Before Lucas knew it, October arrived, and with it the first gusts of colder air. People on the streets started wearing jackets and boots. One morning he looked out his kitchen window and saw frost on the grass, and realized the first snows of late autumn might only be a month away.
He thought he’d done a good job of trying to forget about Margot. There were days of golf with his friends while the trees around them shifted into brilliant shades of gold and red and orange. He puttered in the garden, had dinner at Connor and Angela’s house — that girl definitely knew how to cook — read the financial papers and waited for the twinge that would tell him which stocks to buy and which to sell. In between, he sometimes went out to the bars and restaurants in downtown Flagstaff. He met women ther
