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had time to go fishing now and then, and nobody bothered him much. Roy was here, but he had Corinne, and they’d gotten engaged three months ago, which kept him pretty occupied. Sometimes they all three hung out at the Tumbleweed Bar and Grill, where Corinne worked. And occasionally, Roy and Corinne tried to nag him into dating some of the local women.
    But that hadn’t happened, and Ty knew it wasn’t going to happen. Fortunately, Roy and Corinne seemed to have gotten the message and had recently pretty much quit trying to push a social life on him.
    It was about time.
    He dropped his briefcase on a chair, flicked on a light switch as the sun angled lower in the sky, and went to the fridge in search of a beer.
    The sun was a molten ball in the western sky as Josy drove slowly through the town of Thunder Creek. Beside her on the seat of the Blazer was an empty foam coffee cup, half of a chicken sandwich in a Wendy’s bag, and the map that had guided her all the way from Salt Lake City to Wyoming.
    Inside the pocket of her jeans was a key to her temporary new home—fresh from the palm of Candy Merck, the friendly young bleached blonde rental agent who had just accepted a month’s security deposit and a month’s rent up front in cash and told her how to find the Pine Hills apartments.
    As she cruised down Main Street, headed south, she couldn’t help the surge of excitement rushing through her. For the first time in a week she wasn’t running away. She had arrived. She was in the town where Ada Scott lived, and where her mother had come long ago to learn about her past.
    When she saw the brightly lit diner filled with people, emotions flickered through her, running the gamut from delight to pain. All those childhood memories gushed back of the visit to Thunder Creek and lunch with her parents in that same tiny restaurant. Her parents had been gone for so long now, yet suddenly, for just a moment, they felt as close to her as the front booth of Bessie’s Diner.
    But only for a moment.
    Her hands tightened on the steering wheel as she drove past. This street looked vaguely familiar, but it must have changed some in the past twenty or so years, she realized, glancing from side to side in the shimmering sunset light. She drove past a glass-fronted beauty salon, Merck’s Hardware, a gas station—then suddenly backed up and pulled in at the last minute. She didn’t need gas—she’d filled up some miles back, but she went inside and bought a can of Coke and a bag of potato chips to go with the leftover chicken sandwich that was going to be her dinner.
    For a moment longing filled her, but she shook it off. Much as she’d have loved to stop at Bessie’s Diner for a real meal, something hot and homey, tonight wasn’t the time. She’d start her temporary new life in Thunder Creek tomorrow, when she was fresh and rested, when she had her wits about her, not now when she was dead on her feet.
    It seemed like months since she’d fled her apartment with one suitcase, her tote, and Ricky’s package in tow. Months since she’d lived through that nerve-wracking taxi ride to LaGuardia, calling Reese hastily on her cell, babbling a voice mail message about taking a leave of absence to work on the sketches and asking Reese to let Francesca know. At the airport she’d withdrawn four thousand dollars, nearly all of her savings, from an ATM, and hurried onto the next flight to Salt Lake City, where she’d stayed only a day, enough time to get her bearings and buy a map and a car. A truck, really, a dented, blue, banged-up 1995 Blazer that had seen better days, but the guy at Ray’s Used Cars had sworn he’d tuned her up three days earlier and she was good to go.
    Ha. The Blazer had broken down in Rock Springs, developed a flat tire on the highway outside of Rawlins, and had been making a weird clunking noise for the past twenty miles. But she was here at last and all she wanted now was to get to the Pine Hills apartments and