Page 11 of The Lost Book of First Loves

For a long moment, June had only stared at her. “No, he isn’t!” she had finally exclaimed.

“Yeah. Pretty sure he is.” She quickly opened the photos on her phone and found the one she used as wallpaper, one of her favorites of them in the mountains near their ranch.

She held her phone out to June, who looked at it in astonishment, then back at Alison.

“Good Lord. Why didn’t you tell me your father is Carson Wells?”

She shrugged. “It’s not something I casually drop into conversation with everyone.”

June’s face had softened. “And he’s only been gone six months, too. I’m so sorry. He seemed like an amazing man. I saw a documentary about him on PBS a few months ago and discovered he lived an even more adventurous life than the characters in his books. I would have loved to have met him.”

She spoke about a stranger, not about someone to whom she was closely connected. Clearly, Juniper didn’t know he was likely her own father.

“Have you always been a fan?” Alison asked carefully, trying to sound casual.

“As far back as I can remember. My mother and I readPurgatory Rivertogether. I was twelve, too young to understand the subtext and the layers then, but I still loved it. We read several others over the years before she died when I was fifteen. He was always her favorite author, and reading his work helps me feel a connection with her somehow.”

Alison had tried to word her next question as carefully as possible. “Had your... mother met him?”

June nodded. “Apparently, she went to a signing of his in Jackson Hole when she was a grad student, trying to earn money during the summer working at a lodge in Grand Teton National Park.”

So that was when the two of them must have connected. At a book signing. Her mind whirled with questions but she suspected Juniper wouldn’t know the answers any more than she did.

“Her signed first edition copy of the book was her most prized possession,” June said. “Now it’s mine.”

As odd as that made Ali feel, she couldn’t wait to tell her father’s friend Beckett Hunter, who was the cotrustee with her of Carson’s literary trust.

He was one of only a few people she had confided in after her shocking DNA test.

He had speculated that maybe June’s mother had been a literary groupie who had hooked up with him in those heady early days of Carson’s career, when his debut novel had launched him into instant success.

That conversation with June here in the hospital had been three days earlier. In the time since, somehow she and her half sister had begun to forge an unlikely friendship.

She stepped out of the elevator when it stopped at the cardiac unit, smiling at a young father and two young girls still inside who carried flowers in a blue basket, along with a small balloon on a stick that said It’s a Boy.

Hospitals were a constant source of drama, she thought. Births, deaths. Cancer diagnoses, miraculous healings. The people who worked here were making a difference in people’s lives.

Unlike her.

Her own discontent annoyed her. She had a law degree. She only had to take the Wyoming bar later that year and then she could start the rest of her life.

When she walked in, she found June sitting up wearing a robe Ali had brought in over her hospital gown. She looked bright and alert, with more color than Ali had seen on her features.

“Alison. Hi. I was telling Adam what a lifesaver you have been, literally and metaphorically.”

She saw at once that the very handsome CEO and tech genius of Move Inc sat in the visitor’s chair. He had been delayed by business overseas. While he called every day, as far as she knew, this was his first visit to the hospital.

“This is Alison Wells, our courageous intern?”

He had never spoken to her before and she felt deeply intimidated.

“Yes,” June said.

To Ali’s shock, he rose and reached out to fold both of her hands into his. “I can never thank you enough for what you have done. Move Inc would be lost without our Junie. She was in on the ground floor, since we were in college, dreaming of brighter days.”

“I’m glad I was there at the right time and the right place and knew what to do.”

“We all are. I want you to know we’re purchasing AED kits for every single department at Move and I’ve initiated a new program through HR where every new hire will be required to learn CPR and other basic first-aid skills as a condition of their employment. I can’t imagine why we haven’t implemented such a thing before.”

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