“You ready to tell me what happened?” Anna asked.
Bea wrapped both hands around the mug. She’d been rehearsing this for two days—not the facts, Anna could get the facts in a paragraph. The facts were easy. Sam’s rented house, Cathedral Rock, the herbs in the planter, Campbell’s soup from a can. The facts were what happened. The facts weren’t the point.
“She’s wonderful,” Bea said. “That’s the first thing I want you to know. She’s funny and charming and she knows everybody in town and she called Carmen Sandoval at seven in the morning because I mentioned her at dinner.” She turned the mug in her hands. “She’s everything you’d want a grandmother to be for about six hours at a time.”
Anna held her cup with both hands.
“And then what?” Anna asked.
“And then she disappears.” Bea looked at the tea. “Not gone exactly. She just stops being there. She’s in the room but she’s somewhere else. She’s thinking about a rock formation or a gallery opening or something that happened in Mexico City, and you can feel it—the moment she leaves even though she’s still sitting across from you.”
Anna didn’t move. Her fingers tightened on the handle.
“She did it to Stella first.” Bea’s voice got quieter. “At Carmen’s studio. Sam walked me in and introduced me—‘this is Bea, she’s a painter, she’s working on light.’ And Stella sat on a bench by the door for an hour while Sam and Carmen and I talked about glazes and linen.” She pressed her thumbs against the mug. “When we were leaving, Carmen finally noticed Stella by the door and asked who she was. Sam was standing right there and said nothing. I introduced her.”
“You introduced her?”
“Because nobody else was going to, Mom. I felt awful.”
Anna closed her eyes.
“In four days, Sam asked Stella maybe three questions total. What kind of camera she used. Whether Tyler still surfed. And what time their flight left.” Bea’s hands were tight on the mug. “Stella’s been photographing everything in this family for almost a year. She sees more than anyone I know. And Sam looked right through her.”
“Is Stella okay?” Anna asked.
“Stella’s Stella. She said she called Tyler and told him knowing is better than wondering.” Bea took a sip. “But I watched it happen and I didn’t say anything and that’s been sitting in my chest since we got on the plane.”
Anna reached across the table and put her hand near Bea’s mug. Not on her hand. Near it.
“It’s not your job to fix that,” Anna said.
“I know. But she’s my cousin. And Sam treated her like a plus-one at her own grandmother’s house.”
The room was still, the toast smell fading. The light shifted on the wall, reaching the edge of the Florence watercolors.
“I asked her why she left,” Bea said.
Anna’s hands went still.
“On the hike. Above the canyon. Stella was ahead with her camera and I just said it. To the canyon. I didn’t look at her.”
Anna pushed her hair behind her ear. “What did she say?”
“She said she always meant to come back.” Bea set the mug down. “And I heard it, Mom. I heard the practiced part. The sentence she’d said before, to other people, about other things. She had it in her pocket and she handed it to me and then she pointed at a rock and changed the subject.”
Anna looked at the table.
“I could have pushed,” Bea said. “I wanted to push. I wanted to say that’s not an answer, that’s a sentence you keep in your wallet for emergencies. But she’d just gotten me into Carmen Sandoval’s studio and she’d cooked us dinner and she was trying so hard to be wonderful that I couldn’t—” Her voice grew quiet. “I took the day instead. I took the hike and the sunsets and Carmen’s glazes, and I didn’t press the question because pressing it would have broken something, and I wasn’t sure I wanted it broken yet.”
Anna picked up her cup, set it down without drinking, and reached for it again.
“That cost you something,” Anna said.
“Yeah.” Bea looked at her mother. “It cost me a lot.”
The room was quiet.
“I know what you’ve been carrying,” Bea said. “All these years. I get it now. Not all of it—I know there are birthdays she missed and years she didn’t call and things you’ve never told me. But I know the shape of it. I know she shows up brilliantly and then she’s gone and the going is always quiet and you’re always the one left holding the door open.”
