Nicole arrived at her parents’ house by nine o’clock on Saturday morning, beyond relieved it was the weekend. And Boone spent Monday at the ranch, so Nicole had the next seventy-two hours where she could at least breathe without wondering if he’d walk in and confront her.

Pure guilt pulled her stomach tight as she walked through the front door. She leaned in the doorway for support, still shocked at her behavior. She honestly couldn’t remember outing Boone’s dyslexia to the staff at Puppy Pawz, but Joanne insisted she had.

The next time she’d looked at Boone, she’d seen the raw pain in his eyes, the horrible hurt, and Nicole knew she’d done what Joanne had said she had. She needed to apologize, but she didn’t know how. He wouldn’t forgive her anyway. Some things were unforgivable.

If she could get out to Three Rivers Ranch and Courage Reins, she and Doughnut could work out a conversation she could have with Boone that included an apology. Maybe even a declaration of her love for him.

But she knew she’d never go out there by herself. That would almost be as painful as the past few weeks had been.

Mama slept in the recliner, and Nicole tried to rouse her. Mama didn’t move. Concern spiked through her and she nudged her mother’s shoulder. Nothing.

“Daddy?” she called, but he didn’t come from the kitchen.

Fear Nicole had only felt one other time in her life—after she’d discovered that she’d humiliated Boone in the clinic—ran through her body like someone had replaced her blood with ice water. She left her non-responsive mother’s side and checked the kitchen.

Empty. Daddy wasn’t in the house or the backyard, but Nicole hadn’t noticed that the car wasn’t in the driveway. She looked now, and sure enough, her father’s twenty-year-old car with the wood paneling was gone.

Nicole didn’t know what to do next. Daddy never left Mama home alone. Maybe he’d panicked when he couldn’t rouse her.

“Why don’t you have a cell phone?” she asked, her voice so high-pitched she wondered if she was even herself anymore. She didn’t feel like herself. She hadn’t since the Christmas program.

And she didn’t like who she’d become in the months since. She glanced up into the stormy sky. “What do I do now?”

No one answered. The neighborhood stayed as peaceful and quiet as it had always been. Nicole raged inside, her nerves teeming and tears streaming down her cheeks.

All at once, she calmed. The sun broke through the clouds for a few seconds, and Nicole knew what to do.

Mama first. Boone second.

She had some damage to undo and she could only hope that it wasn’t irreparable.

Straightening her shoulders and wiping her face, she returned to the house, where she dialed 911.

She paced in her parents’ living room, her mind racing through the serenity of the neighborhood. Then the ambulance arrived, and the paramedics began asking questions, and Daddy showed up with a bag of bagels from the bakery.

He went in the ambulance with Mama, and Nicole sat behind the wheel of her car, the road between Three Rivers and Amarillo miles and miles longer than it usually was. She parked near the emergency entrance, but she couldn’t get herself to go inside. The sedan provided safety, and Nicole couldn’t break the seal and pop that bubble.

Not without Boone, who had driven her to this hospital last time she’d been here.

A sense of hopelessness nearly drowned her, a feeling she hadn’t experienced in a while. Since giving up her dreams and staying in Three Rivers. At least she didn’t start crying again. She’d spent so much time crying lately, and she wanted to be stronger than that.

She wanted to be better than she was.

A better singer.

A better office administrator.

A better girlfriend.

A better human being.

She opened the door and started with one step at a time toward the emergency entrance.

One step, she told herself. One more. And then another.

Mama stayed in the hospital, unresponsive but alive. She’d fallen into a coma, and the doctors weren’t sure why. Daddy wouldn’t leave her side, but Nicole found she couldn’t just sit in that tiny room, with those beige walls, the humming machines, the nurses coming in and out with no new results.

She left Sunday night and returned to her house, where she spent a long time in the shower, trying to get the stench of the hospital out of her hair. After all, she couldn’t wait until Tuesday to see Boone—and she certainly didn’t want her desperate and heartfelt apology to happen at Puppy Pawz, even behind his closed office door.

The very idea of going to his house and pouring out her heart to him, begging him to forgive her, made a fearsome tremor shake her entire body. She towel dried her hair, piled it on her head, and slipped into a pair of yoga pants and her favorite oversized sweatshirt.

The neighbors had taken Taz and Valcor, and she left them there, rationalizing that another hour wouldn’t matter. She drove slowly, the blocks passing quickly, which made no sense.

She knew as soon as she pulled up to Boone’s that he wasn’t home. All his windows sat in darkness, but she pulled into his driveway anyway. She got out of the car and stepped down the front walk.

That was when she saw the For Sale sign staked in the front yard.

She froze, everything in her going numb. Was he gone already? How could he be gone and she not know?

Please don’t let him be gone, she begged as she pulled out her phone.