Chase was her kid, through and through. She’d never settled for failure. She worked at something until she mastered it. Chase did the same.

Today, she didn’t know how to get back up.

She averted her eyes for fear of being lost in the past. Finished her sandwich and washed her plate. She then sat in the living room and pulled out her phone to listen to Lucas Vega’s podcast.

It would keep her mind off—well, everything, for an hour or two.

Before she hit Play, her dad walked in.

“I brought you peach cobbler,” he said. “Jeff insisted.”

“I’ll eat it later.”

“You should have joined us. Jeff cooks better than anyone in our family.”

“I don’t know about that. You can barbecue a mean steak, Dad. And your venison stew is the bomb.”

“True.” He put the cobbler in the kitchen and sat in his favorite chair, across from where Regan sat curled on the sofa, her feet tucked under her butt. “How was your presentation this afternoon?”

“Good. The students seemed interested. They had intelligent questions. After, I went up to Henry’s office. He said to say hi.” Her dad and Henry Clarkson had become friendly over the years. They’d met on campus when Regan was a student, and being from the same generation and loosely in the same field, they’d started playing golf on occasion. They didn’t see eye to eye on everything—Henry had been a criminal-defense lawyer in his day, and her dad was a strict law-and-order guy—but their arguments were good-natured. Her dad had guest-lectured for Henry multiple times.

“Our last two standing golf dates were rained out, but it looks like this Sunday is going to be clear.”

“Cold, but clear. That’s what the meteorologist says.”

“You don’t agree?”

“Ask me Saturday morning.” It could be bright and sunny one day and a storm could brew over the San Francisco peaks overnight and dump inches of water on them in a matter of hours. The local weather was wrong far too often for her to ever trust a forecast more than twenty-four hours in advance.

“Join us. You used to be wicked on the course.”

“Not this time.” She enjoyed golfing occasionally but much preferred more rigorous sports. “Jessie and I are going hiking in Sedona on Saturday, and knowing Jessie, I’ll need Sunday to recoup. Humphreys is still covered in snow, and I’m not in the mood to pull out my snow boots.” Humphreys Peak, the highest point in Arizona, was one of her favorite hikes. It was ten miles, and at the top on a clear day you could see the Grand Canyon. It wasn’t an easy trail and was best to tackle in the late spring or summer.