Comforted by the smell of fresh muffins, she stared through the patio doors and hopped her gaze from peak to peak. Last August, she couldn’t even begin to wrap her mind around that question. She needed time…and distance. So, she said goodbye to Green Ridge and set a course for Tucson. Some days she felt like she left home ten years ago. Today, her hurried departure felt like yesterday.

Aspen was not remotely on the route from Pennsylvania to Arizona. But at a rest stop in Indiana, she uncovered a stash of her father’s John Denver cassette tapes. In a soaring tenor, he sang about Starwood and Aspen, conjuring a sweet Rocky Mountain paradise.

Colorado called. Tessa had to see the mountains.

When the camper’s motor died on I-82 just outside Aspen, she wasn’t surprised. The Rockies took a toll on the transmission of a 1970s pop-top van, and she’d been smelling smoke since Denver.

The mechanic who ran the nearest vintage camper repair shop determined only a complete reconstruction of the motor would render the van mobile. Learning Tessa was stranded, he made a few calls.

Though a much bigger small town than Green Ridge, Aspen proved itself even more welcoming. Within hours, she was invited to stay in the log cabin guesthouse of a friend of a friend of the man’s wife.

Marcia, the cabin’s owner, not only possessed every one of Margaret Meadows’s cookbooks but also was the features editor of the local newspaper.

So, “Tessa’s Corner,” a weekly gardening column, was born. Even after the van was repaired, she stayed, paying a modest rent for the digs. The tiny, rustic cabin suited her fine. Mountain air eased her battered heart.

Could almost a year have gone by since she quite literally drove into the sunset? The notion seemed impossible, but the calendar didn’t lie.

She peeled the paper from a steaming muffin and replayed Jennifer’s message just to hear her laugh and snort. Then she read a juicy email from Claire, with all the local scuttlebutt.

According to Claire, construction was underway on a state-of-the-art medical clinic Richard designed to serve the rural communities surrounding Green Ridge. An article in a well-regarded medical journal profiling his handling of Rebecca’s meningitis, the efforts to stop the spread of disease among her Ohio family, and his campaign to bring high-tech medicine to rural populations would publish this fall. He’d been spotted making house calls with a curvy ER nurse named Cindy, and rumor had it they were dating. Claire long since forgave Tessa for breaking Richard’s heart, and Tessa spent a wonderful week with the MacMillans when the whole family traveled to Aspen for a spring break ski trip.

She took a bite of muffin. The top offered a satisfying crunch, and the fluffy inside dissolved on her tongue, leaving behind a tang of berry. Delicious. Happy almost-one-year-Colorado-versary.