“And screaming,” Caro says, and they look at her, surprised.
“Yes,” Hope says. “Absolutely for screaming.” She prods the tiny ashes that are left from her paper with her skewer, the fire blackening the last of the marshmallow clinging to the stick.What would it be like toactuallyscream?she wonders.Not as a character, but asmyself? What if I screamed right now?
“I made you both something.” Ash digs into her pockets and pulls out three beaded bracelets. They catch and glint in the firelight and at first, as she and Caro each take one, Hope can’t tell what colors the beads are. She can tell what the beads with letters on them spell out, however:EDEN.
“Ash, they’re beautiful,” Caro says. “Thank you.”
“The beads are each of our favorite colors,” Ash says. “And I thought, I’ll make us all another one for every place we go together. So: Eden to start.” She’s eager now, as if she’s willing these future trips, this continued friendship, into being.
Hope’s heart twists almost painfully.Who says we’re going to go anywhere else together? Nothing lasts. Things fall apart. Everything is a risk.Pushing away her own thoughts, she pulls the bracelet onto her wrist. “Perfect,” she says. “Let’s make a deal. We don’t take them off for the rest of the trip.”
“Sounds good.” Ash’s voice is flooded with what sounds like relief, and Hope feels it wash over her, too.
“Deal,” Caro says.
“Okay,” Hope says. “We made it. We’re all here.” She looks up at the stars. Even with the light from the campfire, they are profound, numberless. She lifts her skewer into the air. “To us.”
“To us,” Caro and Ash echo in perfect unison. They follow suit, skewers hoisted high, bracelets glinting.
And as Hope catches their eyes across the fire, she thinks,It’s happening.
We’re really going to do this.
6
BEFORE
IS THIS REAL?
It’s their third book group meeting, and they each worry that this might be too good to be true. How did they stumble into this bright pocket of possibility and friendship in the middle of the pandemic, which has felt both utterly dehumanizing and deeply personal?
Hope doesn’t turn on her camera. She leaves up the old picture of herself that she’s had as her avatar for ages. It was from a trip to New Zealand with a boyfriend she had once. He was basic. The trip was not. She’s facing away from the camera, so all you see is her hat and her coat and her Lululemon tights and her hiking boots and her hair, which is in a ponytail. She could be anyone who ever hiked a mountain and had their significant other take a picture of them with their back turned. Her butt does look great, though.
Ash is the first to pop up, and Hope lets her in. “Hi,” Ash says, smiling nervously into the camera. Seconds later, Caro appears, fresh-faced, her hair pulled back into a kind of sprig, her even, unruffled personality setting both the visible Ash and the invisible Hope at ease.
“It’s so good to see you guys,” Hope says. “I’m sorry that my camera isn’t working again.” Can they hear the lie in her voice? She really wants themto likeher, to get to know her as herself. It has been years since she’s had this chance.
“No worries,” Ash says easily. “We’re all still figuring this out. I had a meeting today where I muted myself by accident.”
The last time they met, they told one another about their jobs. Hope told them she was a “storyteller.” Ash and Caro were too polite to drill down on a job that sounded vague enough to seem synonymous with unemployment. Between that and Hope’s profile picture, they might be thinking she’s some kind of itinerant poet. Or maybe they think she’s one of those trust fund girls who travel for a living, eating and praying and loving in their expensive leggings and various winsome hats. For her part, Hope is intrigued by both of them: Ash, who spends every day tending flowers and daughters, and Caro, who works in a hospital, who sees life and death and specializes in putting people in a place that is somewhere in between.
“To confirm, Caro’s on East Coast time and the rest of us are on West Coast time?” Hope asks.
“I’m actually on Mountain time,” Caro says. “I live in Salt Lake City.”
“What?!?” Hope is delighted. “I love Utah! It’s so beautiful there. I’ve visited a few times.”
“I grew up in the southern part of the state,” Caro says. “But I came to the University of Utah for medical school and liked Salt Lake so much I never left.”
“Ash, do you ski?” Hope asks. “Maybe we should plan a trip to Utah.”
“I don’t, actually,” Ash says. “But for you ladies, I’d be willing to learn.”
“And Caro can fix us up if we fall and injure ourselves,” Hope says.
“I’m an anesthesiologist, not an orthopedic surgeon,” Caro says drily.
“We should get together someday,” Hope says. “In real life. Don’t you agree?”
