Page 32 of Forgotten Mountain Man

Not the almost-smile. Not the ghost. The real one, rare and unguarded, and it changes the shape of his entire face. I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to make it happen as often as possible.

It’s still the rarest thing I’ve ever seen.

He picks up the ring from the counter and slides it onto my finger, and his hands are steady, and it fits.

Chief lifts his head from his bed. His tail thumps once against the floor—slow, deliberate, final. The punctuation at the end of a long sentence.

I kiss Rhett with the soup burning behind me and his grandmother’s ring on my hand, and the snow coming down outside the windows of a cabin that used to belong to a man who wanted to be forgotten.

He doesn’t want to be forgotten anymore.

Neither do I.

***