When he pulled off the road, they were at a trailhead.

  He pointed out the latrine, and she was glad of the relief. When she was done, Halo told Max to use the bathroom, and Max climbed up on the toilet seat and did his business. When he finished, Max looked confused that there wasn’t a handle to flush. “That’s amazing,” she said.

  “Normally, he’d just go in the woods, but we need to practice his new skill in as many places as we can.”

  When Halo handed her a backpack that carried a water bottle, Mary said, “I can just put the bottle in my pocket.”

  “Iniquus requires backpacks with both straps clasped when on the bog.” He waited for her to bring the straps around her chest, then waist, and then handed her a set of bog shoes. They reminded Mary of the kinds of plastic snowshoes her northern cousins used when they were little.

  “Is that ominous about the backpack?” Mary asked, tucking the shoes under her arm to carry through the woods to the bog.

  “Precautionary.” He was putting Max on a lead, and she hadn’t seen Max leashed anywhere else. What was that about?

  Mary had hoped she’d have another excuse to ask Halo to offer a stabilizing hand, but as they moved onto the trail, she realized it was an easy hike.

  They had moved far enough into the forest that Mary could no longer see the car. The trail she assumed he was leading her down wasn’t that apparent, and he didn’t have a GPS out. “This is the right way?”

  “I’m following my shirt,” he said with a smile. “Here, feel the sleeve. Do you see how it's puffier on one side?”

  “Yes.”

  “The shirt wants me to veer to the right here.”

  “Is that what Nutsbe was referring to when he said he’d programmed your shirt?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Very cool. It might be interesting to have something like that when I’m out on a rescue. Where the patient is isn’t always where the helicopter lands. Sometimes, we have to hike quite a distance, and then my hands are busy, and my attention is elsewhere.”

  “Congratulations on becoming a flight nurse. I can’t imagine what it must be like for you to have gone through decades in a role then to suddenly need to reinvent yourself.”

  “I’m touching on the basics of the job I’ve always done, caring for others.”

  “Same but different is a nice challenge, hey? Tell me about your challenges.” He looked down at her as she came to a stop. “That’s such an interesting look on your face. What was that thought?”

  “In all honesty?” Mary blinked, then turned to walk again. “Sure. I thought, what the heck is this man doing asking probing questions of value? He’s supposed to be regaling me with stories of how impressive he is—that’s been my experience with men until now. You’re throwing me off kilter.” She laughed a bit nervously. “What are my challenges? Give me a second. No one’s ever asked me that before.”

  Continuing down the path, he waited patiently while she was silent for a long time, gathering her thoughts.

  Finally, she said, “Okay. Here’s something. I’m no longer the coach. I’m the player. I used to look at my kids and try to find ways to expand their horizons. I wanted them to have no limits for themselves and the possibilities that existed for them in their lives—a deep departure from the way I was raised.”

  “Small town Catholic. Yes, I heard your two-penis horror story as we came in last night. Hysterical in the retelling but baffling that you were put into that position. That’s kind of, what, eighteenth century?” When Mary didn’t respond, Halo said, “I interrupted you. My apologies.”

  “Apologies?” she whispered, then shook her head. That, too, was new for her. When had a man in her life ever apologized for interrupting? “Uhm. Yes, I cheered the boys on through their first wobbly steps in whatever it was that they were trying. I encouraged them to try a lot of things so they could at least have some idea if they enjoyed it. I saw the world as a wide, exciting place for them.”

  She stopped speaking to see if he wanted to change the subject. And he seemed to be waiting to see what she had to say next.

  So very unusual.

  Mary cleared her throat. “When my children were young, I watched their sense of discovery and the power of accomplishment, and I lived vicariously through them, giving my kids all of the opportunities I could afford or could create. And when they left, those sparks of curiosity and novelty were gone, no fire in the belly. I had to learn how to light that for myself. It was an evolution of thinking. Most of my friends are older than me by about a decade because I got pregnant so young. I saw them settling into their after-nest lives, feeling comfortable. And that’s lovely. I’m happy they’re content, but that isn’t what happened to me.” It was about five silent steps down the trail until she found the word and was willing to admit to it. “I felt trapped. Stifled. Like moldy bread.”

  “Wow. Moldy bread,” Halo said. “Sounds terrible.”

  “What I mean is that I needed something to make things fresh, thrust me out of my routine.”

  “Okay. How did you do that?” He extended a hand for her to step over a fat trunk that lay across their path.

  She held his hand a few beats longer than necessary, then forced herself to let go. She didn’t want to get him in trouble on her account. “These last four years, I’ve— no, this last year. The first three years out of my marriage, I was just learning how to work at a job and make decisions without considering other’s tastes. It’s this year that I’m trying to do things differently and see that I have endless opportunities. And that in and of itself is overwhelming.”

  “I agree that it’s easier to order from a limited menu. And if you’ve sampled the lot, maybe head to a different restaurant.”

  “I like that metaphor. Yes. So I set out to make a list of twenty things to try—that’s the breadth, and if I particularly like something, then I’d keep going to gain depth. As I set out on my twenty-things project, I told myself I could rearrange the hierarchy. But I had to follow through with the repetitions.”

