“Lynn.”

For a moment she thought she was dreaming.

But there he was.

Standing on the corner in front of a store, looking like a beat-up road sign.

Daryl.

She froze for a moment, too scared to panic, too surprised to say anything.

“How are you?” he asked.

Everything in her suddenly became defensive.

You want to know how I am? Really? After all this time?

“How’d you find me?” she asked.

“It took some doing.”

She barely recognized him. He looked thin, almost sick, but he also looked as if he’d tried to clean up. Showered, shaved, his hair slicked back.

Her husband, at least still officially, stood there on the sidewalk, trying to find the words.

He certainly knows the right word when he wants to hurt you.

Daryl wasn’t the best when trying to do anything else.

“Have you seen the kids?” she said.

“No,” Daryl said.

“I don’t want any trouble.”

“There ain’t gonna be any. I promise, Lynn.”

“You’ve promised that before.”

“I know.”

She looked around. It wasn’t as if people she knew would see them. She had nobody. But she still had her dignity. That was one thing nobody was ever going to take from her. And she didn’t care who was around—if Daryl tried to do anything, anything whatsoever, Lynn would make sure any passing soul around knew about it.

“I just wanna talk.”

“We’re talking,” she said.

“Somewhere a little more private, you know?”

She looked in Daryl’s eyes and saw it. Not the fiery anger or icy resolve. She saw the empty look, like a forest that had been stripped and left barren and bleak.

“Please, Lynn.”

It didn’t matter that she hadn’t spoken with him in almost a year. She still loved the man, despite how little it seemed he loved her back.

A few moments later, they sat in a small diner. She watched him try to hide his shaking hand from her. But when he lifted the cup of coffee, it was visible to both of them.

“When was the last time you drank?”

“It’s been a while.”

“When?”

“Thanksgiving,” his hollow voice said.

She knew, sitting this close to him, that he was telling the truth. His complexion and his weight and his whole demeanor said so. She knew Daryl and she also knew a lot about alcoholics.

“What happened on Thanksgiving?”

“Enough.”

She didn’t want to know. She would worry and want to make things right. But that was what she’d said good-bye to when she realized that she could never make things right—not their marriage, not his alcoholism or his abuse. When she saw that there were two bright shining suns that were being eclipsed by their father, every day and every night, and that she was helpless to fix it, she knew she had to go.

“Why are you here?” Lynn asked.

He nodded, as if to acknowledge that the question was legitimate. “I just want to know how you’re doing.”