“I know I’m a little early,” he continued, oblivious to the chaos he’d created. Everything seemed fine on the surface, but I could feel something invisible moving through the room, like shock waves from an underwater explosion. “Rehearsal dinner’s not for a few days yet, right, puddin’?”

“Right,” Dusty said shakily, pale under her spray tan.

“Wanted to make sure I was nice and rested up for the big day.” He grinned. I couldn’t stop staring at him. “Lookin’ good, Laurie.”

He nodded at Mom. She nodded back, her hands fluttering like she was still trying to hold on to that shattered champagne glass. But the staff had already swept the shards up into a neat little dustpan.

“Dude,” Heaven whispered. “Is that your dad?”

I shrugged, wildly. Was that my dad? Was this tall blond stranger in a gray suit my dad?

Jamie caught my eye across the table and raised his eyebrows questioningly. I shook my head.

Heaven’s hand found mine and held it under the table. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I hadn’t seen so much as a picture of this man, and here he was. Out of nowhere. It seemed impossible that he could exist, an actual three-dimensional person, who had been living a life concurrent with, but completely separate from, mine.

“Who are you?” Florence asked imperiously, commanding the attention of the room. Even with the father-shaped bomb that had been dropped into the middle of it, ready to detonate at any moment.

“I’m the father of the bride. Cash Keller,” he said. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

Cash Keller. It sounded like a fake name. Like a character in a bad made-for-TV movie. Like someone you thought was a nice guy until he married the heroine and attempted to murder her as part of some elaborate financial scheme.

“I know him,” Heaven murmured curiously. “Cash Keller. I know him.”

“Well, that makes one of us.”

“He’s familiar.”

“He looks familiar?” I asked, squinting at him. He didn’t look familiar to me.

“Naw, I mean he looks kind of like Brad Pitt, but that’s not it. He seems familiar.” Heaven closed her eyes. “No, he sounds familiar.”

“Quite a place you got here.” Cash—my dad—whoever he was—whistled. “Yep, this is quite the pile of bricks. You did all right for yourself, here, puddin’.”

“Daddy!” Dusty exclaimed, scandalized, as a faint blush crept up her neck.

“Well, just look at you, sweetheart. So beautiful.” He walked over to Dusty and held out one of her arms, like he was examining her. I half expected her to twirl. “Can’t believe how grown-up you are. You’re the spittin’ image of your mama, I swear.”

I guess it would be hard to believe how much someone had grown up in sixteen years. If you hadn’t even bothered to see them once.

Much to my surprise, Dusty let him pull her into a hug. If she wanted to pretend this was some happy reunion, that was fine, but I wasn’t going to play along. I looked over at Mom, pale and shell-shocked. What did you do, when suddenly faced with the father you’d never met? Mostly I just felt hollow and nauseated, like my stomach had dropped right out from under me. Like that weird feeling you get in an elevator sometimes.

I wished he hadn’t come. I’d been curious about him, sure, but I would have preferred a photograph. I didn’t want an actual flesh-and-blood human being to contend with.

“Cash Keller. 96.5, Scores Sports Radio.” Heaven’s eyes fluttered open. “That’s how I know him! Cash Keller, 96.5!”

“Did someone say Scores Sports Radio?” Cash turned his blinding artificially white smile toward us, and I froze like a deer in headlights. “Is the little lady over here a fan?”

Cash walked right up to Heaven, turning the full force of his personality on her like he was switching on a lamp. I swear, it was like he was shining through his tan. He seemed like the kind of guy who was used to people liking him. Used to getting his way. He seemed like…well, like Dusty.

“Do you listen to 96.5 with Cash Keller in the mornings, sweetheart?” he prompted, nodding encouragingly at Heaven.

“Um, yeah—yeah,” she stammered, looking wildly back and forth from Cash to me to my mom, clearly unsure of what the social etiquette was in this situation. “We listen to you every morning on the way to school. My dad loves you.”

“Your daddy’s a sports fan?”

“He’s a football coach.”

“My kind of man!” He rubbed his hands together gleefully. “Where does he coach?”

“Just at my school. Tupelo High.”

“Hey!” Cash snapped his fingers together in recognition. “Dusty, that must be where you went! I’m sure you broke a hell of a lot of hearts on that football team.” He chuckled.

It was at that moment I reached the horrifying conclusion that my dad had absolutely no idea who I was. He sure didn’t recognize me, although there was also a distinct possibility that he had no idea I existed. I had thought he’d left after I’d been born, but I didn’t really know. In all the pictures of me as a baby, it was only me and Mom and Dusty.

What was I supposed to do, walk up to him and formally introduce myself? “Hi, Cash Keller? I’m Dylan Leigh, the daughter you abandoned. Great to meet you. Crazy weather we’re having, huh?”

I emitted an involuntary squeak of distress. Cash looked over and smiled blandly. He didn’t know. He really had no idea who I was.

