I could tell Shawn was torn, but he told me.

Shawn had bought Loretta and Oscar a condo in an exclusive development on the beach in Florida.

Somewhere quiet and calm they could get away from grandbabies and family drama to enjoy their retirement if they wanted to.

Preacher was there.

Shawn set it up.

The meeting.

And I drove there.

He did not meet me in the condo.

He met me on the beach.

Don’t think that’s romantic.

As I’m sure you’re guessing from what happened after, it wasn’t.

We met there because, if I was in the condo, it might be difficult to get rid of me.

On the beach, he could walk away.

He had changed.

He was always so much of everything.

So tall and big and handsome and magnetic.

But I had no idea how much his past was draining from him.

When I saw him on that beach, he was tan and leaner, fit.

I knew the minute I saw him that he wasn’t drinking or using.

His eyes were clear and bright.

I mean, it was an absolute impossibility, but he was even more beautiful than he’d always been.

It says very little about me that I was disappointed in this.

I thought, without me, he’d waste away to nothing.

I knew immediately that it was not good that he was thriving.

I was not doing the same.

For once in my life, I didn’t find it hard to lose weight, which he was bound to notice.

But at that moment, I hoped the intense care I took that morning on everything from my hair and makeup to my outfit and chewing a breath mint before I got out of that car were hiding everything else I was feeling.

I will tell you his appearance was not because he got what he’d always wanted regarding his brother and his parents.

He got what he wanted but he was not at peace with it.

He was not at peace at all.

How I knew that, I cannot explain, outside the fact that I just knew Preacher, inside and out.

But also, when that kind of thing happens, peace is a forever impossibility.

He had told me he wanted this, way back when.

He’d told me that night.

It was one of the things he told me in that dark room in that motel in Indiana the first time we met after he’d pulled his feet out of Amber’s dad’s pool and walked to me and asked if I was okay.

When I told him I was, and he said, all gentle, with that crazy-cool Cajun accent, “Now, cher, don’t lie to me.”