When Mac headed out to the mailbox one afternoon, Avalon was there. She was holding what looked like mail in one hand; in the other arm she was holding what appeared to be a large, dusty cotton ball.

A bathroom rug? An exotic lampshade?

“Hey, neighbor . . .”

“Yikes!”

The fluffy thing had stirred in her arms. It turned what was apparently its head to look at him. It had the happiest eyes he’d ever seen. Little glittering brown beads of joy shining from a nest of fluff trimmed away from its eyes.

Good God above.

Whatever it was, it was almost upsettingly cute.

“What. The hell. Is that,” he said by way of greeting.

He was alarmed by the compulsion to lean over and snorgle his face into its blond fluff.

And he didn’t know what “snorgle” even meant but words adorable enough to discuss this creature hadn’t yet been invented. On some level his brain knew this and was making them up.

“She’s a dog. I got a dog!”

Two pairs of brown eyes were sparkling at him now.

He pressed his lips together and studied it a moment longer.

“Are you . . . are you sure?” His voice creaked a little.

“Quite sure,” she confirmed.

There was a little silence.

“That’s not a dog.” He said it firmly, as if he could make it true with adamancy. “A baby chicken, maybe. A baby chicken and . . . and . . . something took a startling turn in its DNA.”

“I got her at the animal shelter,” Ava said. The dog tipped its head back and looked up at her adoringly, as if she was a movie star. “Her name is Chick Pea. Go on. Pet her.”

He sighed so gustily the fluff around the dog’s eyes shimmied. He pressed a tentative fingertip to the plush place between its eyes. His finger vanished into fluff. The dog’s little tongue darted out to taste him. Lap lap.

He retracted his hand before his heart caved in like an overripe apricot, permanently, dangerously softened.

“Chick Pea is like one bite for a coyote,” he assessed gruffly.

“I prefer not to think of her in terms of bites.”

“Bite,” he repeated. “Singular.”

Ava studied him for a wordless moment. “Are you worried about Chick Pea?”

“No. I’m frowning because I’ve never seen a bunny dog before and it’s upended my view of the world.”

This was a lie. He was actually worried about both of them. Because the day they’d buried her squirrel had been a bit like falling down a well in the dark. That sort of helplessness was a first for Mac Coltrane. He’d wanted something that he couldn’t have, which was for Avalon’s heart not to break. And to know what to say to take her pain away. He could only provide a velvet shroud, a heart-shaped rock, and his aching silence. It was all he’d known to do.

And here she was with an animal that was bound to break her heart sooner rather than later.

“So you went inside the animal shelter, and you said, ‘I’m looking for a hairy garbanzo bean,’ and they said, ‘Wait right here, we have just the thing in the back’?”

“She was wandering dirty and lonely and matted around town and they washed her up and she’s been there almost a year. No one else wanted her because she’s getting old. She’s nine years old, I’m told.”

There was a silence.

“Maybe I should have been more specific. I meant Rottweiler or Doberman or that dog that the guy at the feed store has, that big black super hairy thing, when I said you should get a dog. Not something that probably craps little pellets. Like a bunny.”

He could feel her temper and tension winding.

“I could only get one dog. So I got this one.”

He could have said, “That dog may not last out the year.”

He could have said, “Boy, they saw you coming.”

She knew all that, too. And even though she probably despaired at the knowledge, she would love it anyway.

He didn’t know whether this was madness or bravery.

She put Chick Pea gently on the ground. She wasn’t even as high as the top of Mac’s boot.

He looked down at the dog, frowning. Inwardly, he knew that same peculiar reflex to protect.

Chick Pea radiated joyous simplicity up at him. And switched her fluffy backside a little.

“Does she at least bark?” he tried. His voice was tense, too.

Chick Pea turned an excited circle and made a sound. It sounded more like a soft beeping sound than a yap.

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Dear God. A fifteen-year-old asthmatic collie would still do a better job of guarding you and your house than . . .” He gestured at the fluff-ball.

“Her name is Chick Pea. Chick Pea! Just because you can’t be bothered to name your cat because that would imply you cared about it and caring about things is for suckers, right, Mac?”

