When they were gone and the mess was cleaned up, Jonathan shook his head. “I should give you a raise for most creative use of a station.”

“You should,” Lily agreed. Not that she’d hold her breath. Jonathan was so tight with his money he squeaked when he walked.

Her next client was a huge, thirty-something lumberjack with a Wild-Man-of-Borneo beard. He requested a shave.

Lily pulled out the clippers to trim the bushy beard but he stopped her.

“My head,” he said.

She looked at his beautiful thick, luscious mane of hair. “You sure?”

He patted the top of his head. “Positive.”

“But—”

“My wife has cancer,” he said, and then he ran a hand over his face. “So yeah, I’m sure,” he said hoarsely. “All of it goes.”

Afterward he tried to pay her, but Lily refused to accept any money from him.

When he’d left, Jonathan came up to her, arms crossed.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll pay for it out of my till.”

He looked at her for a long beat. “You’re pretty damn amazing, you know that? And you won’t be paying out of your earnings. I’ve got it covered. Because for cancer, anything goes. Always.”

It was six o’clock before Lily left the salon. It’d been a long day, made longer by the way she kept thinking about Aidan. This isn’t over, he’d said. And then there’d been the conversation with her mom.

Forgive yourself.

Promise me.

Lily got into her car, but instead of going home, she parked in the empty clearing at the trailhead to the hiking trails. There she drew in a deep breath and looked at herself in the rearview mirror. “You’re okay,” she told herself.

Her reflection didn’t look convinced.

“You just need to feel Ashley,” she said, testing that theory out loud.

It was the truth. She desperately needed to feel her sister. The first problem with that was that she was still in her work clothes, a sundress and cropped sweater with wedge sandals. Alone in her car with no one nearby, she first looked around for security cameras. Not seeing any, she quickly stripped down to her sports bra and spandex shorts, and then dug into the duffel bag in the backseat for a T-shirt and running shoes.

She got to the exact same spot she’d made it to on her first day back in town before stopping for a break. She sucked in some wind and checked her phone.

No missed calls. And no texts from a certain firefighter …

She sighed. Without water and supplies she knew better than to go much farther. She might be a little unbalanced and a lot messed up, but she wasn’t stupid.