Then she got home. She hadn’t called Wyatt. She expected him to be home—it was Saturday and it was still early. She heard voices and scuffling. She left her bag and purse near the door from the garage and walked down the hall to the master bedroom. And in her bedroom she found Wyatt and Stephanie frantically scrambling to grab their clothes.
“Seriously?” was all Hannah could say.
Wyatt was sleeping with Hannah’s assistant while Hannah was at a retreat with her colleagues. Rich.
Stephanie looked at Wyatt in a panic and burst into tears. “How am I going to get home? Are you going to take me home?”
“Get an Uber,” Hannah said. “Oh, and you’re fired.”
To climb steep hills
requires slow pace at first.
—William Shakespeare
1
Owen and his Great Dane, Romeo, walked around the lake and up the road to Sully’s store. Sully was sitting on the porch with his son-in-law, Cal Jones. His little granddaughter was sitting on the porch steps. The moment three-year-old Elizabeth saw them, she clapped her hands and yelled, “Womeo!” The Great Dane paused, turned his big head to look up at Owen. “Okay,” Owen said. Romeo took off at a gallop, looking like a pony, loping across the yard to his welcome party. Sully’s yellow Lab, Beau, met Romeo at the porch steps and the two dogs treated themselves to a trot around the yard.
Owen leaned his walking stick against the porch, doffed his backpack and ruffled Elizabeth’s hair as he took the steps.
“Hey, neighbor,” Sully said. “How’s the shootin’ today?”
“I only see the good stuff if I leave the camera at home,” Owen said. He shook Sully’s hand, then Cal’s. “Looks like the campground’s filling up.”
“It’s always spring break somewhere,” Sully said. “At least I get the outdoorsy types instead of the drink-till-you-puke types.”
Owen laughed. “Good planning, Sully. Is it too early for a beer?” he asked, looking at Cal’s beer.
“I hope not,” Cal said. “Maggie’s in Denver. I’m holding down the fort with Elizabeth’s help.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” Owen said.
“That’s nice, but unnecessary. Now that Elizabeth can actually talk, nothing is sacred.”
“What’s a sacwed, Daddy?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Cal said.
Owen got himself a cold bottle of beer from the cooler inside, left a few dollars on the counter and wandered back onto the porch. He sat down, stretched out his very long legs and took a long pull on his beer. Romeo and Beau wandered back to the store porch. Romeo treated Elizabeth to a full face wash, cleaning her off with a few hearty licks. She squealed with delight and said, “Oh-oh-oh-oh, Womeo! I love you, too.”
The men all laughed. “Why can’t the weather be like this all year?” Owen asked.
“Because we need that snowpack,” Sully said. “Don’t need those summer fires, though. You just coming home or you getting ready to go away again?”
“I’ve been back a week,” Owen said. “Next is Taiwan in about a month, but they’ve been having some serious weather issues right where I plan to shoot. I’m keeping an eye on that.”
Owen, a photographer, was a freelancer. When he was younger he did a lot of portraits, school pictures, weddings, family Christmas cards, that sort of thing. When he was in his thirties he began doing more artistic photographs and sometimes more political photos—war-ravaged villages, citizens of impoverished countries, the poverty or decadence in his own country, as well as interesting or beautiful landscapes, mountains, wildlife. Then he wrote accompanying essays or blogs for his photos and became something of a travel writer, with a twist. He would expose the blunders, chaos, humor and turmoil in his own little world of professional photography, and he became famous—reluctantly. He snuck into the kitchens of five-star hotels, backstage at concerts, into locker rooms at sporting events and behind the scenes at dog shows—anything that seemed interesting and where he could potentially expose a secret or insight or revelation. A few books of his collected photos and essays were published and, for some crazy reason, people bought them.
What he was most interested in was art and travel, experiencing other cultures. And solitude—he always traveled alone.
“I’m spending a couple of weeks in Vietnam in July. I love Vietnam,” Owen said.
“I can’t remember loving it,” Sully said.
“Exactly what my dad said.” Owen laughed.
“It’s so polite of you to remind me I’m old enough to be your father,” Sully said.
“Old enough to be mine, too,” Cal said. “Oh, that’s right, you kind of are. By marriage.”
“Where’s Helen?” Owen asked.
“Some kind of writing convention in New York.”
“And you never go along?”
