Someone tugs at my sleeve, and I open my eyes to find a young girl in a brown sweatshirt I’m sure is mine with a silver tag that reads “Maree.” Her eyebrows raise high, and her arms are extended in front of her, palms up, waiting, I assume, for me to speak. When I don’t she sighs and says, “My name is Maree and you’re Ms. Claire, and you’re teaching me how to play the guitar, but first we fed the reindeer ’cept we almost got eaten by a bear until you saved my life by being so tall and brave and smart.” She wipes a hand across her forehead. “Whew, it’s hard work to keep you remembering!”

I stand, surprised when she takes my hand, and we head for the elevator while Maree recounts the story about the bear who nearly ate us.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Tuesday, February 19

I wake up with my head against the glass window of—I sit up and take in my surroundings—a pickup truck window. I look beside me and nearly jump out of my skin because Tate Dunn is driving. My hands go to my face, feel my clothes. We could be seventeen or twenty or—no, I’m not seventeen. I’m older and I’m different and—I look closer at Tate—so is he.

Tate looks sideways at me, a comfortable smile playing around his lips, and it eases the twisting in my gut. His hair sticks up on the top like he’s been wearing a hat, but the ebony tresses are just as I remember them, still fill me with the desire to run my fingers through them.

“Have a good n . . . n-ap, Rip Van Winkle?” he says and hands me a note card.

I take it, suck in my top lip. “Rip Van Winkle?”

“Read the note card, Claire.” He concentrates on the road, and his profile magnifies the line of his jaw, makes pleasing lines around his mouth. Oh, he’s so handsome. “Claire,” he laughs. “Read the . . . note card.”

I do. I live in Whittier now and I know about the baby. We went skiing and sometimes I think you use your notebook to keep people out, so I convinced you to leave it at home.

My eyes widen when I look at him. “Why?”

“I w . . . w-want you to trust me with your . . .” His mouth is frozen, lips together, and I wait, so familiar with his stuttering it’s second nature for me. Part of me wants to crumple the note card, throw it at him for suggesting I want to keep people out. But I can sense his nerves in the stuttering, can see that he’s doing this for me. “I want you to experience life instead of having to write every minute down,” he says. “Not all the t . . . t-ime, just some of it.”