“No. Her friends were always trying to match her with people, but she wasn’t interested. And we never talked about it until last year when Richard left, and she told me then that she’d grown to love her life exactly the way it was and that she had no intention of disrupting it. I think she liked the idea of being in control of all aspects of her life. But it was difficult for her when Richard left me because it brought it all back for her too.”

He nodded. “It must be hard watching your child go through tough times. You’re lucky to have such close family.”

“I know.” And she felt guilty for all the worry she’d caused her mother. She was going to make sure that from now on she would be a bundle of sunny positivity whenever she visited. “How about you? Never married?”

Their main course was delivered at that moment and he waited until they were alone again to answer.

“I married straight out of law school, and it lasted a year. So I think we can both agree it was something I wasn’t good at. But it was an experience, and all experiences teach you something.”

“I think relationships are just hard. People change, and they want different things.”

He studied her for a moment. “What do you want?”

In that moment he reminded her of Nicole. If you could have three wishes . . .

It was something she rarely thought about because she was so focused on making it through each day, but she thought about it now and realized that she’d been stuck in the present since Richard had left, and that was entirely her fault.

She hadn’t wanted Richard to walk out. She hadn’t wanted him to leave her. She hadn’t wanted any of it to happen, and because of that she’d refused to let herself move on. And by not moving on, by not accepting things as they were, by looking for areas of blame both in herself and him, she’d kept things the same. But they weren’t the same, and all she was really doing was denying the truth. And denying herself a future. She’d spent her whole time looking back, wanting to somehow find the place where she’d dropped the ball so that she could undo everything that had happened, but now she realized that there was no going back. There never had been. There was only what lay ahead, and instead of seeing a bleak future she saw possibilities.

What did she want?

“I want what I have,” she said finally. “Is that boring? Maybe it is to someone else, but I love Forest Nest and the people who stay with us. I love this part of the world, and it feels like a privilege to be able to live and work here.”