The letters went on like this, addressed to Deschutes but speaking mostly of Peter’s father. He kept reading and discovered that Slinky had eventually married. Had two children. Out of need, she said. Not love. Still, she missed her Kansas boys. She missed her Donnie.

He thought then about Rena, about all of the things they would never do together, not because of distance or location or timing, but because she did not love him. Hadn’t he known it all along? Hadn’t he seen it in the way she never quite looked at him when she said she loved him—her gaze always off in the distance, as if the man she really loved were standing just behind him? Or how she had asked her best friend, Tori, to take her to the airport? He’d told himself it was because she didn’t want a maudlin good-bye scene, but now he could admit the truth: she didn’t want him to be the last person she saw in Kansas. It really was that simple: there was love, and there was the absence of love. The heart was not a sunset but a light switch. He wondered whether somebody would ever come and switch his off, or if he’d end up like Deschutes—trapped in a fluorescent room, wanting desperately to sleep.

He crumbled the letters and threw them away. A headache pressed against his neck and cheeks, and so he swallowed a Tylenol from a bottle Rena had left behind. He let a moment pass, and then he removed the letters from the trash, smoothed them out, and placed them between the pages of a thick anthology of essays called How Nature Can Heal Us, which Rena had given him when they’d first started dating. He told himself he’d return the letters to Deschutes in the morning; it was the right thing to do. Perhaps he would also apologize, return the painting. Perhaps the old man would forgive him and allow him to finish the painting for the full sum of money. Perhaps he could still buy the plane ticket. Perhaps nothing had been lost after all.

At last he got into bed, deciding to sleep everything away. The covers still smelled like Rena, like the almond lotion she rubbed onto her elbows before going to bed. He breathed in deep, imagining her beside him. She would turn to him and smile, her hair cascading over the pillows, which still held the scent of her coconut shampoo. He wondered, with a sinking feeling, if it would ever be a good time to wash them.

The Golden State

As these things go, we left Kansas on the hottest week of the year. A red rash burned over the weather map as Alec and I shoved everything we owned Tetris-style into a U-Haul, which we then dragged across the prairie and desert, completely bypassing the pretty parts. In Denver I suggested a day hike, but Alec ruptured his Achilles tendon playing Ultimate Frisbee in college (an injury I never entirely believed), so anything athletic was strictly out of the question.