And when Vivienne said, through her tears, that three days of believing she had abandoned me should have been enough to make me hate her forever, I told her the truth.

“Those three days,” I said, “were enough to show me exactly how much I love you.” And she took my hand, and she got off the bus.

Chapter 14 — Mason

Neither of us noticed, that morning, the boy watching us from the far side of the quiet terminal.

His name was Mason, and he was eleven years old, and he lived on the farm beside Delilah’s land, and he was about to change everything.

Three weeks earlier, Mason had kicked his baseball over Delilah’s tall fence and gone to fetch it near her old barn — and had heard a heavy truck engine, and hidden in the bushes, afraid of being yelled at.