“Yes, and I know what you’re thinking, but I loved him. I also loved this other man who’s here. Crazy thing is we knew each other in our lives before. He’s here with his wife and son, and when he came to tell me that my husband had been killed, I asked him if his family had survived.”

“Had they?”

“Yeah, but you know what? There was a part of me, a bigger part than I want to admit, that was actually sad she had lived. Don’t get me wrong, I miss my husband terribly, but I kept thinking . . .”

“If his wife had been killed, then the two of you . . .”

“Right. So on top of losing my husband, on top of the fact that I can’t be with this man I love, it also turns out I’m a shitty human being.”

Hassler laughed.

“Did you laugh at me?”

“No, I just think it’s cute that you think that’s horrible. Do you want to hear horrible?”

“Hit me.”

“In my life before, I loved a woman, but she was married to this guy who worked for me. I . . . arranged a chain of events so that her husband would be removed from the picture. See, I knew what this town was as it was being created two thousand years ago. I made certain this woman was abducted by David Pilcher, and then I volunteered to go into suspension so I could be with her when she woke up. We lived together in Wayward Pines, and she never knew she was here because of me. After a year, I was sent away on a mission beyond the fence. I was never supposed to return. Every day I was out there, it was the thought of her that kept me going, kept me breathing, putting one foot in front of the other. Against impossible odds, I made it back. I thought I’d be returning to her, to a hero’s welcome. But instead, I find that her husband is here and the town has been destroyed.”

Down in the darkness of the valley, tiny points of firelight had begun to gather on Main Street.

Watching them, Hassler said, “So I climbed up here to take my life. You thought about bad things. I did them. Does that shift things back into perspective?”

“Why are you up here?” she asked.

“I just told you.”

“No, I mean, is it because you can’t live with what you did? Or because you can’t be with her?”