We stood together on the back porch of a craftsman home overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains, the autumn sky a deep brilliant orange, the air smelling of cedar and rain.

Camila had returned to her legal practice and founded an independent nonprofit law firm dedicated to defending small property owners against the kind of predatory developers and corrupt officials who had nearly destroyed her, turning the worst thing that ever happened to her into a shield for other people it might have happened to.

And I had transferred to a permanent shore-duty station ten miles away, so that I would never again be a continent away when she needed me.

She leaned on the wooden railing with a warm cup of coffee.