“We certainly will,” she said, heading across the yard for one of the trails.

    * * *

    Connie went into the store and found Sully stocking shelves. “Need a hand?” he asked.

    “I got it,” Sully said. “Grab a cup of coffee.”

    “Holler when you’re ready for boxes from the storeroom. You know I like to show off my big muscles.”

    “Just seen you show off the one between your ears, son,” he said. “Besides, there don’t seem to be any pretty young women around at the moment.”

    “I’ll just practice, then.”

    Connie positioned himself at the lunch counter where he could visit with Enid and be handy when Sully started toting big boxes of supplies out of the back storeroom.

    Conrad Boyle was thirty-three and had grown up in and around Timberlake. For a while his family lived in Leadville when they’d found a good rental house there. Then they moved back to Timberlake when Connie was in first grade and his mom and dad had divorced. When his mom remarried, they’d stayed in that house and his stepfather moved in with them.

    Connie wouldn’t call his growing up years hard, but they were at least inconvenient and at times very difficult. First off, his father and then his stepfather had both been brutish, angry men while his mother was a kind, hardworking, even-tempered woman. To this day, Connie didn’t understand why his mother couldn’t find better men to marry. And if she couldn’t, then why didn’t she just live as a single woman?

    “You’ll understand someday, Connie,” his mother, Janie, said.

    Right then and there he decided that if he didn’t find a good woman, one with whom he had mutual respect and happiness, he wasn’t going to do it. He did not ever come to understand, as his mother promised he would. His mother might not be gorgeous but she was certainly attractive, had a nice figure, a pretty smile and a sunny disposition. Both his father and stepfather were verbally abusive and while they did work steady, they did as little around the house as possible, yet their demands seemed constant. Conrad, you get that garage cleaned yet? Help your mother in the kitchen! I never saw anyone as lazy as you! That’s your yard, kid—every Saturday come hell or high water! Why the hell ain’t that driveway shoveled? You’re a fucking idiot. If I can put food on the table you can at least keep ahead of your chores!

    To add to Connie’s misery growing up, he was small. Hard to believe, looking at him now. He was small and he had a girl’s name—everyone always called him Connie. Even if he corrected them and said, “It’s Conrad,” they’d still call him Connie. He felt like a boy named Sue; he had to defend himself a lot. There were guys in his class who had the shadow of a beard in sixth grade, but his growth didn’t kick in until he was fifteen. It was like that summer between ninth and tenth grade his feet grew from size seven to eleven. Testosterone descended on him and he shot up. Thank God.

    His mother divorced his father when Connie was six and his stepfather when Connie was seventeen, not quite finished with high school. He had a half brother, Bernard, who they called Beaner, ten years younger than Connie, and with that second divorce, his mother got a job in Denver and took seven-year-old Beaner with her.

    Connie stayed in Timberlake and moved in with his buddy Rafe’s family even though they had five kids. It was where he’d been hanging out whenever he could anyway. Rafe’s mother, Margarite Vadas, said she’d always kind of wanted six kids so it was perfect. And at the Vadas home, Connie found the kind of family life he admired and wished he could emulate. Carlos Vadas, a cook and outdoorsman, loved kids. It was a revelation to Connie that just the simple action of enjoying one’s family could make home life nearly perfect. It wasn’t flawless, it wasn’t without its tense or grumpy moments, it certainly wasn’t without arguments—just the fights over the bathroom alone could be staggering. But it just wasn’t challenging all the time. No one held a grudge and the single most important thing—no one seemed to walk on eggshells or brace themselves for the next blowup. He never once heard Carlos Vadas complain about the work of feeding his family or ridicule his children or call them names.

    The Vadas kids, like all kids, could be lazy about their chores and Carlos would say things like, I think someone wants to go to homecoming and have a new dress, but she doesn’t like doing the dishes. I think that’s not the way it works, does it? Or, I hear someone wants to use his mama’s car on the weekend but he isn’t so interested in mowing and trimming, do I have that right? And of course everyone got in trouble sometimes. No phone, then. Maybe if you have no phone you have no opportunity to make plans that will only get you in trouble. Or, You don’t like that curfew of midnight? I think you will like eleven better, yes?

    Connie realized he developed an idea of the kind of life he wanted from the neighbors, it was as simple as that. Carlos and Margarite were not as attractive as his mother and father had been yet were far more affectionate. They were always playing on the same team when it came to the kids. Connie wanted that—a wife he could love and depend on into old age.

    He had wanted that until he thought he had it and had lost it in a most miserable and humiliating way. Now he was trying to figure out what kind of life he could have instead.

    Connie had stayed on in Timberlake, taking a few college courses, joining the volunteer search team and training until there was an opening in the fire department and he tested right alongside his best friend, Rafe. They were both twenty-five when they were hired and it seemed they were junior firefighters forever. When he was twenty-seven he met Alyssa. She was cutting hair in Timberlake and she was hot. She was tall and leggy, big breasted with long, thick dark hair, dark eyes and ruby lips that were full and delicious. Connie was suddenly needing a lot of haircuts. They began to date and Connie fell in love—hard; he’d found the one. He’d bought some land just outside of town, a beautiful acre in the foothills, not even half-paid for. While he and Alyssa talked marriage and children, he began to build her a house. Well, he was having it built, but he took great pride in being involved and helping. It was a small house to start, but it was designed for future add-ons. Within two years they were living in it and planning a wedding.