“I don’t…That’s…”

“Oh, it will only go to waste here, honey. You just take it.”

“Margaret—”

“Please. He’s going to lock himself up in his garage and tell people he’s fine, when we can all see he’s not. He’s always been that way, hiding himself away when he’s hurt. It’s how we all ended up on this mountain.”

“Because of the accident?”

“He was hurt long before that. And he won’t let anyone take care of him. So, let me take care of you. Just a little. Just…so I can feel like I’m doing something.”

I was extraordinarily glad that Dylan had Margaret up here on this mountain with him. Someone who cared. I took the bag of food because I wasn’t sure if anyone down at that trailer park was going to care at all about me and I would take whatever care, comfort, and cinnamon rolls came my way.

I wanted to believe that Joan, Ben, and even to some extent Tiffany would care. But I had my doubts. Life was pretty threadbare down there and we all had our hands full.

So, I took the food.

And when I got in the car my phone buzzed and I read Dylan’s text message with the contact info attached.

This is the lawyer. His name is Terrance, he’s a good guy and he’s expecting your call. I am expecting you to call me if you need me. But I am also expecting that you are tough and strong enough to do this on your own. And you are.

And I took the comfort of that. I clung to it, holding it against my chest so it would give me strength for the days ahead.

Margaret insisted I sit in the back of the black Mercedes sedan.

“So you can stretch out,” she said. “We got a drive ahead of us.”

I couldn’t remember from the frantic middle-of-the-night drive up to this mountain how long it took, but I settled into the plush backseat, exhausted yet wide awake.

The first of the leaves were turning up here, and in the dense green of the forest, there would be one bright blaze of color. Red or orange. The sign that change was coming.

We drove down a gravel road and I saw the other buildings. A charming house set back in the forest that must have been Margaret’s. And a little farther, what looked like an airplane hangar. There were trucks parked in front.

That must be his garage, I thought, turning as we drove by until I was looking out the back window.

He was there, standing in the shadows, and as we drove by he stepped out into the road, watching us as we made our way off his mountain. He wore a black fleece with his jeans, and the late afternoon sunlight slashed across his face.

I pressed my hand against the glass as if I could touch him. Desperately I wanted to believe this wasn’t goodbye.

But I wasn’t lying to myself anymore.

The Flowered Manor was entirely the same, but somehow completely different. What had appealed to me before when I’d been scared and looking for a place to hide now seemed utterly astonishing. Repellant in a way.

It was so small. A tiny island of RVs and double-wide trailers in a wide sea of forest and kudzu. The rain and the darkening sky made everything seem sad. Fragile somehow. As if the metal and plastic walls people lived behind were a laughable attempt to keep everyone safe.

A solid wind would blow all of this away.

“I’m leaving you here?” Margaret asked, clearly horrified.

I smiled, weary. I nearly said it was my home, but my home was a thousand miles away from here. A two-story white farmhouse surrounded by soy and cornfields and wide, white-blue sky as far as the eye could see.

I had not missed it and I couldn’t say that I missed it now, but I felt very keenly that it was mine.

“You can stop here,” I said, just as we drove up to the office. Looking at it now I realized it was a modified garden shed, not unlike the one where all the tools I’d been using were kept.

“Are you sure, honey?” she asked.

“I’m sure. And thank you…for the food and the ride.” For taking such good care of Dylan.

“My pleasure and,” she sighed, “I love that boy to death. Like he was my own. But he’s not easy. And he carries a burden so heavy he’s getting crushed under it and doesn’t even realize.”

I knew that; perhaps that was part of what we’d been attracted to at the beginning. Both of us knowing, somehow, that we were carrying impossible loads.

“And sometimes,” Margaret continued, “I wish he would meet a girl. Someone like you. Someone who doesn’t care about his money and his scars. Or what he’s done in the past. Who cares about him. Who makes him smile and pulls him out of that garage where he’d spend every living moment of his life, and then I think…no. If he met a girl who loved him, she would get crushed under that burden too.” She turned to face me. “Don’t come back, Annie.”

I blinked, stunned.

“It hurts me to say, but you’re a good girl. Find yourself an easier man and don’t come back.”

I stumbled out of the car, my goodie bag of gourmet leftovers banging against my legs. She lifted a hand in a wave and the car pulled away, flinging mud up everywhere. My eyes burned. My throat hurt and my body was sore from Dylan’s hands.

Instead of going to my trailer, where I would do nothing but lie there and think of Dylan, I walked toward the office. Toward distraction.

The bell rang over the door as I stepped into the office. Kevin was playing solitaire in front of the blasting air conditioner.

Exactly the same. Like I’d never left.

I appreciated Dylan’s offer of the house, but if I was going to divorce Hoyt, I had to stand on my own two feet. And that meant staying here. Working here. Living here. The luxury of my hours with Dylan was a dream. A beautiful dream. But it was time to wake up.

“Hey there,” Kevin said, glancing up from his game.

“Just checking in on the storm damage,” I said. “You need me to do any work?”

“We got a shit ton of fallen trees in the back lots. One of the trailers nearly got crushed. We’re going to need a chain saw.”

“We don’t have one in the tool shed,” I said, jumping with great relief onto the idea of work. Physical hard work would clear out my head. Get me right. If nothing else, it would fill up the empty hours.

“Yeah, I’ll need you to go into Cherokee and rent one. Come back in the morning and I’ll get you some cash.”

“Thanks, Kevin,” I said and walked back out the door, the bell tinkling all the same. Coming, going, it didn’t matter. I found the consistency comforting. I paused in the doorway and thought for a second that I should ask him about Dylan. What he knew about us. But in the end it didn’t matter.

There was no more us.

I walked back through the trailers with the families, where a few people were clearing branches out of their driveways or away from their cars. Tiffany was in the playground with her kids picking up branches, or at least she was picking up branches. The kids were in a stick sword fight.

“Stop it now, kids,” she said. “Someone is going to get hurt.”

“Hey,” I said as I walked by.

“Hey,” she said, pushing her long hair off her face. She seemed startled to see me. Like she hadn’t expected me to come back. “You’re here!” She wore men’s work gloves that made her wrists and arms seem so fragile. More fragile than the sticks she was carrying. “You weathered the storm someplace else?”

“Yeah, a friend’s. It was bad here?”

“Scary. A little,” she said. “Kids were freaked out, but Phil was here and he kept us all in the bathroom. Made it seem safe.”