Opal found herself taking a little extra time when she was getting ready for trivia. Normally, she’d go straight from work at the gallery, in whatever she was wearing.

But tonight, she chose her best angora turtleneck sweater—a white one that Olivia always said made her hair and eyes stand out—and she carefully clasped the emerald necklace that her mother had given her shortly before she died. She ran her fingers over the stone, and thought of her mother.

Her parents had been the happiest couple she’d ever known—before Olivia and Fred, then followed by her uncle and Gillian. They were like young teenagers in love, up until the very end.

Her father had been crushed, and had done his best to shield his daughters from his pain, but they’d felt every wave of his despair nonetheless. When Olivia left for college, she and her father both felt that second loss deeply.

She’d never forget the look in her father’s eyes when he handed her envelopes from colleges far away when it came her turn to apply. He radiated sadness, and she’d gathered all the brochures from the colleges and thrown them away, vowing that he wouldn’t be alone on her watch.

In the years past, they’d developed a great rhythm, and she’d enjoyed working with him in the hardware store all those years, taking classes part time toward her goal.

But her real goal had been photography, and when Olivia moved to Idaho and they’d followed and, after the wedding, decided to stay, she’d really found her stride.

Although she still felt like she had a lot to learn, she was a little bit proud of her pictures, and hanging them in the gallery had been overwhelming. As she touched the emerald once again, she hoped that her mother could see her—see her family—happy.

She ran a brush through her black hair and put it up in a ponytail before clasping the matching earrings on. She pulled on jeans and her cowboy boots and headed out into the kitchen of the small cabin.

She pulled her phone out of her pocket and answered when she saw Bernard’s name.

“Hi,” she said brightly, looking forward to seeing him again.

“Hi,” he replied. “Hey, I’m running a little late and I need to hop in the shower. Do you mind stopping by here on your way to the main house? My cabin is closer and we could head over together.”

“Sure,” she said. “Dad’s going straight from the gallery. No problem at all.”

“Great. My roommate isn’t here. Let yourself in and I’ll hurry.”

“Okay, see you in a little bit.”

She was ready to go and anxious for pizza, so she grabbed her coat, pulled on her hat and gloves and headed toward the door. At the last minute, she turned around and grabbed her camera. Since they couldn’t use her computer to zoom in on the pictures tonight, at least they could check them on her camera between trivia rounds.

When she got to Bernard’s place, she remembered he’d said to let herself in, so she did, poking her head in before she entered.

“Bernard?”

“I’ll be right out,” he called from behind his bedroom door, and she stomped her boots on the mat before she stepped in.

She took in a deep breath as she walked into the living room—she’d never seen so many photographs in her entire life. Not in one place, anyway.

There were pictures of the Old Town—each shop, the Kids’ Korral, the jail. He was really good. Even in the pictures, it looked like a movie set.

She got lost in the pictures, and moved around the room slowly. When she reached the mantle, she noticed several framed pictures that looked very old. They were of couples—women with long braids wrapped around their heads in lovely dressed, and men in cowboy hats or top hats.

She leaned forward and looked more closely. Each couple was the same, just in very different attire.

“Those are my grandparents,” Bernard said from behind her. She hadn’t heard him come out of his room, and she set the picture frame that she was holding down hard, her hand flying to her chest.

“You scared me,” she said as she laughed.

“Sorry. Thought you heard me,” he said. He smiled and reached out for the picture she’d set down and moved it to its proper place next to the others.

She leaned in again and looked more closely at the picture, then turned to look at Bernard as he ran his fingers through his wet hair. She looked back at the photograph again and could see the resemblance, mostly to his grandfather. He had the same chiseled jaw, wavy hair and she ventured to guess—if the picture hadn’t been in black and white, she could tell—that they had the same eyes.

“You sure look a lot like your grandfather,” she said.

“I’ve heard that before,” he said with a smile. “Guess it skipped a generation.”

She looked around for more family pictures, but couldn’t find any.

“No pictures of your parents?”

She could see him stiffen, even with his back to her. He pulled on his socks and boots before he turned around and tucked his plaid shirt into his jeans.

“No.”

She waited for him to elaborate, and when he didn’t, she squirmed a little, shifting from foot to foot. Why didn’t he want to talk about his parents? She didn’t want to ask, so she thought of another angle.

“And none of your sisters and brothers?”

He reached for his camera and set it on the counter next to his coat and walked back into his bedroom.

“I’m an only child,” he called from the other room, and she shook her head at another defeat.

She might just have to let that one go for a while. All week long, he’d done the same when she’d asked too many personal questions...just shut her down.

And it wasn’t like she hadn’t been open with him. He’d spent almost every evening at her house, with her father, even, watching either the computer or the Olympics, and he’d already met her sister. Heck, tonight he was even going to meet the rest of her family—and she knew next to nothing about his. He hadn’t said an awful lot about them before now, but it was as if the rest of his family didn’t even exist.

She shrugged it off as he entered the room, ready to head to the main house for pizza and trivia. Who was she to try to dig more information from him. She’d only known him for almost a week, and while it had been fun searching for whatever was in the glen on the side of the mountain, and she’d learned a lot from him about photography, she clearly didn’t know him—and it was also clear that he didn’t want her to.

“You ready?” he asked. He held out his arm for her, and she hesitated just for a second before she looped her arm in his. “I’m looking forward to trivia. Don’t even know how to do it, really.”

Opal laughed. “It’s just like Trivial Pursuit, that game we played when we were kids.”

She felt his arm stiffen.

“What?”

“I never played any games when I was a kid. Not Trivial Pursuit or anything else.”

She looked up at him as he escorted her over to the restaurant. How could that be? Everybody played games with their families when they were growing up—didn’t they? She remembered many, many nights around the kitchen table, with popcorn or hot chocolate, playing all kinds of things from Monopoly to Uno. How sad that he hadn’t had the chance to do that. Maybe because he was an only child?

She sighed as they reached the steps of the main house. She’d tried for days to find out more, but at least she was getting little hints now and again, and that was better than nothing. For now, that would have to do.