"Wyoming is a rectangle full of wind."
"Every state west of Ohio is mostly a rectangle," I say, turning to face him, "and you don't see me calling Iowa imaginary."
"I'm not calling Wyoming imaginary."
"Then what are you calling it?"
He considers this for a moment, mug raised halfway to his mouth. "Aspirational."
I stare at him. "That's the most diplomatic dismissal of an entire state I've ever heard."
"I lived there for two years," he says, like that explains everything.
"And?"
"It was very windy."
"That's your whole review."
Beck shrugs, unbothered. "It was very flat and very windy and the coffee was terrible."
"OKAY." I point at him. "The coffee seals it. Wyoming is not a real place."
He laughs — actually laughs, not the barely-there almost-smile but a real sound, low and brief, like something that caught him off guard. It does catastrophic things to my chest and I look away before he can notice me noticing.
The light fades. Clarence moves from the railing to the back of Beck's chair, which he does sometimes when he thinks nobody is watching. The mountains go dark blue against a sky turning purple and then that particular Montana black that's different from city dark — deeper, more convinced of itself.
We talk about smaller things first. His mom, who lives in Bellingham and sends Ivy elaborate care packages with books and pressed flowers and once a full taxidermied squirrel that Ivy named Professor Nutsworth and Beck put in the attic after two days. My mom, who worked three jobs and never once let me feel it, and fell asleep during every movie we watched together and I learned to narrate the ending for her because she'd wake up for the last five minutes and want to know how it went.
"She still does that?" he asks.
"Every time. I call her during the finale of whatever show I'm watching and tell her the whole thing. She says she could just watch it herself but then she'd have to actually stay awake."
"That's efficient."
"That's her. She found the workaround and stuck with it."
He turns his mug in his hands for a long moment. Then: "My father's version of parenting was to be present and entirely unavailable. Showed up to everything. Didn't actually see any of it."
He says it the same way he'd tell me the forecast — no lift in his voice, no invitation to respond with sympathy. I look at him sideways.
"That sounds exhausting to be around," I say quietly.
"He was very good at it. Coached my little league team for two seasons. I don't think he knew any of our names."
The porch is quiet for a moment. Clarence shifts on the back of Beck's chair, and somewhere in the dark the spruce trees move. Beck isn't asking for anything back — he said it the same way he says everything, flat and certain — but he gave it to me anyway, and it feels like the kind of exchange that only works if it goes both ways.
"Denver," I say.
He goes still. Not a flinch — just a pause, the way he gets when something lands and he's deciding what to do with it.
"Denver," he repeats.
"I transferred from Denver Trauma. That's where I came from." I keep my voice even, because I've been practicing "even" for a long time now and I'm mostly good at it. "There was a pediatric code. Bad one. And I froze."
The word sits between us. He doesn't reach for it with reassurance or softness or any of the things people usually grab when someone hands them the difficult part.
"How old?" he asks.
