She had first seen the man outside the diner, so Kassie knew that was where she had to start looking. After some negotiating with Hillary over the phone and promises to take over a shift the coming weekend, she managed to get the morning off. Then it was time to hit the streets around The Jukebox to see if anybody else had seen the homeless veteran or knew anything about him.

Kassie started with the drugstore next door. The teenage boy who ran the counter was oblivious to having seen anybody matching that description, and the girl at the makeup counter vaguely recalled having seen “some sort of bum” a few days back, but it wasn’t until she went to talk to Gregory Jennings, the old man who worked the pharmacy, that she got any real leads.

“Oh, I know who you’re talking about,” he said. “That’d be Cole Patton. Ah… well, I suppose Patton’s not really his name, but after Miss June took him in…”

“Miss June?” asked Kassie. The name rang a bell, but she couldn’t recall it clearly. It just seemed oddly familiar somehow.

“You’ll have heard of her if you’ve been in Spartanburg long enough. She passed away a couple of years back, but she was well known around these parts. Kind old lady. Kept to herself but did her part for charity. And she took Cole in when he was a teenager. People say he was a runaway, from where, nobody really knows. God knows if Miss June herself knew. She never was the sort to ask too many questions. Probably just saw the boy needed help and decided to give him food and shelter.”

“I see.” Kassie frowned. But that at least gave her a starting point. “And where was Miss June’s house?” she asked.

“Ah, well. Out on Miller Road. South edge of town. Little yellow house with white trim.”

Miller Road… She had dropped the boy—Cole—off near there on that night all those years ago.

“Thank you,” she said, reaching automatically for her keys. She didn’t know for certain, but she had a hunch that if she were going to find Cole anywhere in Spartanburg, this was the most likely place.

The question was, did she really want to find him? She didn’t know for certain. After everything that had happened the past few days, and after the prospect that Cole already knew about their daughter, her mind was racing with possibilities. She had desperately wanted to keep this a secret. The fact that she now had to share her daughter with someone else—someone who she didn’t know and couldn’t possibly trust—already had her on edge.

There was nothing she could do now but to go and find him. Spartanburg gave way to wooded land, and already she was being transported back years to that moment in time when she had found Cole in the forest. Except instead of rain and lightning, there was sun falling from overhead, bathing everything in a mesmerizing yellow light.

When she found the house that Mr. Jennings had mentioned, she saw that it was in horrible disrepair. The front door seemed to have fallen off halfway so that it was hanging on by only the topmost hinge, and the yellow paint was peeling. The entire yard around it was weedy and overgrown, and all the windows were broken and boarded up.

She pulled up in the driveway out front and then stopped the car, unable to decide whether she really wanted to proceed. But, for Taylor’s sake, she knew that she had to.

As she got out, she felt her feet crunch against the gravel driveway. “Hello?” she called, shielding her eyes from the blazing sun overhead. Kassie paused about halfway to the house, looking at the black space beyond the door to see if there was any discernable movement within.

There was nothing at first. Then, slowly, the door creaked, practically falling off but not quite as it was pushed out of the way. Then he was standing there. He was tall, just as she remembered. His eyes were just as blue. But that was just about the only thing about him that was like her memory of him.

Everything else was immeasurably different. He was thin to the point of gauntness. His hair was long and clung to his face, and he looked as if he hadn’t bathed in days. He wore a denim jacket that was ripped, torn, and at least two sizes too big for him, not because it was someone else’s, but because he had shrunk since he bought it.

Immediately, Kassie forgot almost everything that she had come there to say to him. It was too difficult to feel anything but pity for the man as he almost slunk toward her, reaching up to scratch at his neck as he slipped and tumbled over the stones of the driveway toward her.

“You’re Cole,” she said. It was the only thing she could say.

“I am,” he replied, and it sounded as if those two simple syllables were the first words that he had spoken in weeks. They sounded dry and scratchy in his throat. After that, a long silence fell between them again before he moved suddenly, as if startled, and said, “Thanks. For the… for the burger. At the diner.”

“It was nothing.” Kassie instinctively folded her arms over her chest, turning her face away from him, unable to meet the gaze that reminded her so much of her own daughter’s. “I…”

“What’s her name?” he asked then, before she could finish her thought, and with that she did look up at him, seeing that he had become overwhelmed by an earnest expression.