He froze, astounded.

“He has a name.” He was absurdly, badly stung.

“‘The Cat’ is not a name,” she retorted. “It’s a . . . a . . . setting on a See ’n Say toy.” She mimed pulling a string and cocked her head and nastily mimicked, “‘The Cat says meo—’”

His voice rose. “That’s his name. His name is The Cat. Initial caps on both words. Like The Hulk, or The Green Lantern, or The Dude. He’s called The Cat because he clearly is the best cat, so obviously there could be no other name. THE. CAT. When we go to the vet, that’s what they call out. The Cat.”

He was aware that while he wasn’t shouting, he also wasn’t not shouting.

Chick Pea made one of those beeping bark sounds, so she was doing her part to be a guard dog.

He knew the conversation wasn’t really about the dog. It was about all the swirling amorphous emotions Avalon had brought right back into his life, and the net result was a ramping anger.

Did she really think that was who he was?

Shouldn’t it be goddamn obvious that he cared beyond reason?

Chick Pea was sniffing his boot now, which made him want to snatch her up and tuck her under his arm. Jesus, a coyote would nosh on this dog in seconds. A stiff wind would blow it into the next county.

And then he saw the rolled-up trade magazine in Avalon’s hand. She was gripping it pretty tightly, as if she wanted to swat flies with it. Or maybe strangle it.

It was some sort of gaming organization supplement, a free-with-membership trade magazine type of thing.

It was impossible not to see who was on the cover. The curly dark hair, the wide smile, the calculatedly dorky glasses, the slightly too-big nose. The boyfriend.

He had a hunch some of her mood had something to do with his tension, too.

“You subscribe to Tools Monthly, eh, Avalon?”

“Ha,” she said blackly. For a second, amusement flickered.

“Isn’t that your boyfriend, Corncob, on the cover?”

She hesitated, as if deciding how to answer this. “His name’s Corbin,” she said tautly.

“Honestly, is Corbin really a better name than Corncob, or just more accurate?”

“They’re both ridiculous. Much less ridiculous to be named after a Roman emperor, huh, Mac? Maximilian is much more memorable. It’s just a shame that ‘a million’ part of your name doesn’t apply anymore.”

He froze as if she’d literally run him through. So thoroughly shocked by the attack it was almost funny.

Because just like that, she’d hurdled a few days’ worth of passive-aggressive gamesmanship and landed right smack in the heart of an ugly hurt. He hadn’t even realized he had a spot left unprotected.

He was Achilles, though.

And now it was clear she was targeting that undipped heel.

Damn, she played dirty. But even as he half admired it, he could feel his own face pale with a low-simmering fury.

She knew he was angry, but met his eyes anyway.

“Some people seem to have found it easy to forget,” he just said, evenly. Almost dispassionately.

She blinked. Surprised.

And then he nodded as if he was bored.

He didn’t know it was a gesture he’d gotten from his dad, a gesture that implied that whomever he was acknowledging was in fact not really worth acknowledging, as dismissive as a gesture could get.

Mac was on his third beer, an uncharacteristic overindulgence, but then, he was in an uncharacteristic mood.

Usually a meeting with the local veterans helped put things in perspective for him, but he was distracted and edgy and so blackly silent throughout, they all told him he should go get a beer. Which was pretty funny. He was clearly lowering the overall mood and they were trying to show him mercy by getting rid of him for the afternoon. He didn’t take offense. He was suitable for his own company only, and frankly, that’s pretty much all he wanted.

He looked up from his battered wood table at the back of the Misty Cat as Gabe walked in.

“Hey, Coltrane.”

“They let just anyone in the Misty Cat these days, don’t they?” Mac said dourly.

“I wish there was more than one respectable drinking establishment in town so I wouldn’t have to look at your ugly mug,” Gabe said in reply.

Affectionate greetings out of the way, Mac and Gabe argued over who would get to buy the beer, which Mac won. He felt like he needed a win.

