Silent Run

hand-stitched quilt with dates and words of memory. But whose words? Whose memories? Whose life belonged to the chest?
    It was a question that had sent her halfway across the country from the urban streets of Los Angeles, California, to the rolling hills of Kentucky. Now she was sitting in the parking lot of a Dairy Queen, where she'd stopped to grab a Diet Coke and rethink her plan.
    Suddenly, a child burst through the doors of the restaurant, holding a large milk shake in her hand. The little girl's small face was covered with chocolate but there was no disguising the ear-to-ear smile.
    A tall man stepped out of a car. "Over here, sweetheart," he called.
    "Daddy, Daddy. Look what I got," she said.
    The man held out his arms with a wide, beaming grin, and the child ran into his embrace. He kissed the top of the little girl's head, and the small affectionate gesture tore at Katherine's heart. There were no words of reprimand for the messy face, only loving acceptance.
    A deep ache of longing swept through her. She'd wanted a relationship like that.   Her stepfather, Mitchell Whitfield, had always treated her more like a responsibility than a daughter. If there was a chance, even a small one, that her real father could be alive, that he could want to know her as much as she wanted to know him, she had to take it.
    Setting the envelope aside, she started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. She barely paused at the entrance to the road. Since she'd left the main highway, traffic had been almost nonexistent.
    As she headed down the two-lane road, past the rolling green hills, endless white fences, thoroughbred horse farms, and elegant dogwood trees still clinging to a few spring blossoms, she knew she was a long way from home and the only life she knew. But the cocktail napkins, the match covers, all had one thing in common: the name Paradise, Kentucky.
    She'd never acted so impulsively in her life, but with her step-parents out of town, she'd had no one to answer her questions.   So she'd decided to make the trip to Kentucky and chase after a dream that probably should have died a long time ago, but she still couldn't quite give up on it. She flipped on the radio for a distraction and was just in time to hear a female singer ask, "Where have all the cowboys gone?"
    A good question, she thought with a wistful sigh. She didn't know if it had to do with wanting a father or wanting a boyfriend or a husband or just wanting someone who really cared about her, but there was a hole inside of her that she couldn't seem to fill. She'd tried to keep busy with work and friends and chocolate -- lots and lots of chocolate. Nothing had worked.
    Jeez, she was a head case, wanting, wanting, wanting, when most everyone would look at her life and say it was good. And it was good. It was just a little lonely.
    Katherine switched off the radio with a decisive click, knowing it was foolish to yearn for some impossible romance of the century. At twenty-seven, she'd been around enough to know there weren't any more cowboys, no more men who roamed the open plains, who were strong and invincible and protective of their women. Those guys didn't exist anymore.
    The men she knew were soft in the middle from too many business lunches and too much time spent firing the remote control. They didn't carry guns but rather cell phones.   And a cowboy hat would have messed up the style of their hair.
    Smiling to herself, Katherine knew she was generalizing, but for the life of her, she couldn't think of one man she'd gone out with in the last year who had made her heart race.
    Where was the deep, passionate love, the desperate need to be with someone, the feeling of intense and utter connection? She wanted to believe she would feel it all someday, but maybe such a love didn't exist. Maybe her father didn't exist. Maybe she should just turn around and go home and settle for the life she had, the family she had.
    As her gaze drifted across the highway, a shiver ran down her spine, and she knew she couldn't turn around and go home. The long, empty road beckoned to her in a way she'd never imagined. She'd spent her entire life in big cities, surrounded by skyscrapers and traffic and people. But here, outside of Louisville, Kentucky, there was a quiet that was oddly appealing. She couldn't shake the feeling that she was meant to come here. Call it destiny, call it crazy, but she had to at least see what was at the end of this road.
    She reached