Page 95 of We Are Just Us

Kieran nodded. “Yeah. Just thinking.”

“About?”

“How different everything looks out here.” He paused. “How different everything feels.”

Rory smiled. “Wait until we get past Banning. It gets better.”

They stopped in Yucca Valley for supplies—fish, bread, s’mores ingredients, too many chips. Rory added water and ice. Kieran tossed in beef jerky because apparently beef jerky was required.

They let the dogs out to stretch and sniff around the parking lot, Hank marking every available surface like he was reclaiming territory.

Rory was right about the landscape.

Past Banning, everything transformed.

The hills gave way to wide, flat stretches of desert, pale sand and scattered rock formations, everything washed in shades of tan and rust. Wind turbines appeared in the distance, hundreds of them, blades turning slowly like they had all the time in the world.

Kieran had never seen so many at once.

“It’s right out of a sci-fi movie,” Kieran said.

“Right?” Rory’s hand squeezed his thigh gently. “I always feel like I’m driving into the future when I pass these.”

The air coming through the window was different now, drier, hotter. It didn’t smell like salt anymore. It smelled of ancient stone and sagebrush.

Kieran realized, somewhere between the wind farms and the long stretch of empty highway, that he was calm.

Not the forced kind he usually manufactured when he was anxious. His shoulders weren’t tight. His brain wasn’t spinning through worst-case scenarios.

Hank was home. The dogs were in the back seat. Rory’s hand was on his thigh.

Everything he’d been holding, the fear, the grief, the waiting was still there, but it had loosened. Enough to let him breathe.

Kieran looked over at Rory, one hand on the wheel, eyes on the road, the sunlight catching the edges of his profile.

“What?” Rory asked, catching him staring.

“Nothing,” Kieran said.

Rory smiled. “See anything interesting?”

“Jury’s still out.”

Rory laughed and squeezed his thigh again.

Joshua Tree appeared like a secret the desert had been keeping.

The trees themselves were strange, otherworldly, twisted and gnarled, arms reaching up at odd angles like they were frozen mid-gesture.

“They look like they’re from another planet,” Kieran said.

“They kind of are,” Rory replied. “Only grow in this part of the world.”

Rory turned off the main road onto a smaller dirt path, the truck bouncing over ruts and rocks. They drove another ten minutes into the backcountry, away from the campgrounds, away from people.

Finally, Rory pulled off into a flat clearing surrounded by Joshua trees and boulders.

He cut the engine.