“I had to make you go,” he said. “I knew it was all gonna come to a head and I had to make you go. You had to live your life. You had to figure it out. You were wrapped up in me since you were seventeen and I knew I’d go there. I knew it was all about to go down one way or another and what I was holdin’ back in me would break loose. I knew what bein’ back in Louisiana, seein’ them again would do to me. And I didn’t want you around that. I didn’t want you around that for so many reasons, my head felt like it would explode with all of them. You’d never find you. You’d always be all about me. Until I made it so you weren’t and never would be again.”

Although I understood this, I was not at one with it.

But I’d get into that later.

“Where did you go?” I asked.

“The woods,” he answered. “Where no one was. Where I had to drive for twenty minutes just to get to the town limits. Another ten minutes to hit the grocery store. I cleared trees. I built a cabin.”

I was stunned.

“You built a cabin?”

“Yeah. You buy a book, you read it, it tells you what to do, you do it. First year, I was in a camper with a generator, cuttin’ down trees, movin’ dirt. Next year, foundation, framing. You get the picture.”

“You built a cabin.”

“Yeah.”

“By yourself.”

“The electricity and plumbing were tricky. There’s codes. But I wasn’t on the moon and I got money so hired a coupla guys. Other than that. Yeah.”

“You built a cabin.”

He stopped talking.

“Where?” I asked.

His mouth moved in a weird way.

Oh boy.

“Where, Preacher?” I pushed.

“About two hours from your house.”

I felt my eyes get big and my word was high-pitched. “What?”

“Dumb luck you moved to Phoenix a coupla years later,” he muttered. “Though I didn’t know that at the time.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Nope.”

It was then I stopped talking.

“Looked at maybe thirty patches of land in ten different states. My patch, there’s no view, ’cept trees. Nothin’ around, ’cept critters. Not close to anything, not far away either. Nothin’ in my world was close to perfect then. But I got out of my truck on that land, and for the first time since you walked away from me on that beach, I took a clear breath. Maybe it was because the forces of nature knew, soon, you’d be livin’ two hours away from that patch.”

That was the most romantic thing I’d ever heard.

“I look at it as a sign,” he muttered.

“Preacher—”