Run. I could hear it as clearly as if someone had spoken it in my ear. I had no idea what to do with Cash, or what to say to Mom, or even how I was supposed to feel. The only thing I did know was I had to get out of there. I pushed back my chair and bolted from the room.

The stillness erupted into chaos behind me. I could hear shouting and chairs scraping and the jarring sounds of rattling silverware. The only voice I could make out was Jamie’s, calling my name over and over again. Rounding the corner into the entrance hall, I pushed open the heavy doors to the castle and sprinted off into the night.

Eventually, the footsteps behind me faded. I knew it would be easy to outrun the camera crew, weighed down with heavy equipment. Hell, I could outrun everyone in that stupid castle. Especially if they bothered to stop for coats. I’d be long gone by the time they made it out here.

My lungs burned from the cold weather and the exertion. I hadn’t been running here as much as I did at home, and I still wasn’t used to the sting of the cold. But I ran anyway, almost reveling in the burn, as far and as fast as I could go.

Each footfall was like a slap through the thin ballet flats Dusty had lent me. I could feel each twig and rock articulated beneath the frost. Luckily, someone had plowed the road clean or I would never have gotten anywhere. Running through knee-deep snow was not something my cross-country coach had covered.

The moon reflecting off the snow was so bright it almost looked like daytime. I turned away from the fields with the sheep and the tiny cottages and the horse barn. A set of tire tracks led deeper into the woods. I was starting to lose steam from running flat-out, and the last thing I wanted to be in right now was an open field. Too visible. I pushed into the woods down the tire tracks, swatting branches out of my way as I went, my only impulse to disappear. To hide. I let the woods swallow me and ran until I couldn’t see so much as a spire of Dunyvaig in the distance.

Panting, I half collapsed against a tree, sliding down until I sat in the snow. I guess there were limits to how far even I could run. So mission accomplished—I’d gotten away. But now I was outside, alone, in the cold darkness of December, wearing only a cranberry-colored dress and ballet flats. I shivered, rubbing my arms for warmth. As my heart rate started to slow and my flush fade, I was left drenched in cold sweat.

“I should’ve run away to a McDonald’s,” I muttered to myself. Then I would have been warm. And had french fries.

This was all too much. Way too much. I could compartmentalize Dusty’s secret pregnancy, and ignoring the cameras, and the fact that I was days away from saying good-bye to Jamie, probably forever. But the completely unexpected reappearance of the dad I never thought I’d see again was beyond even my powers of denial. There was too much to feel, and the only option was to go numb, to feel nothing because I couldn’t feel everything. Or maybe that was the cold setting in. I had no idea how long I’d been out here. My legs weren’t stinging anymore; the stabbing pain of the cold had faded into a dull numbness. I hugged my knees tighter to my chest as my body shivered violently. It felt like I was coming apart at the seams, each shiver a spasm that rocked me to the core. I shut my eyes and buried my head in my knees, curling into as tight a ball as possible, scared to stay out here much longer, but too scared to go back.

The moon went behind a cloud, casting the woods deeper into darkness. I tried to wiggle my toes experimentally, but I couldn’t feel them at all. This was so, so much worse than being stranded at the Dunkeld & Birnam train station. I hadn’t known it was possible to be so cold it was painful. I tried to think of August in Tupelo, of the kind of heat that shimmered on sidewalks and melted ice-cream cones before you could eat them. But all I could see was darkness and all I could feel was cold. I braced myself against another round of shivers, listening to the jarring sound of my teeth chattering.

The first thing I heard was the hoofbeats. The second was my name being shouted. The third thing was a lot of snorting, and then an absolutely enormous black stallion appeared in front of me, air bursting from his nostrils in white clouds.

“Dylan!” Jamie cried, pulling on the reins to bring the horse to a stop, the large hooves skidding in the dirt before my feet. Jamie did look rather dashing riding bareback, his dark hair shining in the moonlight, his kilt flapping in the breeze, but I was not in the mood for dashing. Or for a kilt, for that matter. I’d seen enough tartan in the past couple of weeks to last me a lifetime.

This was ridiculous. This was not real life. I blinked a few times, but Jamie and the horse remained firmly in place.

“I’m not Jane Eyre!” I shouted.

“Sorry?” He blinked somewhat owlishly a few times.

“I’m not Jane Eyre!” I repeated. “You can’t Mr. Rochester your way out of everything!”

“Prior to this moment, I have never attempted to Mr. Rochester my way out of anything,” he said, baffled. “I have neither dressed up as a fortune-teller to ascertain your intentions nor blinded myself in a fire. This very incident hardly qualifies as Mr. Rochester-ing, since I am still firmly atop my horse. And I’m not entirely sure that gentleman’s name can be used as a verb.”

“In America you can use anything as a verb!” I retorted shrilly, scrambling to my feet. “You can verb whatever you want! Thank the goddamn Smurfs for that!”

