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that’s not why…that has nothing to do with…”
    I decided being forthright was the only way to go here. I turned to look him full in the face and said meanly, “Well, you’re wrong.”
    I might as well have punched him in the gut; even as unperceptive as I was at that age, I could see this. He blinked then, owl-like, and opened his mouth to say something else, but I stood up and shoved the chair back from the table, intending to hide out in the bathroom for a minute. I was embarrassed, and angry at him, however unfairly, for saying such stupid things and putting me in this uncomfortable position.
    Immediately he followed after me, and though he was drunk he seemed to have no trouble keeping up.
    â€œWait, please wait,” he said.
    I hurried faster, in spite of the heeled shoes I would never wear otherwise. At the bathroom door, when it was apparent he might actually follow me into the ladies’ room, I spun to look up at his face and snapped, “Leave me alone!”
    He held up both hands and said, “Just listen…”
    â€œNo, you listen!” I felt all hot and tight, as though my dress might have shrunk. I continued, “I don’t know you and I don’t want to know you! You think I like being followed by some drunk moron?”
    Ouch . Now, rocking gently on the porch swing drawing on my smoke, separated by years from that moment, I reconsidered the use of this word. At the time I had been pissed off enough that it had seemed appropriate.
    He blinked again and then said, almost as though in pain, “I don’t understand how I know we belong together, but we do. I know this.”
    My heart had responded oddly to these words, swift and intense, but before he could say anything else, I shoved into the restroom, almost ready to lean against it so he couldn’t follow behind; I needn’t have worried, as he had been nowhere in sight when I reemerged minutes later, my heart not yet having resumed a normal, non-frantic pace. I hadn’t seen hide or hair of him the rest of the night. And they’d all returned to Montana the very next day.
    Case Spicer.
    Of course I’d demanded the entire story of Camille, who had somewhat unwittingly related the tale of what had happened regarding Case and my picture, out in Jalesville, back during that July when she and Mathias had first met him and the Rawleys.
    â€œHe’s actually really sweet,” my sister had insisted. “He’s a honey. You just don’t know him.”
    â€œAnd I never will! God, Milla, how could you keep something like from me? He had my picture? God, that’s so creepy!”
    Camille couldn’t resist needling me, saying calmly, “I’m sure he still does.”
    â€œYou didn’t get it back from him?!”
    Since then I had heard only marginal information regarding this guy, Case, who kept in contact with Mathias. Camille and Mathias had brought the kids out there to visit a few years ago, and all of the Rawleys (just them, not the Spicer brothers) had come for a two-week stay in the July of 2010. I’d been home for the summer then; it was just before I started law school in Chicago, and I had been in the clouds with elation, so proud of myself for earning acceptance into Northwestern Law School, once attended by my own wealthy, charming and very successful father.
    The Rawleys were great, I had to admit. I remembered Clark, their father, and all the brothers well; Camille called them the ‘Peter Pan tribe,’ and Grandma and Aunt Ellen spoiled them ridiculously. It was their favorite thing after all, caretaking. The oldest brother, Garth, brought along his wife, a woman named Becky; there were four additional brothers, all looking so much alike that I’d joked they should wear nametags, but after the first few days I’d been able to distinguish between Marshall (who was a drummer, part of a band that included Garth and Case, as he