Glenn opened the screen door and motioned to the little seating area. “You can come in or wait out here. I’ll just be a minute. Cooler outside.”

Mari pulled out one of the chairs. “I’m good right here.”

“Need anything?”

Smiling, Mari shook her head. “Not a thing.”

“Be right back.”

Glenn disappeared and Mari leaned back with a sigh. She couldn’t see much beyond the confines of the dimly lit lot below, but she didn’t really need to. The air had finally cooled, and a breeze smelling of something green and alive tickled her hair. The sky was clear and starlit, an amazing phenomenon she wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to. From somewhere down the road or maybe across the fields, a lilting, melodious refrain she couldn’t place drifted out someone’s open window, the music triggering the memory of her mother ironing or folding laundry late into the night, humming along to the radio. God, she missed her. All of them.

Glenn stepped out in shorts, T-shirt, and running shoes. “Ready?”

Mari rose quickly and swallowed the sadness burning her throat. “Yes.”

“You okay?”

“Fine. Although I think I could sit out here for the rest of the night. It feels great to be outside.” Mari let herself stare, hoping the almost-dark covered her interest. The half-light softened Glenn’s sharply etched features, but the running clothes revealed a lot more of her body than had been apparent in her scrubs. Her limbs were lean and muscled, her trunk slender and sleek beneath the sleeveless tee she’d cut off at waist level, baring a strip of skin just above her shorts that Mari found suddenly very captivating.

“I sleep out here sometimes, when it gets really stuffy in the middle of the summer,” Glenn said.

Mari pulled her gaze from the pale, smooth skin and looked around. “On what?”

“The floor?”

“I got that part,” Mari said laughing, “but I mean…there’s no sofa or anything.”

“Oh.” Glenn laughed. “I just bring out a sheet and a pillow and bed down.”

“The idea is nice,” Mari admitted, “but the reality might be a little rustic for my taste.”

“Hey, no stones, no sand, no fleas. As far as I’m concerned, that’s perfect.”

And there it was, the reference point that seemed to mark everything in Glenn’s experience. Mari wondered what had happened to her over there and suspected she would never really know. Even secrets shared were often only half the story.

“How long were you in?” Mari asked as she followed Glenn down the wooden stairs.

“Eight years,” Glenn said.

“And…over there?”

“Fifteen months, the last time.” She stopped and slipped her palm under Mari’s elbow. “Watch your step right here—pothole.”

“Thanks, I’m good.” Glenn’s hand fell away, but Mari knew exactly where she had been touched. “More than once?”

“Three tours,” Glenn said, surprising herself when she answered. Like a lot of vets, she didn’t talk about her service except in the vaguest of terms. Many people were interested in what it was like, and she got that. Americans had lived with war for over a decade, had watched it begin in terror and unfold in horror on television in a way no war had ever been watched before. Countless knew people who had gone away whole and come back less than that, in spirit if not in body.

Flann was the only one Glenn ever talked about it with, and then only because Flann knew what not to ask. Flann wanted to know technical details—how battlefront medics handled traumatic injuries, how they saved lives in greater numbers than in any previous war. She never asked how the pain and terror and fear of failure affected those who knelt in the dirt and blood and smoke and waged their own personal wars on death. Glenn never minded talking about the things Flann wanted to know. Medicine was medicine, and the battlefield had taught her more than a lifetime of civilian practice in a clean, bright operating room stocked with everything she might need and all the help she’d ever want ever could. She remembered the day Flann had said she envied her the experience, and Glenn got that too. No one else would really understand what it was like to be pushed to the edge of her skill and knowledge and ability only to discover it wasn’t enough, that she needed to do more. Risk more.

“I’m sorry,” Mari said quietly. “I imagine it’s something private, something you might not want to talk about. Your story to tell.”

Glenn realized she must have gone silent. “A familiar story.”

“Not when it’s yours.”

“I’m glad I was there,” Glenn said, for the first time really knowing it was true. “Someone needed to be.”

“There must be hundreds, more, who are glad you were,” Mari said gently.

“I didn’t do anything anyone else didn’t do.” Glenn shrugged. “Nothing remarkable, nothing worth reliving.”

Reliving. Yes, that was exactly how Mari felt every time she imagined recounting the last year of her life—she feared she’d be right back there again, amidst the fear and the pain and the desperation. She quickly brushed the top of Glenn’s hand, the most comfort she could offer when Glenn so clearly didn’t want sympathy. “If, when, there’s something, anything, you want to talk about, I’d like to hear it. But if you never do, I understand.”

“If I ever do, I have a feeling it would be you.”

Glenn spoke so quietly she might have been talking to herself, but Mari heard the words, sensed them settle in the deepest part of her like a cherished gift. She took a second until the tightness in her throat abated. “Are you really going running?”

“Sure, why?”

“For one thing, it’s dark, and besides that, weren’t you up half the night operating with Flann?”

“Yeah,” Glenn said, not quite following Mari’s questions.

Mari laughed. “Well, aren’t you tired?”

“Oh no, not really. I don’t need much sleep.”

“Apparently.” Mari pointed to her house. “I’m in there. Second floor.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

“Thanks for dinner. Be careful running.”

“I will.” Glenn was pretty sure she didn’t have anything to be careful about, but Mari’s concern felt weirdly good. She waited on the sidewalk until Mari unlocked her door, turned, and waved.

“Night!” Mari called.

“Night,” Glenn whispered, and started to run.

