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“Home.” I sighed. “Not sure that what we have right now is home. Not without my dad around, anyway.”

“Any word from him?”

I shook my head as a sharp pain swelled in my throat.

“I read somewhere once that home can be a person and not just a place.”

“Yeah.” I picked her hand up and threaded my fingers through hers. “I always felt a little guilty using that word when it wasn’t in the same place as my grandparents though. Like we abandoned them or something.”

Eliza got quiet for a moment and then sat up straighter, letting her head fall back against the window. “When Grandma died, it felt like she abandoned me. Which feels stupid to say out loud, because she didn’t choose it. But I still felt it.”

“I get it.” I squeezed her hand. “My dad chose to join the military. I’m proud as hell of him, but I still feel like he abandoned us.”

“Exactly.” She wiped her eyes. “But then I realized Grandma was still here, just not in the way she used to be.”

“Like in her connections to the town and the theater?”

“Mhmm.”

“I think that’s what scares my grandparents the most about this summer.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “That if they lose their farm, they’ll have nothing left to connect them to this town. Like they’ll be erased.”

And if they’re erased…

I couldn’t imagine not coming back here to see them.

To see her.

Eliza sat up, closed the space between us, and kissed me. If she listened hard enough, I knew she could hear my heart thrumming.

“Fairfield isn’t Fairfield without Crowleys and Fultons,” she said. “We won’t let them lose that farm.”

We. I liked the sound of that.

Our foreheads touched, and for the first time all day, my body relaxed.

Maybe it was the starlight.

Or the sound of the corn moving with the wind.

Or the beautiful girl sitting next to me.

But whatever it was, my stupidly optimistic heart decided to believe her.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Eliza

“The theater was created to tell people the truth about life and the social situation.

—Stella Adler

The day after the Fourth of July, I worked in the booth alone after rehearsal. The quiet made it easier to focus, and since I didn’t have an ensemble on the stage, I was much less self-conscious about my cues and choices of colors and fades.

As I double-checked act 3, scene 5, my phone buzzed on the table next to the board.

Reed: I’m outside

Reed: Is it cool if I come up?