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list of
consequences
and stick to them. In theory, that was easy. In practice, though, all it did was make her angry. If he was the one with the problem, why was she the one who had to take responsibility? And if alcoholism was a disease, didn’t that mean he needed her help, or at least her loyalty? How, then, was she—his wife, who’d taken a vow to remain with him in sickness and in health—supposed to justify ending the marriage and breaking up their family, after everything they had been through? She’d either be a heartless mother and wife or a spineless enabler, when all she really wanted was the man she’d once believed him to be.
    That’s what made every day so hard. She didn’t want to divorce him and break up the family. As compromised as their marriage might be, part of her still believed in her vows. She loved the man he’d been, and she loved the man she knew he could be, but here and now, as she stood outside Tuck Hostetler’s home, she felt sad and alone, and she couldn’t help wondering how her life had come to this.

    She knew that her mother was expecting her, but Amanda wasn’t ready to face her just yet. She needed a few more minutes, and as dusk began to settle in she picked her way across the overgrownyard to the cluttered garage where Tuck had spent his days restoring classic cars. Parked inside was a Corvette Stingray, a model from the 1960s, she guessed. As she ran her hand over the hood, it was easy to imagine that Tuck would return to the garage any minute, his bent figure outlined against the setting sun. He would be dressed in stained overalls, his thinning gray hair would barely cover his scalp, and the creases of his face would be so deep they’d almost resemble scars.
    Despite Frank’s probing questions about Tuck this morning, Amanda had said little, other than to describe him as an old family friend. It wasn’t the whole story, but what else was she supposed to say? Even she admitted that her friendship with Tuck was a strange one. She’d known him in high school but hadn’t seen Tuck again until six years ago, when she was thirty-six. At the time, she’d been back in Oriental visiting her mother, and while lingering over a cup of coffee at Irvin’s Diner she’d overheard a group of elderly men at a nearby table gossiping about him.
    “That Tuck Hostetler’s still a wizard with cars, but he’s sure gone crazy as a loon,” one of them said, and laughed, shaking his head. “Talking to his dead wife is one thing, but swearing that he can hear her answer is another.”
    The old man’s friend snorted. “He was always an odd one, that’s for sure.”
    It sounded nothing like the Tuck she’d known, and after paying for her coffee, she got into her car and retraced the almost forgotten dirt drive that led to his house. They ended up spending the afternoon sitting in rockers on his collapsing front porch, and since then she’d made a habit of dropping by whenever she was in town. At first it was once or twice a year—she couldn’t handle visiting her mother any more than that—but lately she’d visited Oriental and Tuck even when her mother was out of town. More often than not, she cooked dinner for him as well. Tuck was getting on in years, and though she liked to tell herself that she wassimply checking in on an old man, both of them knew the real reason she kept coming back.
    The men in the diner had been right, in a way. Tuck had changed. He wasn’t the mostly silent and mysterious, sometimes gruff figure she remembered, but he wasn’t crazy, either. He knew the difference between fantasy and reality, and he knew his wife had died long ago. But Tuck, she eventually decided, had the ability to make something real simply by wishing it into existence. At least it was real for him. When she’d finally asked him about his “conversations” with his dead wife, he’d told her matter-of-factly that Clara was still around and always would be. Not only did they talk,