“Hey.” Stella pulled her knees up and looked at the view below her.
“You’re up early.”
“I’m always up early here. How’s the surf?”
“Flat. Completely flat. I went out anyway because Luke said there was a south swell coming and Luke was wrong.” She could hear him moving—a towel, a zipper, the truck door. “How’s Sedona?”
“It’s good. Bea’s happy. Sam took her to Carmen Sandoval’s studio and Bea almost passed out.”
“I heard. Anna told me.”
“Sam called Carmen in the morning because Bea mentioned her at dinner. Just picked up the phone.”
“That sounds like Sam.”
They were both quiet for a second. A bird crossed the canyon below her, low and fast.
“She did an ice cream bar the other night,” Stella said.
Tyler laughed. “She did not.”
“Three kinds. Hot fudge. Marshmallows. Sprinkles from a container that has survived multiple state lines.” Stella turned a pebble over with her boot. “I had mint chocolate chip.”
“In a cup.”
“Obviously. Cones are structurally unsound.”
“That’s where we got it,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“The ice cream thing.”
“Yeah.”
Another pause. The canyon was getting lighter. The orange was deepening toward amber.
“Dad?”
“Yeah.”
“She walked Bea in and introduced her to Carmen—‘this is Bea, she’s a painter, she’s working on light.’ And I sat by the door the whole time.” Stella picked up the pebble and held it. “When they were leaving, Carmen finally noticed me and asked who I was. Sam was standing right there and didn’t say a word. Bea introduced me.”
Tyler didn’t say anything.
“And last night Bea asked Sam if she wanted to see my photos. Sam said yes, she’d forgotten. So, I laid them out. Six prints.” Stella turned the pebble over. “She looked at them for about about thirty seconds and said ‘these are good, you have your father’s eye.’ And then she asked Bea about her series.”
“I—I’m sorry, Stella.”
“I’m fine, Dad. I’m not—it’s not a crisis. I just—” She set it down on the rock next to her. “I wanted her to see them the way she saw Bea’s paintings. I wanted her to see me. And she didn’t.”
Tyler was quiet for a long time. Long enough that Stella checked her phone screen to make sure the call was still connected.
“When I was twelve,” Tyler said, “I made the all-star team for baseball. I was so excited I called her—she was in New Mexico somewhere, or maybe Colorado, I don’t remember. I told her about the team and the ceremony and she said ‘that’s wonderful, Tyler, I’m so proud of you.’ And she sounded like she meant it.”
“Did she come?”
“She said she would. She didn’t.” He paused. “But that’s not the part I remember. The part I remember is that she said she was proud, and it sounded real, and it lasted about thirty seconds before she started telling me about a ceramic artist she’d met in Taos. And I was sitting on the kitchen floor holding my MVP trophy, listening to her talk about ceramics, and I thought—she’s not being mean. She’s just somewhere else already.”
