-- Five Years Later --

The California high desert wasn't beautiful in the way most people expected. It didn't shout its wonder like a coastline or whisper secrets like a forest. It stood bare and unapologetic—open sky and cracked earth, sun-bleached bones of Joshua trees and power lines stretching like scars across the landscape.

Here, everything endured or it didn't. The wind didn't caress; it scraped. Summers came with an unrelenting blaze, the kind that shimmered off the road like a warning. Winters weren't gentle either—biting cold in the mornings that reminded you nature didn't care how long you'd lived there.

The land was both harsh and sacred, full of contradictions. The ground was brittle and dry, yet come spring, the poppies burst through in defiance—acres of orange flames licking at the sky, like the desert laughing in color. Dust clung to everything, found its way into your boots, your lungs, your soul. My initial realtor joked that it was the "Desert Spice" that flavored everything.

There were no tall trees to hide behind here. No shade to retreat to. Just endless sky, so blue it hurt to look at sometimes, and space that made you confront yourself whether you wanted to or not.

But that was the draw, wasn't it?

The stillness, the space, the unforgiving honesty of it all. There was nothing soft about this place, and yet—somehow—it was healing. The quiet let your thoughts rise to the surface, even the ones you tried to drown. The sun burned away the lingering ghosts. Slowly. Relentlessly.

You didn't live in the high desert by accident. You came here to get away from something—or to find something buried in the silence.

Maybe both.

The envelope sat on the counter, crisp and ivory white against the worn grain of the reclaimed wood. My name was written in Tiffany's elegant, looping hand. Inside: a birth announcement. A professionally photographed card with Warren and Tiffany smiling—him holding the baby like she was the sun, Tiffany glowing with soft joy.

Their daughter. Their perfect little girl.

I held the card for a moment longer than necessary before setting it down. My fingers lingered at the edge, one thumb tracing the floral border.

Some part of me had known it was coming. They'd been trying for years. But seeing it—tangible, printed, sealed and mailed—felt like the final punctuation on a sentence I thought I'd already finished.

She was beautiful. Big blue eyes, a swirl of golden curls already beginning to form. Her name was Meadow.

I looked out the window to the horizon, where the sun was beginning to rise from behind the mountains, painting the desert in orange and blood.

"Meadow," I whispered to no one. A name full of softness, of bloom and safety.

I'd spent years cultivating something else entirely. Structure. Strength. A network of vetted, and trained men and women—Lunas and Luna-adjacent—who stepped into chaos and helped steady packs when leadership wavered. I'd built a business out of what once broke me. We taught, we led, we left. And I was good at it.

Still, this—this ache—wasn't something I could schedule out or delegate.

I closed my eyes. Let the desert air sweep in through the screen door. And for the first time in a long while, I let myself remember.

Not the bitter parts. Just the shape of what once was.

Warren's arms around me when I cried over another negative test.

His whispered promises that we were enough, just the two of us.

The way we clung to each other in the dark when it felt like the world was fraying.

He had a daughter now.

And I had this: a house in the middle of nowhere, a job that mattered, and a silence that finally made sense.

It was enough.

Most days.

I blinked hard and reached for my coffee, fingers curling around the chipped ceramic mug like it was a lifeline to the present. Still in a half daze, I took a sip—and immediately grimaced.

Cold. Again.

"Of course," I muttered, setting it back down with a soft clink. Second cup today sacrificed to memory and melancholy.

"I need to snap out of this," I muttered, picking the cup back up and heading to the microwave. Nuked coffee was bad—twice nuked was tragic.

I was at the last five seconds when my cell phone went off. With a quick glance, I saw it was my assistant, Robby.

"This is Allison," I answered, opening the microwave after it beeped and carefully taking out the coffee.

"Goooood Morning!" greeted the chipper voice on the other end. I rolled my eyes and suppressed a grin. "Are you ready for today's exciting schedule?"

"If I say I haven't had enough coffee today, what would you assume the answer would be?"

"That I have to doordash you something stat," he replied. I couldn't stay mad at him, and he knew it.