“No. My parents were naturalists, and every form of life, animal or plant, was a miracle to them. I don’t kill animals for food, but I also understand that the world is populated by people who eat animals, and others raise animals for food, and their livelihoods depend on it. So if I want to eat meat, I buy it. I do like to fish, and I catch and release almost everything. But during the season when the lakes and streams are stocked, if we don’t fish them down a little bit, they’ll be overpopulated. So now and then, I’ll take a bass or trout if I get one and cook it up.”

“That’s fascinating.”

“You don’t cook?”

Lily smiled. “Does heating up leftover pizza count?”

“Not even close. But I do make a mean pizza.”

“When do you have time?”

Chase lifted a shoulder. “This time of year I don’t have much, but I don’t have a wide variety of interests. What interests me”—she glanced toward the windows and, beyond that, the mountains—“is out there. There’s always something to see, something to discover.”

“I can imagine. Do you get much chance to climb?”

Chase jerked back. “No.”

“Oh,” Lily said, reaching for the dish of raspberry jam for her last piece of toast. “I’m surprised, it seems like a natural—”

“I don’t climb anymore,” Chase said flatly.

Lily looked up. “I’m sorry. Not my business.”

Chase let out a breath. Not the direction she expected the conversation to go. From easy and casual to raw and too damn close. Not Lily’s fault. “I used to. Then I fell.”

Lily had heard every tragic story of loss imaginable, but she never grew immune to it, and this time the barely concealed pain in Chase’s eyes struck her hard. “Then I’m sorry for mentioning it.”

Chase grimaced. “It’s the morning for treading on tender spots, isn’t it.”

“It doesn’t have to be.” Lily put down her knife and took Chase’s hand the way Chase had taken hers. “I want to get to know you, the parts you want to show me, but we all have our secrets and places we’d rather not go. The last thing I would want is to bring up past pain.”

“It was seven years ago—I’m…I was a free-climber. That’s—”

“I know what it is—no ropes or safety lines, right?”

“Yes. I started when I was a kid, and by the time I was eighteen I was a ranked competitive climber. I planned to climb a few more years and then open a climbing school.” Chase’s voice turned to gravel and misery darkened her eyes. “I missed a handhold—a simple thing I’d done ten thousand times. I fell, broke my back, and my climbing days were done. I ought to be over it by now.”

“Why?”

“I’m lucky,” Chase said, her grip on Lily’s hand tightening. “I healed, I can do what I need to do for my job—I just can’t climb anymore. Not the way that counts for me.”