He held up two fingers and Glenn Harwood—Avalon’s father, of all people—brought them over. They were between waitresses here at the Misty Cat since Glory Greenleaf’s fortunes had changed so dramatically, which also meant the caliber of open mic talent had rather plummeted. Glenn didn’t show any signs of recognizing Mac as the kid who had run around Devil’s Leap with his own kids about a thousand years ago, though he did nod politely to him and to Gabe. Who, as the school principal, was often at Glenn’s granddaughter’s various pageants and softball games. Mac had been busy over the past year planting and caretaking. He wasn’t precisely a fixture in anyone’s life in town.

“Good meeting tonight?” Gabe asked.

The meeting of local vets was pretty informal; guys from all branches of service from the various small towns nearby convened in a meeting room at the Adult Learning Center, and Mac and Gabe were both in a position to help in a lot of ways. Sometimes Mac made repairs to wheelchairs or gave advice on home repairs; they swapped farming stories and tips; he taught guys how to build and repair their own stuff, too. They all swapped financial advice and war stories.

“Yeah. Randy, Morty . . . pretty much everyone made it this week.” Except Mike, he didn’t say, but Gabe would have guessed that. “Why’d you miss it?”

“Basketball game at school. I’m pinch-hitting as coach.”

“Kind of mixing your metaphors there, aren’t you, Gabe? Not a lot of hitting in basketball.”

“You should watch kindergarteners play it. Pinching and hitting. Also, sitting down in the middle of the court to cry, and wandering off because they saw something shiny.”

Mac grinned at this.

“Mike pay you back yet?” Gabe asked shortly.

“Nope.”

Mike Wade was a friend who’d had his leg blown off in Iraq. Mac had loaned ten grand to help him keep his house, which was underwater. Mike had sworn he’d had a line on a job and he could pay Mac back in full pretty soon, but he hadn’t been to any of the meetings for weeks. And before he’d even offered the money, Mac had promised himself that he would never hound the guy with calls or visits. His credo was: don’t give or loan anything you can’t afford to lose.

He wondered if that applied to his own stony little heart, too.

Which was smarting right now, with righteous indignation. Almost as though it wasn’t made of stone. He knew better, though.

“Sorry, man.” Gabe knew what Mac could have done with that ten thousand dollars.

Mac just shrugged. “I wouldn’t have done it differently, but the timing kinda blows.”

Quite an understatement. It was a large part of why he wasn’t offering Avalon actual dough for the house. Which was why he was left working whimsical strategies that were effective in the short-term but doomed to fail, because her head was as hard as a rock. Lucky for her.

As hard as her heart was soft.

And her lips. Her lips were soft. He remembered that all too well.

And her eyes.

“So . . . I heard through the grapevine that Avalon Harwood bought that house at Devil’s Leap.”

“Oh, but she did indeed,” Mac said darkly. “That she did.”

Gabe regarded him wonderingly. “What’s with the ‘indeed’? Are you Irish, suddenly?”

“Drunkish,” Mac corrected. And took another sip.

“Sorry, man. Really sorry. About the house. If I could I would have—”

“You’re a freaking elementary school principal. And a veteran. You can’t afford it. But that, as far as I’m concerned, is about as heroic as it gets. After the day I had the other day, not sure which one you deserve more medals for.”

“Oh yeah. I actually heard all about your tomato garden and the worms and your goats. A few girls can’t stop talking about it.”

“Yeah?” Mac was oddly flattered by this.

“Yeah. Seems they were playing ‘Tomato Worms’ at recess. They put their fingers like horns over their heads and tried to ram each other with them. Two of them got in a fight over it and one got poked in the eye and they both wound up in the office for hair pulling.”

This was actually pretty funny. “I did make the worms sound pretty dangerous and badass. At least they learned something.”

“They all, and I quote, ‘totally want to do it again.’”

“Huh.” Despite himself, this was rather gratifying. “I put them to work finding tomato worms. Their little sharp beady eyes and their teeny little fingers came in surprisingly handy. Child labor laws are so yesterday.”

