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a reason. And when has hopeful ever been sad?”
    Her eyes grew a little wide, a little wet. “When representatives from the Army show up at your door to inform you that your husband was killed in action, and you sadly and futilely hope there’s been a horrible, horrible mistake.”
    She looked mortified, suddenly, by what had come out of her mouth. And there wasn’t even a touch of color in her cheeks now. Her face had gone deathly pale.
    “Excuse me.” She shot out of her chair. “I need to use the ladies’ room.”
    He stood, thought about going after her, but in the end let her go. It wasn’t as if he could follow her in there. And it wasn’t as if he knew what to say if he did.
    She needed a minute to collect herself. For that matter, so did he.
    Maybe this was a bad idea after all. By his calculation, it had been three and a half years since her husband was killed. Should her wounds still be this raw? Or was there something wrong with him that he was ready to move on so soon after losing Maya?
    He’d poured more wine and contemplated downing the whole glass when she came back to the table, composed and apologetic.
    “Sorry I went all weepy widow on you there. I don’t know where that came from. I don’t usually—”
    “I know you don’t,” he interrupted, because he felt both relieved and sensitive to her embarrassment. “You hold up. And you didn’t do anything wrong.”
    He was the one in the wrong. He should have realized he made her nervous. After all, the last time he’d seen her, he’d used her dead husband’s gun to kill a man.

    J ESS FELT BEYOND grateful that Ty had the sensitivity to let things go. At that point, she somehow marshaled the wherewithal to shift into “Board of Tourism” mode and change the subject to a lengthy and oh so educational and oh so boring history of the area and the chain of lakes. She told him all about the Boise Cascade plant that was the region’s biggest employer and about the intriguing NOvA project, the world’s most advanced neutrino experiment, which, if successful, would have profound implications for understanding the structure and evolution of the universe. She talked about anything to keep from talking about something that might lead back to a personal dialogue about her life in general and her husband in particular.
    She was a coward. She knew it. Ty, apparently, accepted it and made every effort to keep her engaged in generalities. Somehow, they made it through a dinner that felt as endless as the ink-black sky that greeted them when they finally left the restaurant to drive the twenty miles back to Kabby.
    She didn’t even remember what she’d babbled about on the half-hour drive; she only knew that she had babbled, and by the time they pulled into the Crossroads parking lot, she felt one-hundred-percent certain that one Tyler Brown would be on the phone first thing in the morning booking a return flight home, as relieved as a caught-and-released walleye to be getting away from the crazy, gibberish-talking widow he’d had the bad sense to think he wanted to get to know.
    She was an uptight, nervous flake who hadn’t even realized until he had shown up and shaken her insulated little world that she still felt so raw and ruled by her feelings about J.R. and his death. She should have moved on by now—or at least be working on it. She hadn’t. She wasn’t. And regardless of the fact that she would not let herself even think about moving on with a man so much like her dead husband, Ty’s ability to shake things up this way proved how badly she needed to get on with the business of living.
    Since embarrassment didn’t even scratch the surface of how she felt about her behavior, he’d barely rolled to a stop when she shoved open the passenger-side door. The overhead lamp wasn’t harsh, but she felt ten times more exposed for the coward she was when light flooded the front seat.
    “Thanks for dinner. I’m sure you’re tired. Long flight