She turned to Stella.
The hug was shorter. But Sam held Stella’s face for a second afterward and looked at her. Whatever she saw there, she didn’t name it.
“Take care of him,” Sam said.
“He takes care of me,” Stella said.
Sam let go and stepped back to the curb. She stood there with her hands in the pockets of her linen shirt, the wind catching her gray hair, watching them walk through the automatic doors. Bea could feel her watching all the way to the security line.
She did not turn around.
They found the gate and sat down. Stella put her headphones in and closed her eyes. Bea sat with her bag in her lap and lookedat the departure board—the flight numbers clicking over, the gates, the times.
She reached into her pocket and touched the folded paper with Carmen’s number on it. It was still there.
She texted her mother.
Heading home. Flight lands at 4:20.
The reply came in under a minute.
I’ll be there.
Her mom would be at the gate. Anna was always at the gate. Anna had never once in Bea’s life said she would be somewhere and not been there.
Bea put her phone in her pocket, left her hand on Carmen’s note, and waited to board the plane that would take her home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The first morning back, Stella sat on the front step with her coffee and let the ocean fill the space the desert had left empty.
Salt. Eucalyptus. The faint diesel of PCH two blocks over. Home.
Tyler came out with his own coffee a few minutes later. They hadn’t talked much the night before—she’d crashed early with a promise to fill him in as soon as she could.
He sat down beside her on the porch steps.
“Hey, kid.”
“Hey.”
“You okay?”
She thought about it. Sam’s linen shirt. The rocks. The four-second honesty on a dark road. The folder of photographs she’d carried to Sedona and carried back without showing anyone.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m glad I went.”
Tyler nodded. He didn’t push. He went to the kitchen and she followed him and they stood at the counter making breakfast the way they always did after something big—side by side, not talking about the real stuff yet, letting the bread and the mustard and the ordinary rhythm of it do the work.
Stella ate half of her eggs before she said anything.
“She’s exactly what you said she’d be,” Stella said, looking at her plate. “Brilliant. Warm. And she sees Bea like Bea’s the only person in the room.”
Tyler set his fork down. “And you?”
“She told the chef at a restaurant that I came along for the trip.” Stella took another bite. “She held my photos for about thirty seconds and then asked Bea about negative space.”
Tyler was quiet.
