“What happened to you?” she said, fingers grazing the bump on his head.

“I wasn’t watching where I was running. Someone must have bent this tree over the path. I smacked right into it, like a dummy.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Not as much as your knee and hip.”

“Go put ice on it. You’re starting to look like a unicorn.”

Andrew kissed the tip of her nose and took the washcloth he’d used to cool her down and filled it with ice from the freezer. He slumped into a chair, holding it to his forehead.

“If someone peeked inside right now, they’d call the cops, thinking we just beat each other up,” Kate said.

“We’d be fine. We have Buttons as a witness.”

The beagle wagged his tail at the sound of his name.

“That is true.” She finally felt good enough to sit up, resting her back against the chair. “I thought a bird had flown into the doors, and I wanted to check on it. Serves me right for trying to be nice.”

Andrew checked the porch and said, “If it was a bird, it’s flown off since then.”

She didn’t mention the house quaking a bit. Kate was pretty sure she’d been the one shaking, not the cottage.

He palmed the side of her face and she tilted into him, loving how strong he felt. “Feeling any better?”

“Anything is better than the way I was before you came in.”

Without warning, he scooped Kate up, slid the door open with his foot, and settled her into an Adirondack chair on the porch. Buttons came out with them, poking his nose between the slats of the railing.

“Thirsty?”

“Very,” she replied, her hip and knee throbbing.

He went inside and returned with a can of Pepsi for her and a beer for himself. She looked at the beer, then back at the clock on the kitchen wall.

“It’s noon somewhere,” he said, popping the tab.

“Times like this, I wish I drank beer.”

They tapped cans. “Hey, you have stuff in that mason jar way better than beer.”

“Yeah, but not as much fun.”

They looked across the lake, watching a loon dive under the water, searching for fish, popping up fifty yards away. Andrew held her hand.

Despite what had just happened and her being sick in a new way she hadn’t been before, Kate should have been happy.

Should have.

Something just wasn’t right, and she didn’t have the heart to rain on Andrew’s parade.

* * *

“Look what I got.”

Andrew dropped a plastic bag on the bed. It was an unseasonably hot day for late June. Kate had made a note to look for a fan somewhere in the house. She was watching a Myrna Loy movie, drifting in and out.

“What is it?” she said, taking a loop of cable out of the bag.