“Not to these book things,” Sully said. “She’s better off without me. She and the writer friends whoop it up. I don’t have the wanderlust like you and Helen. And someone has to be around here to mind the store. I can’t see renting out my place like you do yours.”
“That doesn’t always work out so great,” Owen said. “There are times it’s a little awkward. Sometimes a trip gets canceled and I end up being on the property. But that’s only happened twice. The Realtor who manages the rentals around here always contacts the guests and offers a refund or another place, but if they want the house, I just stay in the barn and they mostly ignore me.” He took a drink of his beer. “I should probably sell the house and move into the barn. It’s really all I need.”
“Why’d you build that big house, then?” Sully asked.
“I like that house,” Owen said. “I also like the barn.”
The barn had been converted into a studio and guesthouse. There was a bedroom and kitchenette behind the studio. The light was good. He had all his camera equipment set up there, plus shelves for his favorite books. There was a bigger library in the main house—Owen loved books. He took people in very small doses and liked his own company. He was drawn to nature, travel, reading, quiet and his work. He blew up and transferred his pictures onto canvases, mounted them himself, carted them around to a variety of galleries and gift shops, and the last few years he had been contracted to provide his photos to hotels, restaurants and private buyers.
“You know I live in a barn,” Cal reminded Owen.
“My barn isn’t as fancy as your barn. It’s a shop. With a bed in it. But my house trumps your house.” Then he grinned.
“What do you do with all those bedrooms?” Sully asked.
“Nothing except when I rent it out. In a few years I might sell it. I don’t know. I like the location. And sometimes my sister and her kids come. Plus, I have friends...”
“You do?” Sully asked.
“Well, yeah. Some. Not too many. I don’t want too many. How many have you got?”
“About six,” Sully said, smiling. “And a town. Plus the Jones clan intermarried with some of my friends so now I have a big family, and I never saw that coming.”
“Neither did the Jones clan,” Cal said.
“Is your whole family here now?” Owen asked Cal.
“All but my parents and my sister Sedona—she’s still back east, but she turns up regularly for visits. Sierra and Connie are neighbors now. Dakota just took a teaching job right smack between Boulder and Timberlake, so we see him and Sid a lot. Sid’s brother and his wife live in town. It’s a complicated web. I could make you up a chart.”
“Is there going to be a test?” Owen asked. But he was thinking he had far fewer connections, and he wondered if they found him odd. But of course they found him odd—he was six foot five and thin, seen wandering around the trails with his backpack full of cameras and his giant dog named Romeo. His big house was full of unused bedrooms that he let strangers borrow. He explained away his solitary ways as a life of art when the truth was he was afraid of close relationships and he distracted himself with travel. Women hit on him a lot. They probably suspected he was rich. From time to time he let them catch him, just not for long. He was only a little rich. He made a very respectable living.
“If you met the right woman you could have a mess of kids,” Sully said.
“You think there’s any chance of that now?” Owen asked. “I’m forty-five and dull.”
“I didn’t know you were only forty-five,” Cal said, grinning.
“Another twenty years and you’ll be a cranky old man and fit right in,” Sully said. “Then again, I only met Helen about a year ago. I still can’t figure out what she sees in me.” Then he laughed wickedly.
Owen was crazy about Helen. She and Sully were living together. Helen wrote mystery novels that Sully said were filled with gore and dead bodies. He claimed to sleep with one eye open. Owen thought they were the cutest couple anywhere. “Maybe when I’m seventy, I’ll meet the right one. You’re a good example—if you can find a perfect woman, anyone can.”
“Well, good luck to you,” Sully said. “But that ain’t gonna help use all those bedrooms much by then.”
* * *
The few weeks after finding her fiancé with her assistant turned into a complete nightmare for Hannah. She faced some very unpleasant and immediate chores: get Wyatt out of her house, hire some temporary admin help at the office and try to ignore the never-ending gossip about how Hannah came home from a business trip to find her fiancé and assistant knocking boots. Everyone but Hannah was quite entertained by the tantalizing story.
Hannah and Wyatt had been together for three years. They’d dated for a year, lived together for a year and been engaged for a year. Hannah was thirty-five; he was not her first boyfriend. He wasn’t her first fiancé, for that matter. She overheard one of the gossips say, “Maybe three’s the charm.”