“This is a nice place,” he finally says. It’s a throwaway comment. He’s only speaking to make noise because I’ve been walking like a girl in a trance. He must think I’m psycho. Or maybe he thinks, like my father, that I’m a silly little girl — walking off on the job because the impulse struck me.

I move to the big rock. To the place where we always laid our blanket. The ground here is almost clean thanks to the needles. They’re like a blanket themselves. I want to sit on them, but instead I rest on the rock. That’s almost a normal thing to do, whereas squatting in the dirt is probably a bit much. But still, I lean forward and brush the needles, as if the memory is still here.

I look up at Brandon. He seems mystified. He doesn’t want to ask why we’re here because clearly it’s this place we’ve been headed for all along … and yet to him, it’s another stop on an anonymous tour. His confusion is charming enough to break my mood. And yes, I’m glad he’s here. It changes things enough that I won’t get lost, that I won’t let this place be more than pine and dirt and water, which is all it is and all it ever was.

“You said you used to hang out at the creek,” I say.

“On and off. I moved around a lot.”

“With Bridget?”

“No. Both times she and I lived together, it was thirty miles down the highway. There wasn’t much nature around. But I was always close enough to come by myself.”

Looking at Brandon, I can tell that his memories are different from mine. Reed Creek was a place of soft fantasy for me. For him, I’d guess it was a place of escape. Maybe he ran here to be away. Maybe he was chased.

“Where did you grow up? Which places?”

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

I won’t pry, even though I want to. In my world, people don’t answer questions like that. Maybe there’s nothing worth hiding. Or maybe we’re numb to what should be hidden, and share too much.

I study the creek’s visible section from end to end. We’re still on the near bank, but not far down it’s easy to cross the water without getting wet. There are large rocks in the middle, and there used to be a downed tree that might have fallen to pieces by now.

“I used to come here with my mother,” I say.

Brandon turns to look at me.

“Right here. Mom was a nature girl. Practically a hippie. You know how they say opposites attract? That was my mom and dad.”

Brandon is looking right at me. Directly into my eyes. That thing about opposites attracting, it felt like a dangerous thing to mention. Because Brandon and me? We’re pretty opposite. He’s tall, and I’m short. I’m blonde, and his hair is dark brown. I’m bubbly, and he’s so quiet and closed, he’s almost standoffish. I grew up rich, almost from birth, and he might have crawled on dirt floors.

But if he was in foster care, I guess we have at least one thing in common. And it’s hard to hold his gaze without my eyes misting about it.

“Dad wanted the nice, polished home as soon as we could afford it. But Mom would have been happy in a tent. Dad was all business. Mom wanted fun.” I feel a bittersweet smile reach my face. “I guess I’m a mix of them both. From Dad, I got capitalism. Mom made me a troublemaker.”

“You don’t strike me as a troublemaker,” Brandon says.

I’m looking at the pine needles. Remembering our blanket. Remembering how uncomfortable Dad always seemed on Mom’s hikes. Remembering how he always tried to keep his dislike of the picnics to himself, and how Mom and I always laughed at his expense because it was so obvious anyway.

“She used to torment him by taking us on nature walks,” I say, ignoring Brandon’s comment and its curious edge. “But he was never forced. She didn’t guilt him into it. She didn’t even ask him to go. That’s what made it so much fun for her. My mom knew that if she announced a hike, he’d go. Because that’s how he is.” I look up at Brandon. “You should know that, if you’re going to work with him. He has a reputation for being hard, and I know people think he’s ruthless. But he’s not. He’s the kind of man who, when his wife wanted to take his daughter on a hike, would drop everything and go. Because he loved her.”

I’m still sitting with Brandon standing beside me. I can see the odd workings of his features and know he wants to ask me what this is all about. But I know he won’t. He’ll let me volunteer what I want to say, and that will be that.

But melancholy has settled around my heart, and I don’t want to say any more. I don’t want to be here, and now sort of wish I hadn’t come. Seeing this special place changes nothing. It won’t bring my mother back, or heal what’s missing from my father’s life.

I stand and turn. It’s time to go. I don’t like that something in me was drawn here. I avoided this place for thirteen years, so why return now? And why with this man beside me? The emotional mix is confusing. It hurts. I feel weak, and a small, quiet part of me — the part that was glad Brandon was here just a minute ago — somehow wants …

… what the hell does it want from him, here, now?

That’s a question I don’t want to answer.

We shouldn’t have come here. I have no idea why I did. I have no idea why, if I felt the need to relive this tender memory, I allowed him to follow me. I have no idea what I expected. Was he supposed to make it all better? Was he supposed to rewind the clock and lick my wounds?

This isn’t who I am.

Or who I want to be.

And if my father knew I’d blew off our errand to come here, it would validate what he’s already thinking. Not only am I neglecting the simplest job; I’ve dragged his new man to a tender spot by the creek in the way I might have let a boy take me to the cliffs to make out before telling Dad I was desperately in love.

I’m not eighteen anymore.

I’m not a nine-year-old girl, lost without her mother.

I’m three or four steps back toward the meadow when a strong grip wraps my arm like a bracelet. Brandon’s hand is large enough to almost encircle my arm below the elbow. This is about a gently as one person can restrain another, but still my first reaction is to wrench myself away. I don’t. Instead, I meet his eyes with a hard stare that lasts a half second. After that, I might cry.

I hate how torn I am. Just yesterday I felt totally in control — a new woman with a college degree, ready to show her hometown that she’s a proper adult, and handle the reins of her family business. But now I barely know which end is up, and it’s my fault, like the worst kind of childish self-sabotage.

“Are you okay?” Brandon asks me.

“We should get back. Margo said she wanted me back at the office by nine, and it’s a half-hour drive.”

Brandon watches me for a long moment. If we were a couple — if we were the man and the woman who’d laid their blanket here, with our own little girl between us — I think he’d challenge my obvious denial. But we just met, and it would be as inappropriate for him to pry as it would be for me to do what something within me wants — to lean in and let him hold me for a moment, to make this burst of memory leave. Because he could. I think about Mom all the time, but only every great once in a while does something grab me like this place has.

A saboteur’s thought flits through my mind (Did you bring him here so you’d break down and need his comfort?), and then it’s gone.

“I’m fine,” I say, my tone softer.

But really, I’m not.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Brandon