Gabe snorted. “Apparently you taught them a lot about worms and dirt and the growing cycles of tomatoes and I got a lecture on all of that from Annelise Harwood. They are into it. How the hell did that even come about? Apart from the fact that you like to tell people what you know and boss people around.”

“Let’s just say there was an unexpected Hummingbird invasion on my property. I was ambushed. They took me hostage. How do you say no to all those little pleading eyes? I’m seriously asking. Seriously. That Annelise Harwood at the head of the pack.”

“That little girl is going to be president one day.”

“I think she wants to be a rock star.”

“Well, it’s really only a matter of time before a rock star is elected president, so.”

Mac understood, fully, perhaps for the first time, what it might be like to root for a kid. To savor the moment-by-moment gleeful chaos and actually relish helping them turn out to be whoever they wanted to be. His own dad had been an aggressive chiseler in more ways than one. He’d done his damnedest to turn Mac and Ty into chips off the old block. It had worked with Ty, pretty much.

Mac wasn’t made of anything so malleable as rock.

Maybe that’s what Avalon was seeing. A guy who was downright petrified. Like a Jurassic tree.

He took another hit of beer.

“Well, kudos,” Gabe said. “You really are quite the farmer these days, Mac. And maybe even an artist—that goat brie you made is the bomb. And here I thought kids gave you the heebie-jeebies.”

“They do,” he said mildly, mostly because he knew it was expected of him. “It’s just that it was . . .” He took a sip of his beer then put it down on the table, and lowered his voice. “. . . it was fun. I had fun.”

Gabe put the beer bottle down hard. “SHUT the front door.”

“Fun in the way those American Ninja Warrior obstacle courses on TV look fun. Really dangerous and kind of slapstick and exhilarating if you make it to the end. And don’t dislocate something or knock out your front teeth or have a nervous breakdown. Fun requiring ingenuity and on-the-spot thinking. Like a freaking military exercise.”

He was, of course, exaggerating for effect.

“Yeah, kids are great,” Gabe said mildly, with typical understatement, though he was clearly wildly amused. He was a freaking elementary school principal, after all. He’d also been a navy SEAL, which, as far as Mac was concerned, should be a prerequisite for any kind of job in a school system.

“Okay,” Mac allowed carefully. “If you say so. But do they have to scream their enthusiasm?”

“Yes. Yes, they do. You didn’t have any sisters, huh?”

“I have seven goats. A half dozen chickens. Thinking of getting a donkey.”

“Why the hell would you get a donkey?”

Mac glared at him with defiant incredulity. “Because . . . they’re . . . cute.”

It occurred to him he might be a little drunker than he’d originally thought.

“Especially the baby ones,” Gabe agreed benignly. “Hey, did you see that video of the baby donkey in the hammock?”

“Cute,” Mac confirmed triumphantly. And they tapped their beer bottles together.

Seemed Gabe was on his way to getting a little drunk, too.

Mac definitely had the head start, though. He was thinking about that poor damn dog Avalon had adopted, old and alone until she went in and picked it out.

He had begun to wonder if Avalon had seen something wounded in him, too, that needed rescuing way back then.

Too late, Avalon, he thought.

She literally thought he didn’t care about a damn thing. It still threw him.

It was so profoundly the opposite of how he’d always viewed her that he’d known a moment of vertigo when she’d said those words.

They were quiet while Mikey McShane tuned his guitar up on stage.

“Might get a horse, too,” Mac said suddenly. “A sad deaf horse that needs some love, maybe. And maybe an eagle that can’t fly because it hurt its wing. And a dog and an owl who are best friends.”

Gabe took this in, staring at Mac, his brow furrowed deeply. And then his expression cleared.

“Are you by any chance having woman problems?”

Mac thunked his beer down a little more adamantly than he might have otherwise. “Why else would I be drinking like a fool and spouting nonsense if I didn’t have woman problems? You’ve known me long enough. I don’t get careless. About anything.”

“No. You sure don’t.”

They watched the kid on stage. He sported dyed jet-black hair and a little loop through his nose.

