The inside of the lobby at the Greater Stillwater Chamber of Commerce was stiflingly hot. The warm sand-colored paint on the walls and the oak furniture and ceilings only contributed to the feeling that I was being boiled alive. It brought back memories of roasting inside a Humvee under the scorching Afghani sun.

I’d already taken off my coat and hoodie, but dressing in layers was a futile effort in this office. “Excuse me, ma’am?” I said, fanning my face with my hand as I approached the receptionist again. “Do you know how much longer I’m going to have to wait?”

Her eyes widened. “I’m not sure. Susan is still on a phone call. Are you… okay? Your face is pretty red.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I’m just going to wait outside. Can you get me when Susan is off the phone?”

She nodded. “Sure.”

I stepped out of suite 204 and didn’t find any relief from the oppressive heat until I’d descended the stairs down to the small lobby area and raced outside into the blissful 55-degree weather. Chestnut Street in this quaint section of downtown Stillwater was bustling with people shopping and going about their business.

I didn’t bother putting my hoodie or coat back on as I took a seat on the low retaining wall in front of 200 Southeast Chestnut Street. I watched people coming in and out of the U.S. Bank building across the street. Everyone seemed so focused and serious. I wondered if my perception of Stillwater as one of the most beautiful and friendly places on Earth was biased.

The city of Portland certainly wasn’t going to meet either of those criteria, but Portland — like Stillwater — had its own charm. I would miss the variety of local coffee roasters and breweries I had to choose from in Portland. I’d miss the laid back vibe and the fried chicken at Reel M Inn. But most of all, I’d miss the people.

Most of the girls I’d slept with before Laurel came around were downright sparkling. They had strong opinions on everything from the best local coffee to the worst local politicians. Portlanders were fanatical about their sports teams, but it was totally okay to be a man who hated sports. They shunned religion and deified nature, fiercely protecting their natural resources and vilifying anyone who threatened their green culture.

Portland was probably one of the few places in America where you could find tree-hugging Republicans and gun-loving Democrats happily coexisting. Because no matter your political affiliation, the most glaring societal divide was the fault-line separating Portland natives from out-of-state transplants. The city was an experiment in cultural contradictions, yet somehow it worked.

Stillwater was probably almost as liberal as Portland, but the culture was very different. On the surface, it was in many ways your typical quaint midwestern small town with a population under 20,000. Wedged between rocky outcrops on one side and the St. Croix river on the other, the town was picturesque. A storybook village complete with Victorian-style bed and breakfasts and a historic district brimming with antique shops. A great place to raise a family.

But underneath the apparent need to cling to its history, Stillwater was a place that embraced change. The former logging town was young at heart. A place where you could take an historic tour of the city on a Segway, or ride around downtown on a beer bicycle. While I would miss Portland greatly, and I looked forward to settling down in Stillwater at some point, I needed to get out of here and explore what the rest of the world had to offer. And today would be the first day of this new adventure.

“Mr. Evans?” a female voice called to me.

I followed the receptionist back inside and up the stairs to suite 204. She led me to an office where a woman with graying blonde hair, almost exactly like my mom’s, was sitting at a round wooden table. Her gold-rimmed glasses rested on the tip of her nose as she removed a binder clip from a half-inch stack of legal size papers.

She looked up as I walked in. “You must be Isaac Evans,” she said in a pleasant Minnesota accent.

“Yes, ma’am. Are you ready for me?”

“I sure am,” she replied enthusiastically, motioning to the chair across from her. “Please have a seat.”

After signing my name, and her notary log, a total of about twenty different times, I began to get a cramp in my thumb.

She giggled as I wiggled my fingers before signing the final document in the stack. “I know. It’s a lot of paper. And, to be honest, I think this is the most paper I’ve seen for a cash sale of a house. Must be strict regulations in Oregon.”

I flipped the final piece of paper over onto the stack of signed documents and smiled. “Is that it?”

“It sure is,” she replied, straightening the documents and affixing the binder clip to the top. “Oregon requires that the funds from the sale of the property be held in escrow for seventy-two hours, while they verify that you’re not a terrorist or something. The funds will be in your account within seventy-two to ninety-six hours. If they’re not, you should call the seller’s agent. Her number is on the copies I provided you. Congratulations! And good luck figuring out what to do with all that cash.”

I smiled as she held out her hand for a shake. “Thank you.”

As I roamed the rows of headstones and grave markers, searching the names of the dead for my brother’s name, I tried not to look at the dates. I didn’t want to know which of these graves bore the remains of dead children.

In Afghanistan, I always felt conflicted and angry with myself when I learned that a child had been hurt in one of the raids I participated in. But, on the outside, it seemed most of us were able to brush it off as an unfortunate consequence of a necessary operation. Those children wouldn’t have been hurt or killed if their relatives weren’t terrorists, I told myself.

Having spent the last few months in the company of a mother who lost her child to violence, I didn’t think I’d ever again be able to detach myself from the consequences of war.

A child should never be considered collateral damage. To someone, that child was their world. To the world, that child was a promise.

It took about twenty minutes to find Dane’s grave. I could have asked my parents for the precise location, but didn’t want them to ask why I was going or if they could come with me. I needed to do this alone. Luckily, I knew they would bury him near my grandfather, so I didn’t have to search too long to find the polished black granite headstone. To my dismay, my parents had picked out a headstone with my brother’s picture on it.

I stared at the image of my brother — standing on the dock at the lake — and became irrationally angry. I knew my parents didn’t choose to put the picture of Dane there to remind me of my own mortality, but it sure as hell felt like a fucking slap in the face. Maybe they thought it should have been me in that grave.

