“What about you?” he demanded. “Do you have any contact with your mother?”
“No.” Lynne’s jaw tightened with disgust. Obviously, her memories of her mother weren’t nearly as complicated as his own. “When she left Pike, she made it very clear she didn’t want anything to do with a husband or child.”
“You don’t know where she is?”
“My parents’ marriage wasn’t a romance story. They married a week after they graduated from high school. I think my mom assumed being the wife of a vet would give her a life of luxury.” Lynne wrinkled her nose. “She hadn’t considered the years she would be forced to work as a waitress to put my dad through school. By the time he was done, she wanted out of the marriage. She resented the years of watching her friends out having fun while she was constantly struggling to try and keep a roof over her head.” She glanced away, but not before Kir glimpsed the pain that darkened her eyes. “Just a week after she told my dad she wanted a divorce, she discovered she was pregnant. She stuck around long enough to have me, but she skipped town before my second birthday.”
Kir knew it must have been difficult for Lynne. Not just because her mother had abandoned her, but he knew any child would wonder if they’d somehow caused their mother to disappear from their life. He’d done it himself.
Still, she’d had a father who’d adored her.
“I’m surprised your dad never remarried,” he said.
“I don’t think my parents ever officially got their divorce,” she told him. “Anyway, my dad was married to his career. He barely had time to take care of me, let alone find a new wife.”
“And you followed in his footsteps?”
Her tension eased as a genuine smile curved her lips. “I suppose I did.”
He stepped close enough to catch her floral scent. “We have a lot in common.”
Her brows lifted. “Because we were abandoned by our mothers and now we’re workaholics who can’t commit to a healthy relationship?”
“That’s not exactly how I was going to put it.” He chuckled, then glanced toward the lake as a sharp breeze swirled tiny tornadoes of snow over the ice. His grief was still raw, but Lynne’s presence had helped him remember the good times he’d shared in this place. “Thank you for coming with me,” he murmured in soft tones. “This is the good-bye I wanted for Dad.”
There was a long silence before Kir started to move. It was too cold to linger, but before he could turn away, Lynne was pointing across the lake.
“Is that the old air base?”
Kir glanced toward the low line of buildings surrounded by a chain-link fence. The abandoned base was such a part of the landscape that he didn’t even notice it was there.
“Yeah, I forgot it was so close.” A wry smile twisted his lips. “I used to sneak in there to party when I was in high school.”
She studied the snow-covered runways, the vast empty buildings, and the rusty radar tower that looked like an alien landscape set in the middle of the dairy farms.
“What’s in there?”
“Nothing but a bunch of old, broken equipment and trash.” A puffy cloud drifted across the sun, stealing the meager warmth it offered. Kir shivered, grabbing Lynne’s hand. “Come on. We have one more stop and then we’ll have some breakfast.”
They waded through the snow and climbed into the SUV. Twenty minutes later they were back on the main road headed north of Pike.
“Now where are we going?” Lynne asked.
“The bowling alley.”
“Seriously?” He heard the hint of surprise in Lynne’s voice. “If you’re in the mood to bowl, you’ll have to drive to Grange. The local alley closed down a couple years ago.”
He turned toward the outer road that ran along the outskirts of town. Long ago it’d been the place to go in Pike. There’d been a drive-in theater, an indoor ice rink, and a bowling alley that also served burgers and milkshakes.
Now it looked like a scene from a dystopian novel.
The movie screen had decayed until there was nothing left but the wooden skeleton, and the ice rink had collapsed into a pile of rubble. The bowling alley had fared better, he noticed as he pulled into the large parking lot. The one-story brick building was faded, and the roof looked as if it was groaning beneath the weight of the snow, but it was still standing.
“I heard from an old friend last night that it’s now a