Her eyes grew soft, and her lips parted as she took in a deep breath, closing her eyes again. She tilted her head back a bit more. And for a few minutes she was silent, but I didn’t mind because it gave me even more time to study her to my heart’s content, to reacquaint myself with each freckle and feature. Perhaps it was pointless, and even unwise, but drinking her in felt like feeding a different kind of hunger, and one that had gone mostly unacknowledged but was there all the same.

“Before we started on this journey, I’d forgotten what quiet is like,” she finally said, opening her eyes. “I didn’t realize how loud the world had become. My world anyway. And I… I’ll miss the hustle. It will be hard giving that up. But this has reminded me to seek out the quiet sometimes too. It’s reminded me what peace really feels like.”

I stepped over to the tree stump seat next to the one she was on and sat down. “Hey, Emily?”

She turned to me. “Yeah?”

“I owe you an apology too.” I squinted out to the fields and the rolls of hay behind her for a moment and then met her eyes. All day, I’d been thinking as we’d walked, going over everything that happened since we’d crash-landed in the middle of Nowhere, Illinois. “I’m sorry for what I said, about you being a sellout. You worked and climbed and didn’t give up, just like you took control of a speeding horse and buggy. I was wrong and I’m sorry. You didn’t end up where you were because of anything other than your talent and tenacity.”

Her cheeks flushed and she smiled, and it was almost shy. “Not that it matters now. All that… It’s over.”

The sun shifted, hitting my eyes and I squinted at her. “You still have the telethon,” I said. “And the marathon…”

I’d said it to make her smile and it did, but the smile didn’t last. “Do I? That’s beginning to feel like a pipe dream too.”

“That was my point. You’re good at making pipe dreams a reality.”

“It might not be up to me,” she said. “But I would like to find some way to help. Or maybe perform. Even if it’s only for a few people. Or… I don’t know. Military bases once they get set back up. If they do.” She sighed. “Maybe there’ll be an opportunity for me to be useful too.”