook and threw it in his face. You didn't even have the guts to tell Matt what you'd done! It's been months!

Riley nodded. It took you twenty years to tell Aidan your little secret.

Oh… my… God. Kat could barely breathe. This is perfect. This is why I /knew/ I shouldn't have any more sex with you! There's no forgiveness here. You can't forgive me for the mistake I made when I was just a scared kid! If I don't have that from you, I don't have anything. /We/ don't have anything.

Riley laughed. And how about you, Kat? Have you forgiven me for my mistake when I was a scared kid? Or how about the mistake I made getting this loan, which I am now admitting to you? Can you forgive me for that?

And how about the mistakes I'm going to make in the future, which will all be real whoppers, I'm sure. Will you be able to forgive me for those?

Kat said nothing. Her heart pounded in her chest.

Loretta's whimpering intensified.

Let's look at the bigger picture while we're at it! Riley shouted, raising his voice in competition with the dog. The last twenty years of your life have been fueled by resentmentyou didn't even /consider/ finding a way to forgive your parents, me, your aunt, the town, the whole /world/yet you have the nerve to be impatient with Aidan because he hasn't immediately forgiven you for a lifetime of lies? And then you demand forgiveness from me, like I'm defective if I don't forgive you in the exact way you'd prefer, in the exact time frame?

They sat in the truck and glared at each other, breathing hard. The blood roared in Kat's ears so loudly she hardly heard Loretta's howling.

A friendly face appeared outside the driver's-side window, and a man knocked on the glass to get Riley's attention. Riley rolled down the window.

Travis! How's it going? He reached out to shake the man's dirt-covered hand.

It's time to stop yer yakkin' and get to workin'. The man produced a big smile, then looked over to Kat and touched the bill of his ball cap in greeting. Heard you was back in town. Remember me?

Kat stared at the guy, the adrenaline pumping through her veins. She was at a loss. She didn't know what to do. Where to go. What to say. She didn't know how she felt. About Riley. About herself. About what he'd just said. About anything.

And she sure as hell didn't know this yahoo in the window.

Come on now. Think hard.

Kat squinted, attempting to picture the man minus twenty extra years, and the name Travis finally registered in her brain.

Hey, Butt Head, she said. How've you been?

Kat woke with a jolt, aware that the vivid red of her childhood coat had dominated a whole string of dreams. They were dreams of velvet, blood, red ink, and anger. Her stomach was in knots.

She threw off the covers, sat on the edge of her bed, and turned on the light. She looked down and stared at her dangling bare feet. In her half-awake state they looked so strange hanging there in the air, fragile and translucent, the thin bones crushable and the skin easily cut. It suddenly struck her as odd that these were the only two feet she'd ever get. Like her two arms and two legs and one set of lungs, one heart, and this one life, just like everyone else. In fact, she was one person in a sea of billions, and she was making her way through this life holding two basketsone filled with her problems and another with her blessings. Just like everyone else did.

Kat wiggled her toes and breathed deep. It was a hard thing to admit, but she'd been an ass the day before. Riley was rightever since she'd shown up here looking to settle the score, it was all about how other people had wronged /her,/ what they owed /her/. And when you went through your days like that, you always wanted more and more from people. You were always keeping score, checking that nobody else ever got the bigger slice of cake.

She hopped off the bed and padded across the wood floor of her bedroom, wondering how she could have thought it was OK to beg for forgiveness out of one side of her mouth and deny forgiveness out of the other.

Kat ran a brush through her hair. Riley had chosen the only option he thought he had to save the clinic project. He'd made a stupid assumption that the state money would eventually reappear. But it wasn't like the millions were going to bankroll a life of extravagance. The money was used for examination tables, an X-ray machine, medical laboratory equipment, bandages, a playroom for children.

Riley's mistake had been withholding his plan from Matt. He was aware of that, and was doing a fine job beating himself up without Kat's help.

She'd asked Riley for the truth and he'd given it to her. It couldn't have been easy for him to admit that he was broke and wallowing in bad debt, but he'd told her anyway.

And now everything felt wrong.

She'd come to Persuasion to sort out her past, true. But the real reason she was here was Riley. She was here so they could learn about each other, see if there was a place for the two of them, in each other's lives and in the world. How were they going to discover that if they didn't talk to each other? She'd hopped out of his pickup at the construction site yesterday and walked the two miles back home, full of righteous indignation. She'd refused his phone calls all evening and into the night.

And it felt all wrong.

Still wearing her pajamas, Kat tied her sneakers, ran down the stairs, and reached for her fleece jacket. She was out the front door in seconds.

As her feet hit the sidewalk and the cold darkness rushed by in her peripheral vision, she knew which route she'd be taking. Kat made it down Laurel to Birch and then to Main. She ran past Forest Drive, passing her father's home without even a curious glance, and retraced the rhythm of her childhood.

Who lived in these houses now? She had no idea. But as she ran past them, the long-ago names floated into her brain like a forgotten languagethe Missonis, the Ballingers, the McClintocks, and finally the Wilmers, where she encountered the chain-link fence. Though a little winded, Kat had enough air to thoroughly laugh at herself. Once upon a time, she could vault this barricade without a second thought, hardly even slowing from a run. Tonight, she came to a full stop, grabbed the fence post, gingerly shoved the toe of her right shoe into a link, and prayed she could pull herself over. She felt a rush of pride when she hoisted her leg above and landed on the ground near the cedars. /The old girl still had it!/ Like always, Kat ran across the lawn to the side of the house, where she pulled herself onto the central air-conditioning unit to reach the porch railing. In her youth, this same railing had seemed as wide as a diving board. Tonight, under the porch light, it felt more like an emery board.

So she held her breath and raced across it with a quick tiptoe before she could lose her nerve. Kat gratefully found her way along the ledge of the dining room bay window, then held on to each of the three equally spaced window frames on the turret to reach the roof of the carport.

It was there she had second thoughts. She must be crazy! She was a thirty-seven-year-old woman with thirty-seven-year-old bones. What if she fell? And besides, it wasn't like Big Daddy was patrolling the premises anymore. She didn't have to sneak inside, did she?

Kat was about to climb down when it dawned on her that she didn't have a key, and Riley might not be in the most gracious of moods after their argument, throwing open the front door to welcome her. She was almost there anyway.

Kat took a deep breath, steadied herself, then remembered the loose tiles. Sure, they'd probably been fixed at some point in the last twenty years, but she did her best to steer clear anyway, just to be safe. She was crawling along on her hands and knees when the tile she'd chosen to hold her weight gave way. She started to slide, and in a panic, she reached out and prayed that her fingers found the edge of something sturdy. Her foot hit the gutter and the slide stopped.