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She didn't have an answer. She lay there a long time looking for one, the gratitude and the fear taking up the same room in her chest, and the day she didn't want to have ended ending anyway around her.

She fell asleep before she found it.

CHAPTER TWENTY

"Absolutely not," Lara said.

"You don't even know what I'm going to say."

"I know your face. You've got the face. The last time you had that face we got thrown out of a wedding."

"That was one time and the bride started it." Addi flopped backward onto the pull-out, propped on her elbows, grinning at the ceiling of the little garage apartment. "I want to go out. It's Saturday. I came two thousand miles to a town with exactly one bar and I refuse to spend the night watching you do a crossword."

"I wasn't going to do a crossword."

"You were going to do something worse. You were going to do bookkeeping for fun."

She was, a little. Lara didn't dignify it.

"Harvey's," Addi said, sitting up, the idea taking hold of her the way ideas did, all at once and at full volume. "Come on. One bar. I want to see the famous bar. I want to see Harvey. I want a cold beer and a jukebox and I want to watch you relax for one single night before I have to fly home and tell Mom you've joined a cattle cult."

"It's not a cult."

"You named four cows on the drive in."

"I did not name them, the kids named them, and you're changing the subject —"

Her phone buzzed. Remi. Heard your sister wants Harvey's. I'm in. Bringing trouble. Wear something you can dance in. —R

Lara stared at it.

"Who is it?" Addi asked, already up off the pull-out and going for her bag. "It's the sister, isn't it. The cowboy's sister. I love her. Tell her we're in."

"I didn't say we were in."

"Lara." Addi stopped, one hand on her hip, and gave her the look. The one under all the noise, the one that had been giving Lara orders since they were small enough to share a bath. "When's the last time you went out and had a single uncomplicated good time? Not with him. Not with the kids. Not being useful to anybody. Just… out. For nothing."

Lara opened her mouth.

"You can't think of it," Addi said. "That's my whole point. Put on the green top. We're going."

She went.

Harvey's on a Saturday was louder than the Friday she remembered, the jukebox losing a fair fight against a room full of people, the pool table going, the long scarred bar two deep. She'd walked in here once before with her heart in her throat and a whole town watching to see what she was. Tonight she walked in behind her sister, who held the door like she was arriving at a premiere, and nobody watched anything, because there was too much going on to watch.

Remi was already there. She came off her stool with a whoop the second she saw them, and met Addi in the middle of the floor, and the two of them embraced like reunited war buddies despite having known each other approximately one day.

"You came." Remi held Addi at arm's length, delighted. "And you wore the heels. To Harvey's. Brave woman, that floor's claimed better ankles than yours."

"I've danced in worse on worse. Buy me a beer and I'll tell you about Cabo."

"Harvey!" Remi spun toward the bar. "Four. And whatever's coldest."

"It's all the same temperature," Harvey said, not moving fast, pulling longnecks anyway. He looked the four of them over from under his eyebrows — Remi, Lara, Addi, and Elena, who'd come straight from the clinic and still had the slightly stunned look of a woman who'd been talked into something. "This a hen party?"

"This is a celebration," Addi informed him, taking her beer. "Of life. Of Texas. Of you, Harvey, and this beautiful establishment."

"You've been here ninety seconds."