“I believe the Smurfs are Belgian, originally.”

“You’re Belgian! Originally!” I was aware that I had long since bypassed the realm of the rational, but I really didn’t care. My legs were practically buckling underneath me, knees knocking with each fresh wave of shivers.

“Distantly, on my mother’s side, as a matter of fact. But not since the fourteenth century. I believe it was called the Burgundian Netherlands in those days, however.”

I raised my hands heavenward in the kind of epic shrug any mention of the Burgundian Netherlands justly deserved.

Jamie slid gracefully from the back of the horse.

“Just go.” I backed away from him, closer to the tree. “Go back to the castle, okay? I’m fine.”

He walked toward me. The horse, for his part, started snuffling about in the snow, presumably looking for some probably long-dead grass.

“You’re not fine.”

My bottom lip wobbled dangerously. Or maybe it was just disturbed by the force of my teeth chattering. I looked away, focusing on a whorl in a nearby tree trunk.

“Let me take you back to Dunyvaig, Dylan.” He reached out a hand, slowly, gently, like I was a wild animal he was scared of spooking. “It’s freezing out here. You can’t stay out long. It isn’t safe. You’re shivering uncontrollably.”

“Is saving people from hypothermia some kind of, like, life goal you have? You seem to do this a lot.”

“Just with you, really.”

His hand touched my cheek tentatively. I closed my eyes and leaned into it, the warmth of his palm cradling my face. It burned, almost, against the bitter cold of my skin.

“I don’t want to go back,” I whispered.

“I know. But unfortunately staying here isn’t an option. You’ll freeze to death. Better to be alive and in a socially awkward situation than dead and free.”

“That’s really inspirational. And seems very British. Is that how you guys tried to deal with George Washington?”

“I’m not entirely sure whether or not I should be offended. That seemed like a slight to the crown.” He slid his tartan sash thing off, unpinning the heavy silver buckle that held it together, and shook it out. It was bigger than I expected. He wrapped it around my shoulders, bundling me up like a burrito. I was still shivering but felt much better wrapped up.

“Can we go hide in the horse barn?” I pleaded. “Just hide in there and bar the doors?”

“They’d find us eventually.”

“Eventually is better than right now.”

Headlights broke through the darkness. I buried my face in the tartan, seeing spots. The horse whinnied in alarm. Jamie grabbed his bridle, making soothing noises as the horse stamped the frosty ground warily. The horn blared, and the horse tossed his head in response. Jamie grabbed his muzzle and blew onto his nose, stroking the sides of his face.

My eyes adjusted to the light in time to see a shiny vintage convertible roll to a stop, a fur-covered lump in the driver’s seat barely visible.

“Dylan!” Heaven. I recognized her voice at once. “The cavalry is here!”

“Why does everyone think I need to be rescued by means of some completely impractical mode of transportation?” I asked no one in particular. The horse nickered in response. He got it.

Heaven left the car running, headlights still on, and hopped out. She was wearing a thick fur coat that fell all the way down to her ankles.

“Why are you driving a convertible in December?” It wasn’t the only question I had. But it was the first one that came to mind.

“I couldn’t figure out how to get the top up on this stupid thing! It’s from like the Paleolithic Period!”

“It’s from 1966,” Jamie answered.

“Is it yours?” I asked, boggling.

“Heavens, no. Look at the personalized registration.”

I looked, attempting to shield my eyes from the glare of the headlights. The plate read KIRBY1.

“You stole Kit Kirby’s car?” I asked incredulously.

“I didn’t steal it on purpose. It was around back, and the keys were in it. I had to make sure you were okay. And there was no way I was running out here. I could never catch you.”

There was something special about a friend who would steal a car for you.

“And the fur coat…” I prompted.

“Pulled it out of a coat closet. In case you didn’t notice, it’s December.” She looked pointedly at my bare knees. “Heat’s running, but it’s not doing much. So let’s jump in and get back to Dunyvaig before we all freeze our butts off, ’kay?”

I looked back and forth between the two of them, the friends who had ridden to my rescue. Who had come to find me in a dark forest and weren’t pressuring me to talk about my dad or why I had run or anything. They just wanted me to be warm and safe. And maybe this was part of the mental confusion of early-onset hypothermia, but I had never felt so lucky. Who cared if my dad didn’t recognize me? I had family. And friends. They knew who I was—and so did I.

Another set of headlights cut through the darkness as a white van barreled into the clearing. Once again, Jamie restrained the horse as he shied and whinnied in displeasure.

“Stop! Thief!” An incredibly angry Kit Kirby burst out of the van, coat flapping behind him like the wings of the angel of death. “Unhand the keys, you madwoman!”

It wasn’t Kit Kirby who scared me, however. It was Pamela behind him, her hands clutching the clipboard as she watched the cameraman advance toward us, a grin on her face so wide I thought her face might split in two.