I shook my head as I read the numbers and letters carved into the granite.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here to pick you out a better headstone,” I muttered, knowing wherever Dane was, he would appreciate the humor. “I wish I’d come sooner. You didn’t deserve to die hating yourself. Because I sure as fuck never did. Even when I thought I hated you, I always loved you, brother. Always will.” I blinked back tears and tried not to feel stupid for thinking I should have prepared a speech or something. “Man, oh, man. I wish you could see Ethan. Looks just like me. He’s gonna be one handsome ladies’ man.” I realized then, as I glanced at the photo of Dane, that my parents put the picture on the headstone so they could look at it while they spoke to him. “I promise I’ll keep your boy out of trouble. I… I put away some money for him. I’m gonna be traveling for a while, but I’ll be back by the time he’s five or six. Make sure he’s taken care of and… doesn’t give Nicole too much grief. She’s a good mom… You did good, bro.”

I stood there for a while, thinking about how my childhood would have sucked ass without Dane. And my family would never be the same without him. But I was going to make sure Ethan didn’t grow up with a Dane-shaped hole in his life.

I kissed the tips of my fingers and touched the picture before I headed back to my new truck. As I slid into the driver’s seat, I picked my phone up off the console and called Emily.

“Hey, what’s up?” she answered with genuine enthusiasm.

“You in the mood for a walk down Nicollet Mall?”

“I’m putting on my coat now,” she replied. “See you in thirty minutes?”

“I’ll be there.”

Emily shared an apartment in Minneapolis with a girl named Jodie, who she had described to me as an aspiring neurosurgeon with a very dry sense of humor. According to Emily, Jodie was the only person who responded to her Craigslist room-for-rent ad who was remotely capable of paying rent on time and wasn’t a total creep. The stories of the other applicants she met reminded me why it was so much easier to be a man.

The Rose apartment building looked like it had been built fairly recently, and the location — a block from the convention center and ten minutes from the University of Minnesota — was about as close as you could get to downtown without making a deal with the devil for your firstborn. I didn’t know how much Emily made as a freelance Mandarin translator, but she seemed to be doing okay for herself. Though I had absolutely nothing to do with her success, I couldn’t help but feel proud of her.

The lobby at The Rose apartment building was decorated in boxy, modern black and orange furniture. An interesting choice, though I suspected there was probably some psychology to it. I learned in a psychology class in the military that orange was a color that made most people feel energetic and enthusiastic. It sure as hell was working on me. As I hit the elevator button to go up to the third floor, I practically had butterflies in my belly.

When I arrived at apartment N305, I knocked a few times and laughed when I heard a female yelp on the other side of the door.

“Coming!” Emily shouted from inside. A few seconds later, the steel lever on the maple door turned and opened inward. “Is it snowing?”

I smiled at the way she was bundled up in a coat, hoodie, scarf, and boots. “Not yet.”

She snatched a knit cap off a table by the door and stuffed it into the pocket of her puffy blue jacket. “Let’s go.”

“You like being prepared, huh?” I said, pressing the call button for the elevator.

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t like surprises.”

I laughed as we stepped into the elevator. “I just called you and asked you to go for a walk and you were totally up for it. Seems to me you’re pretty good at going with the flow.”

“No, you called me first and asked if I wanted to go for a walk. You didn’t just show up at my door unannounced. That’s not a surprise. That’s a plan. I like to plan.”

The nervous energy in my body intensified as I thought of what I had planned for tonight. “If you say so. I’ll try not to surprise you too often.”

She flashed me a beaming smile as she stepped out of the elevator. “I don’t know. You seem like the kind of guy who’s full of surprises. Maybe you’ll change me.”

“I don’t want to change you.”

She covered her cheeks as we crossed the lobby. “I really wish I didn’t blush so much around you. It’s really embarrassing.”

“Another thing I wouldn’t change,” I replied with a smile.

She shook her head as I held the door open for her. “What’s up with this weather?” she said, as the first snowflakes of the season began to fall on us. “I was wearing a tank top this afternoon. Now, winter is officially here.”

I tilted my face toward the dark sky, closing my eyes as I breathed in the cool, clean scent of fresh snow. “I have a feeling that’s not the only change coming.” When I opened my eyes, Emily was staring at me with a strange grin on her face. “What?”

Her smile widened. “Nothing. It’s just the look on your face… That pure, unadulterated love of the snow.”

I reached forward and grabbed the knit cap, which was sticking out of her pocket. “You should put this on.”

“Go ahead.”

I smiled and carefully pulled the beanie over her dark hair, gently tucking some loose waves under the cap so they wouldn’t poke her eyes. Then, I took her face in my hands and kissed a snowflake that had just landed on her eyelashes.

“There,” I said, looking down at her as she gripped my forearms. “Do you think you can still be a freelance translator while you’re traveling?”

Her eyebrows squeezed together. “Probably. Why?”

I brushed a snowflake off her rosy cheek. “I’m leaving next week. I’m going to Japan first, then probably Bali. I want to travel the world while I’m still young enough to climb mountains and wrestle grizzly bears. And I want you to come with me.”

She pressed her lips together for a moment as she considered my words, then she nodded her head emphatically. “Okay.”

“Really?”

She continued nodding for a moment before she blurted out, “Yes!”

I laughed as I wrapped my arms around her tiny waist and lifted her off the ground.

She yelped as she curled her arms around my neck. “Yes, to everything except wrestling grizzly bears. You’re on your own there.”

I set her down gently and planted a kiss on the tip of her nose. “Yes to everything?” I said, smiling as I watched her straighten the cap on her head again. “I have a feeling this is going to be the trip of a lifetime.”