Kassie swallowed a lump in her throat. “She…”

‘I don’t… I mean, I know I’m nothing to you or her. I’m sorry. Shit, I don’t even know your name. But when I smelled… when I saw her, I realized, and…”

“It’s Taylor,” said Kassie, cutting him off when she saw that he was rambling. “And I’m Kassie. Kassie Duchamp.”

“Taylor,” he repeated.

He didn’t smile. He didn’t have any sort of expression really. Kassie wished he could have at least smiled on finding out his daughter’s name, or looked sad, or… something. Instead, he just seemed hollow, like a husk of a man who had been carved out from the inside.

Seeing that made her remember what she had come here to do. It gave her the strength to say what she needed to say, no matter how difficult it may be.

“Listen,” she said, dropping her head. “You… you came and saw her, didn’t you? I saw it. I saw that keychain. I thought I had lost it that night, and then it showed up out of the blue, after I ran into you, and I put two and two together.”

Cole nodded. “I had to,” he said. “I just needed—”

“I know. I can’t blame you for that. But you need to realize… I never expected Taylor to have a father. It’s been the two of us, for all these years, and we’re doing just fine. And it’s not like you meant to be a father. It’s not like you even knew about her. So, I think it would be best for all of us—for you, for me and Taylor—if you just pretended this never happened.”

She drew a deep, shaking breath. There. It had been said. And even though a little part of her hated herself for saying it, she told herself it was for the best.

He continued to stare at her for a long moment, and then his head drooped as the weight of what she had said seemed to have sunken in.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t come back to Spartanburg. Not like there’s anything for me here, anyway,” he said, and for the first time he let out a hollow laugh. And at that, Kassie did feel a brief pang in her heart, and despite herself took a step forward.

“Look, if there’s anything I can do, to help…”

Cole shook his head. “I don’t need your pity. I can tell you’re a good person… Kassie… I could tell way back then that you were a good person, so I know you’re just looking out for our little girl. I don’t blame you for wanting to keep a guy like me away from her.”

“It’s not—”

“It’s hard to get used to coming back. Everything’s different, but also still the same.” He stepped away from Kassie and went to the porch in front of the house, dropping down. “They never train you for that, for coming home. They don’t train you for the looks and the murmurs and the fake concern. They just train you to see everything and everyone as a threat. And when you’re something like me, more animal than human, it fucks with you even more. At night, I still smell it. The blood. Like I can’t ever wash it all off of me.”

“Cole…” Kassie had started to move toward him, hesitantly, when he looked up at her, eyes flashing wildly.

“God. Shit. She’s going to be like me.”

“What?” Kassie drew back now. Everything that he was saying sounded like complete madness to her. She had heard of PTSD, and it was obvious that he was suffering it to some extent, but it seemed to her that he had come completely unhinged. “What do you mean, she’s going to be like you?”

“I mean…” Cole trailed off, shaking his head. “Fuck. You wouldn’t believe me, would you? But it’ll happen to her someday. And I can’t do a goddamned thing to help her. She’ll be all alone with this shit, just like I was.”

Kassie sighed. Regardless of anything else that she may have felt, he was a man in need of serious help, and she couldn’t just leave him here. Moving toward the front step, she knelt down, sliding a hand toward him and laying it on his shoulder. He looked up, and when he did she saw the tears glinting in his eyes.

“Come on. Let me help you. Get you cleaned up, find you a better place to sleep. I can at least do that.”

And with that she practically had to force him to follow her back to her car. He didn’t say another word, as if all his energy had been used up in his breakdown, and he’d returned to little more than a hollow husk of a person.

They rode in silence together as Kassie turned toward home and didn’t say anything else even as she led him to her apartment. It wasn’t until they stepped through the front door and he looked at her quizzically that she said, “Taylor is with her babysitter today,” and he nodded quietly.

While he was in the shower, she went to the bedroom and scoured in the back until she found a few old things left by her last boyfriend, yet another cheater. At least this one had only stuck around for a few months before she had unceremoniously dumped him, though.

He was slender enough, so the thin, long-sleeved black T-shirt and the dark jeans were the right fit for Cole, making him look almost transformed when he stepped out of the bathroom. But he still had a strange and hollow look about him, and he still wore his dog tags prominently around his neck.

When he came out of the bathroom, he stared in shock at Kassie, who was in the kitchen making a quick dinner of boxed macaroni and cheese, hair bound up in a ponytail.

