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“Broke his wrist.”

She stares at me. “He told me he broke his wrist falling off a bike!”

“He lied.”

“That asshole.”

I laugh. “Your husband was full of shit.”

“I know.” She says it with a smile.

So I keep going.

I tell her about the summer we tried sleeping out here and lasted until two in the morning because D was convinced something was walking around underneath us.

“It was a fucking raccoon.” I laugh, remembering D’s face. “But it was a big one!” he said when all my brothers laughed their asses off as soon as we walked into my bedroom. I mimic D and laugh at the memory.

She laughs again, so I tell her about Blackjack throwing me into the lake and Damiano laughing so hard he fell off the platform. About the time our dads caught us trying to build a second level without permission, the initials carved into the beam above our heads and the summers when we would leave after breakfast and only come home when Mama started calling for us through a walkie talkie.

Nora listens to every word. Sometimes she laughs or asks questions, and sometimes she just looks around the treehouse as though she’s trying to fit this version of Damiano beside the man she knew.

And I realize something.

She knew parts of him I never did. I knew the boy who rode Blackjack down this trail and jumped into that lake, but she knew the man he became after he left Lander.

Maybe that’s why bringing her here feels right.

Between the two of us, we still have so much of him.

I hand her a sandwich, and she takes it before looking out over the lake.

“Thank you.”

“For lunch?”

She shakes her head. “For this.”

I follow her gaze toward the treehouse, the lake and everything that’s still here after all these years.

“Figured you should know his past too.”

Nora looks out over the water. “People always avoid it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Talking about him.” She keeps her eyes on the lake. “Sure, they say they’re sorry, or they tell me at least he’s not suffering anymore and that one day I’ll see him again. But whenever I start talking about him, people tend to change the subject or look elsewhere. They don’t meet my eyes. Somehow, they think talking about him hurts me.”

She shakes her head.

“And don’t get me wrong. In a way, it does. But it also…” She pauses, searching for the right words. “It keeps him alive somehow. Talking about him, remembering him, laughing at his old antics… it makes me miss him a tiny bit less.”

She looks at me and shrugs.

“I guess it’s a paradox. I know it hurts me, but at the same time, it brings me closer to him for a while.”

I nod. “Then I need to tell you about this one time we snuck a whole batch of cookie dough my mom had prepared for her B&B guests up here.”

Nora gasps. “How much?”