She blew through the open gate and headed east on Camelback Road. The city lights whipped past us, and a tingle of excitement crept into my veins. How long had it been since I’d been out of my house in the evening? Ages. I’d been so determined to get my health back to optimum, I considered sleep one of the best things I could do for myself. Subsequently, I was rarely up past ten, last night being a major exception, and I was usually hunkered in for the night by seven. I glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was seven thirty and I hadn’t even eaten.

I glanced down at myself. When exactly had I become an eighty-five-year-old man? But I knew the answer. My stroke had changed everything for me.

It was cold out. The cloth top of the Jeep kept most of the night air out but not all of it. Annabelle had the heat cranked up, and it blasted over my feet so my bottom half was hot while my upper half was chilled. She must have registered my discomfort because she grabbed a fleecy throw from the back seat and shoved it at me. I wrapped it around both of our shoulders, and she flashed me a grateful smile. It occurred to me that there wasn’t much I wouldn’t do to be on the receiving end of that smile.

As she drove us through Scottsdale and the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation Reservation, I tried not to panic, thinking about how far I was from a hospital if I suddenly needed one. My anxiety spiked and I did some of the calming exercises that Jackson had taught me. We were flying up the Beeline Highway into the Tonto National Forest, and the air was getting cooler, the night darker, and the world quieter.

She peeled off on an exit that was one lane of loose dirt and then she flicked on her high beams. We followed the pitted road into the rocky terrain for several miles. There were no other cars, no other signs of life, and I tried very hard not to have a complete freak-out.

Annabelle consulted her phone two or three times until, satisfied, she pulled into a small dirt lot. A posted sign announced that it was the trailhead for a hike. Sweet baby Jesus, she did not think we were going night hiking, did she? That was a hard no.

She switched off the engine and cut the headlights. Then she began unfastening the cloth top of the Jeep by the light of her phone.

“What are you doing?” I demanded. I was getting impatient.