  “Like what?”

  “Not skiing.”

  “You said some of your bruises were from falling on the slopes.”

  “I was trying to be spontaneous. Which I am not by nature. And I was keeping Deidre company, and honestly, I was practicing being brave.”

  “What?” The surprise in his tone and on his face made her smile.

  “I look at my older brothers and am in awe of them because they don’t seem to have the piece in their brain that says, ‘That’s not for you.’ They just do it,” Mary explained. “I have everything they have except, like you know, testicles.”

  Halo laughed. “Do testicles, in particular, make a person think they can just do something?”

  “I don’t know. In my mind? It helps, I guess. Anyway, I decided to see what I could do about my own mindset of ‘that’s not for me.’ I’m trying stuff out. And I created rules.”

  “Like —”

  “I can’t try it once and decide it’s not for me. Twenty things that I try at least twenty times.

  “Twenty is a lot.”

  “It is, especially when I don’t like something.”

  “Why twenty? Random number you pulled from the air?”

  “No. At the time I picked the number, I had been a responsible adult for twenty years. I figured that if I had the ability to make babies twenty years ago—and that’s one of the scariest things I can imagine. You know, being completely responsible for another human being. Well then, I could do something less scary, like stand-up comedy.”

  “You are hilarious. Good comic timing. They loved you last night.” He stopped because Max had stopped. Max’s nose was chuffing, and Halo was hard-focused in that direction.

  “That depends on the routine,” she said just above a whisper so as not to interrupt his concentration. “And it depends on the mood of the audience. I might be hysterical and have people peeing on themselves one night, and the next time I try —” She gave a thumbs down and a raspberry.

  Max was focused back down the trail, and they were walking again. Mary could see where the trees would give way, and there was a broad expanse ahead of them. That must be the bog.

  “I’m fascinated.” Halo was grinning. “You’ve made people pee themselves?”

  “You’re so literal. Anyway, my big lesson with doing my schtick on the stage is that I need to appreciate a win. I don’t have to be perfect. I have to show up. That’s my mantra. Well,” she shrugged, “it’s what I’m trying to teach myself to do. Show up and give myself the opportunity. And grace.”

  “These twenty things are breadth over depth.”

  “Yes! At first, anyway.” Mary felt good out here. If she lived in Estonia, the forest they’d just passed through with the little Alice in Wonderland red mushrooms and huge grandfather evergreens would be a place she went on her days off. “When I find something where I want to dive deep, I’m up for that.”

  “Okay, stand-up, that’s one. Give me another.”

  “You mentioned singing with your daughter. I started voice lessons. I always wanted to be able to sing. And I did. I sang all the time. I just didn’t sing well, and the people around me weren’t appreciative that I kept searching for the right key.”

  “I get where you’re going with this. In your mind, singing well was for someone else?”

  This sounded to Mary’s ear like an advanced relationship discussion. She and Deidre had both somewhat tried the dating circuit. Mary had a libido, after all, and sometimes it felt good to be in someone’s arms. That meant she’d had first dates, lots of first dates. Some second dates. And third. The third was when she allowed for intimacy.

  But on those dates, she was hitting up against that “she was too young to be so old” scenario.

  The men in their late thirties—early forties were all divorced with kids. They were only available every other weekend. Their cash was low because of child support, so while Mary always paid her own way, she wanted to go do things that were a step above a fast-food budget, movies at the theater rather than on some guy's couch with microwaved popcorn.

  All of them talked about light topics. None seemed to really want to get to know Mary as a human. Motherhood could be dehumanizing, and she really wanted to know what it felt like to have someone interested in hearing her story. What she was mulling and weighing.

  This conversation—Halo’s unfeigned engagement and interest—was so foreign to her.

  Mary stood there, looking into intelligent brown eyes that seemed to see her as three-dimensional—it felt amazing and a little overwhelming.

  She could swear these were the tentative steps of something solid and long-lasting. Yeah, in books Mary had read and movies she’d seen, this kind of conversation was the kind you had that led to … more.

  “Mary?”

  “Yes?”

  “I was asking why Deidre signed you up to do stand-up comedy last night instead of singing. You’re taking voice lessons, after all.”

  “Deidre grew up singing in a choir as a child and in a band in college. You heard her; she’s amazing.”

  “We came in at happy birthday,” he said.

  “Oh, you missed out. So Deidre sings, and I sing along. There’s a big difference. But it occurred to me, as I was making a list of things to try, that Deidre could sing because she had years and years and years of lessons, coaching, and practice. She didn’t come out of the womb able to belt out a song the way she can. Granted, some people are born talents, but that’s not what I wanted to focus on. I want to focus on the fact that I counted myself out without giving myself the opportunity to learn. I signed up for classes online.”

  “Not in person? You were afraid of breaking their eardrums?” His teasing didn’t feel like it had a hidden knife in it the way Dan’s had. Mary didn’t mind Halo’s teasing tone.

  “I just thought having a little distance would be less intimidating.”

