Blaze threw an arm around her and hugged her up to his side. No bells or whistles sounded in her ears. Not a single spark sizzled in the air around her. No fireworks popped off in the distance.

“It’s more than lust, Lizelle. It’s something that can’t be described. I knew when I looked at Colleen that she’s my soul mate.” Blaze’s tone said that he was serious.

Liz had never seen him like this and wasn’t quite sure what to say to him. “What about Janet?” she finally asked. “Seems like you had a fairly long-term thing going with her before we left last spring.”

“Honey, she got married a few weeks ago, and she, along with all the other women who’ve been in my life, wasn’t real. Colleen is,” he said. “I haven’t been to bed with anyone since I laid eyes on her.”

“Holy smoke, Blaze. You are worse than…”

“You?” he asked.

“Far worse,” she said.

He got up and opened the door into his trailer. “Don’t leave. Maybe you can help me start taking the Ferris wheel down after I get dressed. We can talk more while we work. Everyone will be waking up soon, and they’ll all want you to help them. We’ve missed you a lot, so I’m laying claim to you first.”

Take down fever.

That’s what the carnival family called today. The last gig of the season, and everyone was ready to go home for the winter. Come spring, the trailers would begin to come in, and take off fever would be in the air.

While Blaze was in his trailer, she wiped a tear from her cheek, and tried to say goodbye to the life she’d always known. Pickup trucks with tiny living quarters behind them were pulled up in a line. Semis and flatbed trucks carried the equipment, rides and vendors’ wagons—five wagons to a flatbed. The ponies would soon be in the horse trailer and probably looking forward to being turned loose in a pasture for the next few months.

The next day they would depart, leaving nothing, not even a candy wrapper, in their wake. This year instead of heading due west, they’d go fifteen miles north to Liz’s place. She had plenty of room for them to park and rest until Thursday morning when they’d be off to Claude. Poppa would be standing on the porch looking for them to parade onto the land by suppertime. Only this year, Uncle Haskell would be there too, for the first time, and Liz wouldn’t be driving her truck and bringing up the rear of the parade. How can I leave all this behind? It’s my life.

She smiled when her phone rang and she saw Raylen’s name pop up on the screen. “Hello, Raylen. Did you find Danny Boy?”

“We’ve got him, but he’s got a nasty cut on his foreleg that is going to need a few stitches and he’ll need a round of antibiotics. He’s in the barn and the vet is on the way. Mama is with him, and Daddy is trying to figure out how he got out. Near as we can tell something spooked him, and his gate stall wasn’t fastened tightly. We’re lucky he’s not banged up even worse. Found him in a mesquite thicket, limping back toward the house. He’d jumped three fences.”