Stretching after the long drive, she looked down at herself. Crap. She rubbed at the four suspicious stains on her blazer that might or might not be fingerprints directly related to an earlier Cheetos mishap. Note to self—give up Cheetos or buy some wet wipes to keep on her. She shed the blazer and eyed the sundress. Damn. There were two more Cheetos finger spots on a thigh. She licked her thumb and tried to rub them out, but this only made it worse. Apparently some things, like Cheetos finger stains and the searing pain of grief, couldn’t be fixed.

She was shedding her hard-earned urbanness moment by moment, transforming back to the rumpled, come-what-may, adventurous but oblivious mountain girl. She started to get out of the car, but stopped when her cell phone buzzed an incoming call from Jonathan, her childhood best friend.

“You here yet?” he asked.

Physically, yes. Mentally … well, she was working on that. “Sort of,” she said.

“What does that mean?” He paused at her silence. “You know you can do this, right? That you’re one of those rare people who can do whatever they need to?” he asked.

True, she’d learned this very skill at an early age, the hard way. But what she needed felt overwhelming and daunting—something that would get her out of the rut that was her life. “I might have come up against my limits this time,” she admitted in the understatement of the day. Hell, understatement of the year.

“Buck up, Lily Pad,” he said. “Things are about to get better. I promise.”

“Yeah.” She shook her head. “And how exactly is that going to happen again?”

“Because you’ve got me at your back now,” he said, a smile in his voice. “Trust me.”

She could trust him, she reminded herself, warming a little as she sighed. Besides, what choice did she have? “Okay, but you’d better be right.”

“Always am,” he said. “Always am. See you soon.”

Lily disconnected and started to get out of the car but realized her feet were bare. She looked around, but apparently along with her city shell she’d also lost one of her wedge sandals. Maybe it was wearing an invisibility cloak. The search led to some swearing and a lot of digging into the luggage in the backseat, and she finally grabbed the next thing she came to.

A pair of Uggs.

She had to laugh as she slid her feet into them. Uggs with a sundress. In San Diego dressing this way would have raised eyebrows, but it was par for the course in Cedar Ridge. Or at least it had been. Torn between hoping things hadn’t changed and that they had, she headed into the convenience store, planning on getting in and out without seeing anyone she knew.