Her mouth suddenly dry, Clare swallowed hard and gave Kaylee a grateful smile, despite the fact that her words did nothing to relieve Clare of her dread. Heather Roberts was exactly the kind of girl this whole fucking town thought Adam should be with. Good looking, good family, and a good chance of making something of herself since she would be heading off to the University of Chicago with her full-ride academic scholarship next fall.

Heather Roberts would be less than two hundred miles from where Adam would be playing basketball for the Hoosiers and majoring in music at Indiana University.

One thousand three hundred miles from where Clare would be, right here in Casper, working as a receptionist for Carter’s Moving and Storage out on Old Round Road. Her mother had set up the job for her, bragging to the owner, Roland Carter, about Clare’s “exceptional typing skills.” That’s what Mrs. Cartwright had written on her last report card along with the A+ she’d received in her typing class. “Clare has exceptional typing skills!”

Exactly what Roland Carter needed in a new receptionist. A pleasant phone voice and fast, accurate fingers on the new computer he’d just invested in. He’d hired her right away. Part-time after school for now, full time starting in less than a month once she graduated from school.

Less than a month.

Up onstage, Adam placed his hands on the keys and waited while the noise from the audience died down by degrees until the whole room sat in silence and waited. In a town like Casper, where almost nothing truly special ever happened, Adam Collins was extraordinary. He was this town’s high school basketball star, good enough to lure scouts from a dozen big universities to the middle of Wyoming to watch him practice and play, and turn down offers of full-ride scholarships to other schools before accepting Indiana University. And if that weren’t enough, having the best local teacher for a mother, he also played the piano like he’d been born in front of it. In a town without many cultural highlights, Adam Collins working his way through Chopin’s “Polonaise No. 6” was almost, almost, as great an evening as watching the kid orchestrate the basketball with the fluidity and grace of a ballet dancer.

Why Adam Collins wasted his time with a girl like Clare Kaczanowski was a big mystery to most everyone in Casper. A girl whose mother, the only woman on the police force, was the butt of every female pig joke that could be thought up over a few beers. A girl whose father ended up just another dead junkie. A girl so clearly headed nowhere, so undeserving of the most special someone this town had ever produced.