baseball games, the day Dylan had been best man to Bram's quietly happy groom. Among all the other things that hurt, losing his best friend was almost as painful as losing his best friend's wife.
"I'm so damn sorry," Dylan said. He'd told Bram the words before, eight years ago, but he wasn't certain Bram had heard them.
But Bram was listening now. His grip tightened on Dylan's hand. "Welcome back," he said. "I missed you." Then he released Dylan to disappear behind the group of Odd Fellow dignitaries standing at stage left.
With nothing else to do, Dylan approached the microphone.
Turning to the audience again, Mayor Ames launched into his speech. Standing near the older man, Dylan tuned it out for the most part, only vaguely noting when the crowd groaned at the politician's notorious, and notoriously bad, puns.
I'll decline it, Dylan thought. The town would be confused and angry, maybe, but that was better than a Dylan Matthews Park, named in honor of his heroism. In his condo in L.A., or wherever the FBI sent him next, no matter how many hundreds or thousands of miles away, he'd never be able to put Hot Water out of his mind if they went through with this.
Of course, even as it was, he'd never been able to put Hot Water out of his mind. It had always been there inside him, hiding just below the barbed-wire covering of his heart.
That truth was still echoing in his brain when the mayor finally made the announcement. Dylan Matthews Park. The people cheered, and he called Dylan to the mike.
The scant three feet seemed a thousand times longer than the path to the stage had been. Dylan tried forming a polite, quasi-reasonable refusal as he walked forward, but once he was facing the crowd, all the words left his head.
They looked up at him, their faces expectant: his first-grade teacher, his high school football coach, his father. There were others he recognized too, from Mrs. McMahon, who had tried to teach him piano, to Mr. Ha, who had sold him his first motorcycle. Dozens of people who had watched him grow up, who had fashioned and shaped his life.
People who had watched Alicia grow up as well. People who had grieved and maybe, like him, had never gotten over her death.
Another pain squeezed in his chest and he fumbled for his St. Barbara medal. Wasn't she supposed to be protecting him? Then, at the back of the crowd, a small hand waved. The movement caught Dylan's attention and he focused on that little brown-eyed girl again, sitting atop her father's shoulders.
She was staring at Dylan and suddenly he noticed that she held a teddy bear in her arms. A voice sounded in his head. Accept it for them, if you can't accept it for yourself. The town needs to move on, even if you won't.
A cold wash spread over Dylan's skin. Everyone in town still hurt, he realized. Bram, of course, but his father, and Kitty, and Mrs. McMahon too. Micah, Dani, and Willa. Everyone.
Beneath the St. Barbara medal, warmth radiated outward, a deep, rejuvenating heat. Swallowing hard, Dylan looked out over the stage, at the people he loved. His gaze moved farther, over the town and to the hills that were as much a part of him as his DNA. Then his eyes lifted, to the blue summer sky that was the exact envy-of-dragonflies shade of Kitty's eyes. Pointless self-exile, he heard her say again.
He cleared his throat and leaned toward the mike. "Thank you very much. I can't tell you what this honor means to me." He took a long, deep breath. "But I can't accept it."
The crowd murmured. Dylan turned his head to offer a half smile of apology at the mayor and Odd Fellows on the stage, then spoke to the audience. "I think we know who we should name the park for. And I think I know why she wasn't the obvious choice. We hate acknowledging that she's gone. We're afraid of the constant reminder that maybe we should have done something different to keep her safe."
Dylan suddenly remembered telling Kitty that some calamities couldn't be prevented. That things happened that weren't another person's fault or responsibility. And Kitty's telling him he wasn't God. He briefly closed his eyes, opened them. "But now I think it's time to forgive ourselves. And it's time to make Alicia Bennett a permanent part of our history and our town, just as she's a permanent