Page 187

“You’re one hell of a smooth talker, Mr. Brooks.”

“So says the smooth-talking lawyer who just won her hearing in front of a judge who’s known to be a hard ass.”

She laughs. It’s bright like the summer sun.

She turns off 133 about eight miles north of town, onto a county road I’ve never been on before. It climbs the east bench before leveling out onto the mesa above the canyon.

She parks where the road ends at a natural pull-off—not a formal overlook, no sign, no guardrail, just a place where the land opens up, and the canyon drops away below, and the North Fork Valley spreads out to the north in the light of a late afternoon in summer.

She turns the engine off and leans back, her hands loose on the steering wheel. “I found this in October. About three weeks after I moved here.”

She opens the driver’s door and steps out. I follow.

We walk to the edge of the pull-off and look at the valley.

“I was driving, and I turned off without knowing why, and it reminded me of the Durango pull-off. Smaller. But the same quality of it. The land just…opening.”

“Like a breath.”

“Yes,” she decides. “Like a breath.”

The valley sits still but alive—the light moving across it, the shadows lengthening across the pastures below, the mountains above the canyon going from blue to the first suggestion of rose.

She’s quiet for a long time.

I’ve learned that her silences are not empty—they’re full of things that are still taking shape.

I wait.

“I forgive you,” she finally says.

The words are soft, without the routine of an announcement—it’s just the fact of them, set down between us like a truth she’s finally claimed.

“Not because everything is fixed. It isn’t. Not because I’m not still—” she stops. “There are things that are going to take longer. Things I’ll need time with.” Her gaze drifts over the valley. “But I’ve been carrying the not-forgiving, and it’s heavy. And I want to put it down.”

She turns back to me, steady, certain. “I forgive you. That’s real. What comes after it is going to be slow.”

“Thank you, Taya.” My heart does that thing it’s been doing—beating fast around her, coming alive like it’s been in deep hibernation.

It’s painful and exhilarating in equal measure.

“I’m still afraid.” She’s always had the courage to speak the hard things—without softening them, without making them easier to say or hear. “Not of you specifically. Of this. Of letting it be real and having it….” She pauses, as if considering exactly how to say what she wants to say. Finally, she confesses, “I’m afraid.”

“I will never hurt you again. Not intentionally. That’s a promise.”

She glances at me, the corners of her mouth tugging upward. “I know. I believe you.”

I draw in an unsteady breath.

“You have to be patient with me,” she warns.

“I have all the time there is.”

Her eyes fill with quiet affection. “That’s not a small thing to offer.”

“To have the privilege of having you in my life, of being part of yours—nothing is bigger.”

A raven crosses the rim of the canyon, a minute there and then gone.