Chapter Nine

Glenn never ran the same route twice. Habit was a dangerous thing. Habit could get you killed. She usually headed for the narrow roads on the outskirts of the village and then looped around the borders between town and farmland, avoiding the populated residential streets where kids and dogs congregated in the road and on sidewalks until dark. Tonight she threaded her way through the mostly empty alleys and service roads behind the businesses on Main Street and across the abandoned, overgrown railroad tracks that once transported corn and milk and flax from the surrounding farms toward the river, where barges carried the goods south and west. The train, like an interrupted lifeline on a scarred palm, no longer linked communities in the heart of the upland farms, although a freight train cut across the countryside close enough for Glenn to hear its lonely whistle crying in the night. At dawn and dusk, her favorite times to run, the roads were mostly empty, and only her footfalls kept her company.

Within minutes, her body settled into its patterned rhythm, and her senses opened to the night. Air moist with a hint of rain and smelling of freshly turned earth, crushed blossoms, and tendrils of charcoal smoke streamed over her skin. Wisps of clouds raced overhead, daring her to keep pace on their wild dash across the face of the moon. A dog barked. A coyote answered with a distant howl. Her heart tattooed a beat that kept pace with the slap of rubber soles on asphalt. Usually this far into her run her mind had stilled, bereft of thought for the only time all day.

Not so tonight. Tonight she thought of Mari Mateo. Oddly, she didn’t focus on the day they’d spent working together the way she usually considered her interactions with colleagues, although Mari had settled in seamlessly and was a welcome addition to the team. She remembered instead the easy way they’d talked about the hardest things, for both of them. She’d always been a pretty good listener, even when she’d rather shut out the shouts for medic or whispered pleas to make sure some loved one in another part of the world knew a soldier’s last thoughts had been of them. She’d never been a talker herself—never saw the point in dwelling on what couldn’t be changed—but Mari’s courage in exposing her personal struggles had inspired Glenn to open up a little, hell, a lot more than she ever did with anyone else.

As she covered the miles, she replayed more than their words, although they counted for a lot. Images cascaded through her mind, of Mari engrossed in examining a patient in a brightly lit cubicle, Mari sitting across from her in the hole-in-the-wall pizza place, Mari relaxing on Glenn’s pathetic excuse for a porch as if there was nowhere else in the world she’d rather be. Glimpses of gleaming hair, so black and bright, and the quick flash of warm dark eyes and an amused smile lit up her consciousness like a strobe suddenly illuminating a dark screen. She could have wiped the images from her awareness if she’d wanted, but she didn’t. Memories of Mari kept her company as her limbs stretched and her lungs expanded, reminding her of something she’d forgotten or maybe never really known, that the other side of solitude was loneliness. She was used to being alone, even in a crowded camp or bustling ER, and she’d never considered she was lonely. Maybe it took not being to know you were.

Glenn let the unanswerable question flee with her straining breaths. She was doing fine, no matter how she described her life, and one shared dinner with a companionable woman wasn’t about to change that, nor did she want it to. She’d faced her ghosts and was making peace with them in the best way she could. That was enough for her.

As she reached the farthest point from town and turned to circle back, traffic suddenly picked up. She slowed and stared at a light patch in the sky that shouldn’t be there. Laughing, she cut down a side street and ran toward the illumination coming from the fifty-acre fairgrounds on the east side of the village that was alive with music, the roar of mingled voices, and multicolored flashing lights. Now she knew where everyone was headed on a weeknight. The rodeo.

She’d forgotten the rodeo was in town for the rest of the week. When the fairgrounds weren’t home to the annual summer county fair with its vendors, barns full of animals, show rings, and carnival midway, the space hosted other events: the boat show, huge antique fairs, classic car exhibits, and the always popular rodeo. Pretty soon a steady stream of pickups and cars passed her, and on a whim, she pulled the twenty dollar bill she kept folded in the small key pocket of her shorts and purchased a ticket for the grandstand show.

She picked up a bottle of water from the guy selling soda, beer, and water from a cooler he lugged back and forth in front of the grandstand and went in search of a seat in the nearly full stands. She’d seen the barrel racing, cattle roping, bareback riding, and obstacle course races a few hundred times in her life, or so it felt, but she still watched the competitors put their mounts through their paces and clapped along with everyone else at the simple enjoyment.

“Hey, Glenn!”

Glenn scanned the bleachers and grinned when she saw Harper Rivers with her fiancée Presley and Glenn’s friend Carrie, who also happened to be Presley’s admin and longtime friend. Carrie had shed her stylish office attire in favor of her habitual scooped tee, shorts, and sandals. With her curly shoulder-length red hair pulled back in a careless ponytail she looked closer to eighteen than early twenties. Glenn waved and climbed between the spectators clogging the aisles. She worked her way down the already full row to where her three friends pressed together to make room for her.

“Thanks for the seat.” Glenn dropped down next to Carrie. “Must be a sellout crowd. Good for the town coffers.”

“Hey.” Carrie gave her a shoulder bump. “If I’d known you’d be free, I would’ve told you we were coming tonight.”

“That’s okay. Hadn’t planned on it.” Glenn uncapped the water and drank down half. She and Carrie hadn’t known each other long, but they had developed a quick, easy friendship. They often ended up together at group gatherings, especially since their mutual friends were pairing off, but things had never gone any further than that, mostly because neither one of them had ever pushed for more. “I was at the hospital pretty late anyhow. First day of the new program.”