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They sat there a while longer, and he ate some of the pizza too, right about the time she’d decided that he probably wouldn’t. And Ruthie figured that they would sit here and continue this awkward conversation, but he stood up again.

“I think we should go back up to the lighthouse,” he told her. Gravely. “I know you want me to tell you the story of our marriage. I can do that. I can try to do it. But I’m not sure you really believe anything I’m telling you.”

“I don’t not believe you,” she told him, trying to be a little more careful. “But you can see why it’s hard to swallow. A woman randomly walks into a bed-and-breakfast that happens to be owned by her ex-husband, who not only isn’t her ex, but funnily enough has been erased entirely from her memory. Surprise!”

“I don’t think it was random.” He waited while she stood up and watched her as she shrugged back into her parka. “You said you got a postcard.”

“I did. Like I said, I thought it was impressive marketing.”

He made a face. “It wasn’t marketing. It was my mother.”

That delighted her, for some reason. “Your mother sends out postcards on your behalf?”

“My mother feels an enormous amount of guilt when it comes to her children,” Dallas said quietly. “She married her high school sweetheart, who turned out to be a laundry list of unpleasant things and she’s pretty sure it ruined us all forever.”

“All of you? You mean your sister, who I met, right?” When he nodded, she considered. “Is she ruined?”

For some reason, that made his jaw go tight again. “No. Not at all, in fact. Both she and my brother are married and disgustingly happy.”

“So it’s you.” She didn’t know why her mouth was curving, only that she thought maybe he was feeling some of that electricity from her, this time. “You’re the one who’s ruined.”

“Anyway,” he said, and she could hear temper in his voice again as easily as she could see the blaze of it in his eyes, “I figured I could at least show you some evidence that we’ve actually met before I try to tell you stories about yourself.”

Ruthie didn’t know what to say to that, really.

“Sure,” is what she settled on. “I would love to see the evidence of us.”

And once she said that, she realized that she really did want to see it, because she still couldn’t imagine it. She couldn’t make any of it make sense. On some level she honestly couldn’t believe that she’d actually touched this man. Spent time with him. Lived with him.

What had he told her? That they had looked at each other and then they were together, and that was that.

Yeah, she was going to need some evidence to prove that.

Dallas ushered her outside, waving at the women behind the counter and nodding at the tables they passed, and she wasn’t ready when the cold hit her like a punch. She wrapped the scarf tighter around her neck, and fell into a rhythm beside him as they walked. And she couldn’t be sure if it was that he slowed that long stride of his, or she hurried up—but it felt entirely too natural as they crossed the road together, keeping pace with each other, and headed for his truck.

He parked in the lot she’d passed before. A brightly painted trailer stood there on the side of the General Store and folks drove up, parked, and waited for the line to die down before they went up to the window and ordered coffee from the menu that hung there. Some even stayed outside, sitting at picnic tables that she thought looked like year-round, though the poles where umbrellas would hang weren’t there. She tried to imagine it in the summer, with the sun beating down, the breeze coming in sweet, and shade to sit in with a coffee.

Everywhere she looked, she could see the hints of the cozy town his sister had mentioned.

And she was looking at the coffee cart itself as they walked by, so she saw the way the girl in the window went still when she caught sight of Ruthie with Dallas, then lifted her eyebrows so high that they almost disappeared beneath the beanie she wore.

What Ruthie noticed most of all was that the girl had eyes almost as blue as Dallas’s.

“That’s Helena,” Dallas said, in an aside to Ruthie as he lifted a hand in the direction of the window. “My sister.”

“Oh, so you have more ruined siblings?”

“That’s the kind of man my father was,” Dallas said. “Or still is, for all I know. He disappeared. We all have a running bet going, because some of us think he’s dead, and others think he’s off having even more families than the two we know about. Maybe they’ll all show up here someday.”

He sounded gruffer than usual when he said that, and she had the urge to reach over and put her hands on him. To comfort him, she thought. And she couldn’t tell if that was an organic urge from somewhere deep inside of her, maybe connected to the things she couldn’t remember about the two of them. Or if it was just him.

Or maybe it was just that she couldn’t seem to figure out how to not want to touch him, even though she couldn’t actually connect to any of the things he’d told her.

She kept it to herself. “I don’t have any siblings,” she told him. “Or I don’t think I do. It’s entirely possible that I have a ton of them, but that my cousins and aunts didn’t want to let them know that my grandmother had died. But I don’t think so.”

“You don’t.” Dallas’s voice was some mix of curt and sure. “You were orphaned when you were five. I don’t know that you ever remembered what happened to your parents, or if you were told the story, but it certainly took a toll on you either way. You had to be rescued from that boat in the river. Chances are, you saw exactly what happened to them.”

“Wait.” She stopped walking, and looked up at him. “I was on the boat when they drowned?”