Piper
Dottie finds us a corner booth near the window without asking. She sets down coffee for me, something amber for him, and disappears before either of us can thank her.
He is bigger than I expected. Broad through the shoulders, dark-haired, hands wrapped around his glass — hands built for demanding work. He has the stillness of someone who learned it under pressure. And he listens. Present and quiet, taking in everything I say like he's going to need it later.
I'm staring at his hands. The knuckles are scarred — old scars, healed rough — and his fingers dwarf the glass. Careful around breakable things.
I drag my attention back to the notebook on the table between us.
I tell him about growing up — the two of us in a small house in Colorado Springs, our mom working doubles at the hospital, Owen keeping me company through every late shift by learning to make exactly the foods I liked.
Grilled cheese with too much butter. Scrambled eggs at midnight.
He was nine the first time he made coffee and it was terrible and he never once got better at it.
"He made coffee at the FOB once," Slade says. "Three guys refused to drink it."
I tell him about the argument over enlistment — how I fought Owen on it for six months and lost, and how the phone calls started a week after he shipped out and never stopped.
Three time zones. Sometimes four. Owen called like clockwork, every Sunday, and talked about the people he served with like they were family he'd chosen.
"He said you were the best medic he'd ever seen."
Slade's grip shifts on the glass. I notice. Interpret later.
"He was generous," Slade says.
"He wasn't, actually." I hold his gaze. "Owen didn't do generous. He did accurate."
He swallows hard. His hand goes flat on the table, fingers spread.
My fingers twitch toward his. I catch myself — four hours, Piper — and wrap them around my cold coffee instead.
I ask what he remembers. He tells me — carefully, one story at a time. Owen's laugh. The way he annotated everything — field manual margins, meal schedules, the back of his own hand when he ran out of paper. How he made hard situations feel possible.
"Not easier," Slade says. "Possible. There's a difference."
I know what it costs. Slade carries the same weight Owen carried, and the recognition settles low in my chest and stays.
At some point the evening light outside the window goes from gold to blue to gone. I don't notice until Dottie switches on the lamp above the bar and the booth gets warmer, closer. My coffee went cold an hour ago. I'm still holding it.
Dottie drops off a plate of fries with the second round of drinks — sets it between us without comment, like feeding strays. I eat two and forget the rest because Slade is telling me about Owen teaching himself to tie surgical knots from a field manual, and I can hear my brother in every word.
The Summit empties around us.
It's past nine when I check my phone. Three hours. I don't feel like leaving.
He's been watching me — I can feel it without looking up. When I meet his eyes, he doesn't look away. He never looks away. The weight of it presses against my sternum, warm and steady, and I lose my next breath.
I am trying not to decide what that means.
"I want to see the mountain," I say. "Owen kept talking about the trails above the town. The eastern ridge. Is that something you'd be willing to show me?"
His thumb moves once across the side of his glass.
"Yes," he says. "Tomorrow morning. Early, before the heat."
"I'll be ready."
Early. Before the heat. Just the two of us on a trail Owen wrote about and never walked. I should be thinking about Owen. I am thinking about how Slade's voice dropped half a register when he said tomorrow.
I pick up Owen's notebook from the table.
It felt lighter tonight than it did this morning.