Vodka had not been able to settle her that night, the night after they found the note and everyone decided her mother had left them. Had walked away. The shock of this had gutted the hollow spaces. It made her cringe to remember now, with him standing before her. How she’d pulled him to the back of the bar, kissed him until he’d kissed her back. Thank God they hadn’t been alone.

“I’m sorry,” Nic said now. She buried her face in the palms of her hands.

“Don’t be sorry. It takes two, you know?” There it was—that calm voice. The kindness.

“So what’s next?” he asked her. “How long are you staying?”

Nic unburied her face and opened her eyes to look at him. “I don’t know,” she said.

“Are the police getting involved again?” he asked.

“They said they would. What do you think? Reyes seems on top of things.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

The sarcasm in Kurt’s voice was unmistakable.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve never seen him disappoint a damsel in distress.”

“Yeah—I kind of got that about him. Lots of eyes linger when he’s around.”

Kurt moved closer now, elbows on the counter, leaning forward. Nic could smell his cologne, or soap, something, and it pulled from a far corner of her mind the feel of his hands on the small of her back, then tangled in her hair.

“You noticed, huh? Most women don’t. Until the next day when he doesn’t call.”

Kurt the bartender was not that kind of man, and he brought her back, somehow, to the time before. Across that invisible line to the time when life was just life. When her future was nothing but opportunities and the quiet faith that her family would remain as it was. Happy, even when Evan and Annie were fighting over something trivial, when her parents were hovering over them. Her father wasn’t perfect—he could be demanding and rigid. But they knew he loved them.

And how he had adored their mother. It was in his eyes, the way he admired her idealism, her passion for her students. They had a special anniversary the first Tuesday in August, the facts of which they kept a secret between them. Her father always bought her something blue. She always made him a chicken salad sandwich. They shooed away the children into another room and sat alone, drinking wine and laughing. They did this every year before Annie died.