“Tastes better from here.”
She took a sip. It did taste better from here. But she wasn’t going to tell him why.
They sat in the booth and drank their coffee and waited for their grilled cheese, and the Shack carried on—the ocean through the windows, Joey at the pass, Anna at the grill.
Margo drank her coffee from the wrong side of the counter for the first time ever, and it was fine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The last morning was quieter than the others.
Sam was at the stove when Bea came out, making eggs she didn’t have to make because the flight wasn’t until two and they could have had cereal. But Sam was cooking—not the Campbell’s improvisation of the first night—and the kitchen smelled like butter and the herbs from the planter on the patio.
The bags were by the door. Stella’s packed and zipped and standing upright. Efficient, no drama. Bea’s was half-zipped with a sweater sleeve hanging out that she’d deal with later.
Bea sat at the counter and watched Sam cook. The eggs were scrambled with herbs—rosemary, something green she couldn’t identify, a pinch of something from one of the unlabeled jars Sam kept on the shelf above the stove. Sam cooked without a recipe, tasting as she went, adjusting with a shake or a pinch, trusting her hands to know what the food needed.
“I called Carmen this morning,” Sam said, plating the eggs.
“Again?”
“I wanted her to know you were leaving.” Sam set the plate in front of Bea, poured herself coffee, and slid a piece of paperacross the counter. “She asked me to give you her phone number and email address. Said you could call any time.”
Bea held the paper for a second. Then she folded it carefully and put it in her back pocket, where it would stay for the flight and the drive home and the next three weeks until she pinned it to the wall above her desk next to the prints from Stella’s darkroom.
“Thank you,” Bea said.
“Thank Carmen.” Sam leaned against the counter with the coffee. “She doesn’t give her number to students. She gave it to you because she thinks you’re serious.”
“I am serious.”
“I know you are.” Sam looked at her over the mug. “That’s the part that reminds me of your mother.”
Bea didn’t know what to do with that, so she ate her eggs. They were the best thing Sam had cooked all week.
“Next month,” Sam said, not turning from the window where she was watching Stella load the last bag.
“Next month.”
“I’ll be there.”
She said it while doing something else, the same as the first night—like it was nothing. Like it was already decided. Bea picked up her fork and took another bite.
“That would be great,” she said.
The drive to Phoenix was two hours of Sam talking. The Subaru smelled the way it had since the airport—coffee and dust. Sam told them about a gallery in Santa Fe she thought Bea should visit someday. She told Stella about a photographer in Tucson who did documentary work on the border that Stella should look up. She pointed out the rocks one more time as they left Sedona, the red fading to brown as the highway dropped out of the canyon and into the flat.
Stella was in the back seat with her headphones around her neck, not in her ears. Listening but not participating. Present and elsewhere at the same time.
Bea watched the landscape change through the windshield and thought about Carmen’s note in her back pocket and the eggs and the way Sam had said that’s the part that reminds me of your mother like it was a compliment she hadn’t meant to give.
At the airport curb Sam got out and helped them with the bags. She pulled Bea’s rolling bag from the trunk and set it on the sidewalk and then she hugged Bea—long, one hand on the back of her head, the same way she’d done it at arrivals a week ago. Bea could smell the rosemary and sage and something warm that was just Sam.
“Come back,” Sam said into Bea’s hair. “Any time. I mean it.”
Sam said “any time” the way she said everything—like time had no edges and there would always be more of it.
Sam let go and held her at arm’s length for a second, and Bea saw her grandmother’s eyes go bright and her mouth press together—just for a moment. Then Sam blinked and the expression settled back, and she was Sam again.