Avalon had been like a . . . window. His life had been so rigid and prescribed for all its excesses, and being with her had opened up this other dimension. Not because kissing her was a freaking erotic miracle for a teenager like him. The way she saw things. Animals, for instance. Once upon a time he’d seen squirrels as just scenery, everywhere, all the same, not as distinct little beings with their own little cultures and ways of relating. It was like the invention of a new color. He’d been as pulled toward her romantic view of the world as he was suspicious, even disdainful of it.

Funny to think how, in some ways, she was responsible for the life he was living now. He was a fucking goatherd! It was pretty funny.

“I don’t think you’ve ever cared enough about a woman to get drunk about her,” Gabe said idly.

“What a tribute, eh?” Mac lifted his bottle in a sardonic toast. “But I don’t care about her. Not. At. All. She’s just a thorn in my side.”

“Sure, sure.”

“And she has these . . . these eyes.” Mac pointed to his own with two fingers. “Big brown ones. And you just want to kind of sink into them like . . . like a fur rug or a warm bath or I don’t know.”

“Sounds way cuter than a donkey.”

“Word,” Mac said, grimly, and took another sip. “She can be mean, though.”

“Yeah. And you’re a delicate little flower.”

This made Mac grin. His grin faded. “It’s just that some people can say things to me and they roll right off, but when she says the same damn thing . . .” He swept a hand back through his hair. “She sees things, you know?”

“I get it.” He couldn’t possibly, because Mac was hardly being a beacon of clarity, but the sympathy and brotherhood were a balm.

“I just don’t like anyone getting the better of me.”

“Yeah. That must be what’s bothering you.”

Mac shot him a black look.

“So who is it?” Gabe demanded.

“Don’t wanna say.”

“I bet I know.”

Mac fixed him with a look that dared Gabe to keep guessing at his own peril. That was going to be the end of the subject.

And as if his friend had actually issued a command, Gabe raised his hands in mock surrender and lowered them again.

They drank in comradely silence for a time, and watched Mikey McShane struggle with his guitar. Mac found himself hoping poor, frustrated young Mikey McShane made it out of this town. A lot of people lived in this region because they couldn’t afford to be anywhere else. And Mac knew you needed to leave before you really understood whether you belonged in the first place.

“I’ve been looking into grants for at-risk kids,” Gabe mused, as if he was reading his thoughts. “We just don’t have enough programs for after school. I wish there was a place for them to go to learn actual life skills. To build some self-esteem and confidence when their home lives are just shit, or outright battlegrounds.”

“Yeah, otherwise they might end up singing Goth folk songs at open mics.”

Gabe laughed.

But the wheels of Mac’s Sierra Nevada–moistened brain began to spin. “They have grants for that sort of thing, huh?” he said idly.

Gabe left it at that. But a seed had been planted. You didn’t poke at a seed after you planted it. You had to give it a chance to grow.

“This song is called ‘Rainforest,’” Mikey McShane finally said. He cleared his throat again and dragged the mic stand toward him, and the mic squealed so aggressively everyone’s head contracted into their bodies like the audience was comprised of so many turtles.

“Gosh, what do you think the song is going to be about, Gabe?” Mac asked his friend.

“I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s about the rainforest, Mac.”

“I hope so. I really hope so.”

Open mic nights at the Misty Cat were sporadically attended and unfailingly entertaining in a variety of ways for the person willing to see them multi-dimensionally.

“The woman I can’t stop thinking about hardly knows I’m alive.”

Mac turned toward his friend slowly.

Gabe had issued this so wryly, out of the blue, that it cut right through Mac’s four Sierra Nevadas. But Gabe wasn’t looking at him.

Given that Gabe was six feet four and usually knee-deep in PTA moms and even a few dads who all but performed acrobatics in order to get his attention, Gabe was the proverbial catch. He didn’t really seem to know it.

“Given that you’re a conspicuous bastard, Gabe, I doubt that.”

“Takes one to know one,” Gabe said, easily.

“Rainforest . . . disappearing like your love for me,” Mikey sang and strummed. “Rainfooooorest . . .”

Somehow the song proved to be much more moving than either Mac or Gabe had anticipated. So they just listened.