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Dad finally sits down when the pancakes are done, which means he was tired ten minutes ago and didn't say so. His color is better than it was in June. The weight is coming back. His hands are steady on his coffee mug, and he's reading the Sunday paper, which is really just Mabel's weekly bulletin stapled to a real estate flyer from Durango.

"Dinner at Ben's tonight," I say, sitting across from him with my own plate.

"I know. He called."

"Reid's coming."

Dad looks at me over his reading glasses. He's sixty-two, retired from the county road crew, and he has the same ability Ben has to communicate entire paragraphs without opening his mouth.

"What?" My fork pauses halfway to my plate.

"Didn't say a word."

"Your face said plenty."

He folds the paper. Sets it beside his plate. Takes a sip of coffee. "Mira, that man has been looking at you sideways since you were twenty-two. You think I haven't noticed?"

My cheeks go hot. "Dad."

"Reid Holloway is a good man. He's also forty-four years old, he's been to war, and he's your brother's best friend since before you could walk. Those are facts."

"I know the facts."

"Good." He picks the paper back up. "Then you also know those are his facts to get past, not yours. All you gotta do is stand still long enough for him to stop running."

I stare at him. "That's either very wise or very irritating."

"Those aren't mutually exclusive." He turns to the crossword. "Pass the syrup."

This is where I got my patience from. And where Ben got his inability to stay out of other people's business.

The rest of Sunday crawls. Clinic charts on my laptop. Two loads of laundry at my apartment, the tiny one-bedroom above the old hardware store that Hank rented me for so little I'm fairly sure it's charity. A run on the trail behind Main Street that clears my head for exactly forty minutes until the thoughts come back.

Four days since the field. Four days since I stood in the cold and told Reid Holloway to stop treating me like wallpaper. Four days of hearing "I hear you" in his low voice and not knowing what that means.

It could mean I hear you, and I'm going to pretend this conversation never happened. Or it could mean I hear you, and I'm terrified.

With Reid, those two things might be identical.

By six o'clock, standing in front of my closet in a towel, the nerves hit. My wardrobe is scrubs, jeans, and three dresses I brought from Denver that still have tags on them. For Sunday dinner at Ben's, I'd normally wear jeans and a sweater. Tonight I pull on dark jeans that fit my hips right, a cream sweater that sits off one shoulder, and ankle boots. Hair down. No ponytail, no clinical bun. Mascara because my lashes are blonde and invisible without it.

The woman in the mirror looks thirty. Finally. Good.

Ben's house sits at the edge of town, a two-bedroom he bought when he took over the county maintenance supervisor job from our father. The porch light is on. His truck is in the drive, and next to it, parked at the far end where the gravel meets the grass, is Reid's black F-250.

He came.

My stomach flips once, hard, and I press my palm flat against it through the steering wheel. Twelve years of wanting this man. Twelve years of watching him walk into rooms and pretend he doesn't see me. And he's here.

Deep breath. Engine off. Boots on gravel.

Ben opens the door before I knock. "You're late."

"By four minutes."

"Reid's been here since six thirty." He grins at me. My brother is thirty-four, built wide across the shoulders from years of heavy equipment work, with the same blonde hair I have and the same inability to hide what he's thinking. "He's in the kitchen pretending to be useful. Fair warning, he reorganized my spice rack."

"Reid reorganized your spice rack."