Sage was busy untangling her white hair from the baby’s fist. He’d fallen asleep with a handful and didn’t seem inclined to let go.
She told me how she gets by, selling and trading her herbs, plants, and paintings at a local flea market every weekend. She’d traded for the cradle and mattress after that vision she’d had. She said with my help, we could grow more herbs—enough for formula and diapers and vaccines, all the things a baby needs.
I blinked. I could hardly believe what she was saying and asked her if she really meant it. That she wanted us to stay.
She nodded and sank back down onto her bed again, probably exhausted after being so sick and immobile. She said her bedroom used to be the loft, until it got too hard for her to go up and down the ladder. Said it could be mine now—that a young woman needed some privacy.
Then she added that before I made up my mind I should know, she’d decided not to die just yet. I smiled at her. I couldn’t help it. I’ve smiled more since walking into this shack than I have since leaving home.
We have a place now, Wolf and I. And we have Sage.
I think we might be okay.
Wolf
Wolf closed the journal and lowered his head. He looked beside him at Camellia, who’d been riveted while he’d read.
“You okay?” she asked. “How do you feel about all this?”
She searched his face. Firelight danced in her eyes. Night insects whirred and, far off, a coyote yipped a lonely song.
“It feels like another layer of knowing. Like some of the missing pieces are snapping into place.” He lowered his head, took a deep breath of the air, smelling the river and the hot smoke from their fire. Looking into her eyes too long was doing things to his heartbeat. “I figured if Mom wasn’t my mother, Grandma Sage probably wasn’t my grandmother.” He shrugged. “I mean, I should’ve figured, us being three difference shades of humanity. But what are the odds? That she just went hiking and found her? That Gram Sage wasexpectingher? That seems like a lot.”
“Oh, come on, what if Grandma Sage reallywasin tune, somehow?” Camellia asked. “She said she thought she was near death. I’ve heard stories like that before. Haven’t you?"
“Sure, but…” He lifted his brows. “Do you believe in that kind of thing?”
“Why not? It’s more fun to believe than not to,” she said. “Don’t you?”
“No, I don’t think I do.”
She blinked at him as if he’d sprouted antlers. “You survived a trip down the Rio Grande as a newborn, and you don’t believe in…anything?”
He shrugged. He’d never given that sort of thing much thought until now, but it would make him seem shallow to admit it.
“You should at least be open to the possibility,” she said. “You never know.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Okay, fine, new topic. You want to knowmytakeaway from tonight’s reading?”
He met her eyes again, nodded twice.
“We can probably find that shack, if there’s anything left of it.”
His jaw dropped and he clamped it again. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”
“I can. You were distracted, filling in the blank parts of your history. I think there are more pieces to be found in this park. I think that shack’s the first one, and I think it’ll lead us to the next.”
He sighed, shaking his head in wonder, then said, “You’re kind of brilliant, Camellia Rio.”
“I think it’s more thatyou’rekind of distracted.”
“I am, for sure.” And not just by the diary, or being so near the spot where he’d been found in the river, though both those things were a constant background hum. No, it was something more immediate, or a mix of things. The quiet, and the underlying rhythmic song of whatever bugs were whirring and chirping in perfect million-part harmony, and the darkness all around them seemed to push them closer. The lure of the fire, snapping nearby, cast orange light and amber shadows across their faces. It was intimate, and the air tasted of woodsmoke. He cleared his throat.
Something shifted between them, there in the quiet. Something changed. He wondered if she felt it, too, looked to see, and got stuck in her eyes.
“It’s cold.” She said it, he thought, for something to say, but her eyes were still locked with his.