“There’s a homeless shelter in Spartanburg,” she said. “I can take you there—”

“No,” he said, then after a pause, “I can’t be around that many people. Not when I’m still feeling like this,” he said.

“Then where can I take you?” she said.

Cole ran his hand through his hair. “There are some abandoned hunting lodges not too far up north. I used to go there a lot when… when I was a teenager.”

She nodded, obviously not intent to argue with him as she dumped the macaroni unceremoniously into a bowl and came over, handing it to him. He still seemed a little perplexed, as if he didn’t really believe that it was meant for him.

“Sorry that I don’t have anything better, but most of the food around here is meant for a three-year-old,” she said with a half-smile as she gestured toward the table. And with that, Cole finally took his cue and sat down as Kassie dropped into the chair across from him.

He ate with fervor, scarfing down in a matter of minutes the entire two boxes that Kassie had prepared. Then, when it seemed like that wasn’t enough, she went ahead and fixed him an additional peanut butter and jelly sandwich, ignoring his half-hearted protest as she set it down in front of him. With that, he finally started to slow down.

“It’s stupid,” muttered Cole. “I could just hunt, right? But I’m too scared to hunt.”

“I guess it’d be hard to be around guns after being in a war,” said Kassie. But at that he looked up at her strangely, as if she’d said something he didn’t understand, until slow comprehension dawned.

“Oh. Guns. Yeah,” he said. “No. Guns never scared me,” he said with another hollow laugh. “Not like they should have, I guess.”

Once again, Kassie felt like they were talking around in circles, as if there were some big secret that Cole wasn’t telling her. Or maybe it was just that he was so wrapped up in his trauma that he just couldn’t speak straight. Whatever it was, she felt her heart squeeze tightly in pity for him, wanting to somehow do more to help, even though she knew she couldn’t. All she could do was lend this small helping hand and maybe hope that giving him someone to talk to for a little while had helped in its small way.

But it was getting late, and she would have to get Taylor soon. “Come on. I’ll take you wherever you want to go,” she said, grabbing for her keys. She saw Cole’s eyes linger on the Celtic knot she had put back on the keychain, flushing a little as she remembered that night, and wondering if he was remembering it too as she stepped back out the door with him behind her.

“Thanks,” he said as they slid into the car, much like they had all those years ago.

Kassie sighed, and then—thinking to herself that she would probably regret it—she pulled out a small piece of paper and scribbled on it.

“Listen, I know what I said, and I still mean it. But, if you ever do need help, I want you to have this. It’s my number. I’m here, okay? I can’t do much, and Taylor is always my priority, but maybe, if there’s any small thing I can do…”

“I’ll keep you in mind,” said Cole as he slipped the piece of paper into his pocket, ducking his head down. But he sounded as if he had no intention of ever contacting her again as they pulled out onto the road into the light of the setting sun.

The hunting lodges had been built for sturdiness, as Kassie saw when they pulled up to them. They were well on the edge of the town, at the far side of the woods, and it looked as if they hadn’t been used in some time. Pulling up at the edge of the lodge, she stopped the car and sat there with Cole beside her, peering over at him and seeing the sunken expression on his face as he slid out of the car without another word.

She watched him as he walked, noting the defeated slump of his shoulders, so unlike the young man she had met only a few years earlier on that cold and rainy night. Kassie felt her heart clutch in her chest again, realizing that it was breaking for this man.

He had said such strange things and spoken in such a roundabout way. And more than anything, he had really seemed broken by the fact that he knew he couldn’t do anything to help Taylor. Having spent the past few years doing exactly that—having been helpless as a parent before when her child was in danger—she knew how he must feel.

But that still didn’t change anything, she thought. As she drove home, she did her best to tame the conflicting thoughts that tumbled around in her mind. Now more than ever she knew that Cole wasn’t inherently a bad person, but she also knew that he was someone who needed help more than he could give help.

She picked up Taylor from Mrs. Jensen’s and went home, ready to once again collapse into bed as soon as she could get her daughter down for the night. But as soon as she walked in, Taylor perked up.

“Big bear!” she said excitedly.

“What?” said Kassie, frowning.

“Bear!” Taylor scrunched up her nose, as if sniffing for something.

That was… strange. She wondered what Mrs. Jensen must be showing her during the day while she wasn’t around. First the incident in the park, and now this. Taylor’s already overactive imagination was in overdrive lately, and for some reason she was preoccupied with bears.