  “And you found someone?”

  “I did, and it is the most ridiculous story you can imagine. I signed up for a trial service. I thought they’d pair me with some woman who had studied voice in college and was now—I don’t know, a church choir director or a stay-at-home mom who needed to earn a couple of extra bucks.”

  “Not so?”

  “This sweet young lady was teaching me. Just so kind and lovely. After I met her online, I thought she was a college student, earning some extra bucks as a side hustle.”

  “Now, are we getting to the ridiculous part?”

  “I decided to look her up online, and it turned out that she has a master’s from the best music school in America. She lives in NYC and was about to perform for a national foundation. She was the lead in an opera that was on a very famous stage. That someone with a master’s from anywhere was teaching me was —"

  “A great opportunity?”

  “Crazy, I think, is the right word.”

  “But why would you say that?”

  “Because you start with training wheels,” Mary said. “You get some basics under your belt. Have some fun. This was the kind of person you went to in order to polish for performances and competitions, to get ready for something big. All I wanted was to sing in the shower without driving people out of my house.”

  “Ah.” He bent over and came up with berries on his palm. “Wild blueberries.”

  She tentatively tasted one. Not as sweet as she bought in the store, but finding them out here was fun.

  “We should go ahead and get our bog shoes strapped on.”

  Mary breathed deeply, then sat on the ground to do as asked. “Yum! What is that smell? It’s like lemons.”

  “That is called Labrador tea. It’s part of the rhododendron family, a family that I have recently had a very bad experience with. Luckily, this one just smells good and is stress-relieving. That’s what you’re sitting on. It’s everywhere.”

  Before Mary stood, she collected a bouquet of woody green leaves with tiny flowers. And buried her nose in them.

  As they stepped forward, the ground under her shifted. It was like trying to walk across an enormous waterbed. “As I get my bog legs, would you help me keep my equilibrium?”

  “At your service, madam.” He extended his hand.

  Together, they stepped out into what was a foreign vista. The colors of chartreuse, wheat, and russet were other-worldly. The craggy trees no taller than Mary’s shoulders could be found in sci-fi movie scenes.

  It took a few minutes to get used to the ground undulating under her feet.

  Max was hysterical how he lifted his paws high, as he pranced forward, his head rotating from side to side, sniffer going at warp speed.

  “This water is acidic from the sphagnum moss, perfectly clean to drink, but it won’t quench your thirst as it has no minerals,” Halo explained. “It’s too acidic for animals to survive in it. So no fish.”

  “Interesting.” Mary shoved her bouquet of Labrador tea into a D hook on the backpack strap where it was near her nose. She thought she’d figured out that Iniquus required the backpack lest their client fall into one of the pools of water, and the guardians needed to grab something to pull them out.

  “Unlike the fish, you can swim in the bog pools,” Halo said. “The water feels quite unique. It’s an amazing experience.”

  “No swimsuit. But then, again, we’re here alone, and you’ve seen me naked. Would that get you in trouble?”

  “I can’t get naked. There’s nothing to stop you from doing as you please.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  When Halo told her it was all right for her to skinny dip, an image of her in the water flashed through her mind: She was a nymph floating luxuriantly—her pale skin against waters so flat and black that they mirrored the sky. At the same time, Halo stood and watched her with lustful thoughts and a hard-as-rock cock that they could act on once they got back to the hotel.

  The air between them was electric, and a wave of horny swam through Mary’s blood. She fully understood that when Halo cleared his throat and got them back on their previous subject, he was trying to divert her to a safer topic of conversation.

  “Twenty things twenty times, I have so many questions. So far, I’ve clocked that the twenty include standup, singing, and pole dancing. Pole dancing, while lifesaving, can also be a fluid and beautiful art form.”

  “Bruises the feet, rug burns on the inner thighs. It looks fluid, but the reality is smoke and mirrors. It’s very difficult.”

  “Most things that look easy take an enormous amount of skill to make them look graceful and effortless,” Halo agreed. “When in actuality, they are years of effort.”

  “When I first tried. It hurt, and I really was tempted to quit right off. And might have, except I’d promised myself twenty tries. Also, the women who were there weren’t from my generation. They had a different worldview. They were inclusive and kind. They focused on their efforts and cheered on the others in the class. I thought I’d put up with a lot just to go and be around them and to learn from them. So much younger and so much wiser than I.”

  Halo said nothing.

  She turned her head to breathe in the lemony scent. Halo was right; there was something very stress-relieving about this plant, and she wondered if she couldn’t find some seeds to take home and fill her garden with this memory. “I realized pole pain is like stretching a muscle. Your brain wants to protect you, so it holds the muscle tight. Right? Over time, the brain begins to trust the move. Slowly, over months of consistent training, the brain lets go a little more and a little more until the stretch is allowed without resistance. And it was that way with pole pain. ‘Get off the pole, it’s painful!’ my brain would scream. And to this day, it is still a bite. True. But so much less so. As my brain learns that I’m pretty safe with my moves, that nothing bad is happening, it stops screaming at me quite so loudly.”