Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
They were halfway down the arrivals corridor at Phoenix Sky Harbor with their bags and the carry-ons they’d packed small enough they wouldn’t have to check, and Bea—three steps ahead, the way she’d been since they got off the plane—stopped.
“That’s her.”
A woman at the railing past security—long gray hair half up, half down, a linen shirt the color of unbleached paper, a turquoise pendant on a leather cord, reading glasses pushed up into the hair. She was watching the gate, then watching Bea, and her whole face opened.
“Bea,” Sam said.
She came around the railing with her hands out. Bea went into them and Sam held her—longer than Stella expected. One hand on the back of Bea’s head. Saying something into Bea’s hair that Stella couldn’t hear.
Stella stayed back with the bags.
When Sam let Bea go and held her at arm’s length and laughed once—surprised, delighted—and pushed Bea’s hair behind her ear, Sam’s eyes moved past Bea and found Stella.
A half-second of something crossed her face. Not unwelcome—just unplanned. As if Tyler’s phone call had told her the facts and her brain had filed them but her body hadn’t quite prepared for a second girl standing there with a camera bag.
“You must be Stella,” Sam said. “Ever since Tyler’s voicemail I’ve been wanting to meet you. What a lovely surprise—another granddaughter.”
“That’s me.”
“He tried to call a few times, apparently, but I was in the studio, and I don’t bring my phone in there. The light is too good to interrupt with ringing.” She squeezed Stella’s arm. “But I’m so glad you came.”
Then Sam’s arm went around Bea’s shoulder and she was already turning them toward the exit. “Let’s go. The car’s in a spot I’m not entirely sure is legal.”
Stella picked up both bags and followed them to the car.
Sam drove a Subaru that had clearly been lived in.
There were two empty travel mugs in the cup holders, a sketchbook on the back seat, three different pairs of sunglasses on the dashboard, and a sweater wadded up against the passenger door.
The gas gauge sat just above the line. Bea got the front.
Stella took the back with her camera bag in her lap.
The windows were cracked and the desert air came through dry and warm and smelling like nothing she recognized—no salt, no ocean, just dust and heat and something faintly green.
The drive from Phoenix was over two hours. Sam talked.
She told them about the formations they were about to start seeing, and which ones had which names, and which ones she liked best. She told them about a restaurant in Sedona that did something extraordinary with prickly pear cactus that they had to try one night.
She asked Bea about the flight. She told them about the time she’d driven this road in a rainstorm and pulled over to paint the clouds and a state trooper had knocked on her window to ask if she was okay.
She did not ask about Tyler. She did not ask about Anna. She did not ask about Margo. Or Meg.
Stella kept her camera in her lap and her eyes on the rocks. They started small and brown and then they got bigger and redder and at one point Sam pulled into a turn-out without warning and said, “You have to see this for one minute.”
The light was hitting the canyon walls in a way that made them look painted. Bea made a sound. Stella took a photograph.
“Worth two minutes off the drive,” Sam said, watching them watch.
“Worth a lot more than that,” Bea said.
“Plenty more where that came from. Come on.”
Sam’s place was at the end of a dirt road on the south side of town.
Single-story, adobe, sand-colored, set into the slope so that the back faced Cathedral Rock and the front faced nothing—just the road and the chaparral.
There were wind chimes on the porch and a stack of flattened moving boxes leaned against the side of the house.
A rental—Stella could tell from the generic doormat and the lockbox still bolted to the railing.
Inside it smelled like sage and old books.
The living room had a vaulted ceiling and a wall of windows that faced the rock.
There were paintings all over the walls—Sam’s, hung as if they’d always been there, though the nail holes didn’t quite match the frames.
Half-finished canvases were stacked face-in against the far wall.
The bookshelves were full but the books looked like they’d been unpacked recently—spines facing out but not arranged, not settled in.
Shelves of ceramic pottery—bowls and vases in earth tones, the kind of collection you build by buying one in every town you pass through.
Sam walked Bea through the living room with her arm around her shoulder, pointing at the rock through the windows, naming the formations. Stella came through the door behind them carrying both bags and set them in the hallway. Neither of them turned around.
“I’ve been here about four months,” Sam said, catching Stella looking at the bookshelves.
“Before this it was Taos. Before that, a place outside Santa Fe that had a scorpion problem I wasn’t willing to negotiate with.
I tend to move when the light changes.” She pointed down the hall.
“Your room’s down the hall on the left. Drop your stuff, come eat.
I meant to cook but the day got away from me, so we’re improvising. ”
“I love her already,” Bea said in their room with the door closed.
Stella set her bag on the dresser and didn’t say anything.
Dinner was on the back patio. The rock changed color while they ate.
Sam had made tomato soup from a can—Campbell’s, the condensed kind, which she’d mixed with milk instead of water and heated in a pot that she’d clearly just bought because the price sticker was still on the handle.
There was a pan of cornbread from a box that had come out flat and slightly raw in the middle.
“I think you’re supposed to put an egg in that,” Stella said, looking at it.
“It said egg was optional.”
“I don’t think optional means what you think it means.”
“It’s fine. It’s rustic.” Sam cut herself a piece and took a bite. “It’s terrible. Eat the edges, they’re better.”
Bea ate two bowls of the soup and three pieces of cornbread, including the middles, and told Sam it was wonderful. Stella ate the edges.
There was salad—bagged, the kind with the dressing packet—and a bowl of berries and sliced peaches from a farm stand Sam said she’d stopped at that morning, which was the only thing on the table that tasted like someone had remembered other people were coming.
There was lemon water. There was wine for Sam.
“So, Bea, tell me about yourself,” Sam said, reaching for the bottle and leaning back in her chair. “I want to hear everything. What are you working on? What are you making? What’s keeping you up at night?”
Bea was already talking about her work, pulling a piece of cornbread apart. “I’m putting together a portfolio for my art show. My big end-of-year show at the Laguna Art Center. Fifty paintings and prints. June second.”
“June second.” Sam pushed her glasses up into her hair. “Tell me about the paintings.”
“They’re—I’ve been working on light. How light moves through a space. How it changes a room. I’m trying to figure out how to get paint to do what light does, which is basically impossible, but that’s the project.”
“That’s always the project,” Sam said, and something in her voice shifted. “That’s the only project that matters. Who are you studying?”
“Carmen Sandoval, mostly. And Diebenkorn.”
“You know Carmen’s work?” Sam sat up straighter and set her glass down. “The glazes on the red rock series?”
“I’ve only seen reproductions. I’ve never seen one in person.”
Sam looked at her for a long second. “Carmen lives about twenty minutes from here.”
Bea’s hand went to her mouth.
“I might be able to make a phone call,” Sam said, and reached for the wine.
“What about you, Stella?” Sam said, turning to her. “What are you working on?”
Stella reached for the berries. “Photography. Documentary stuff, mostly. The Shack. People around town.”
“Black and white?”
“Mostly.”
Sam nodded once, took a sip, and looked at the canyon, which had gone the color of a bruise. “And how’s your father? Is he still doing the photography thing?”
“He’s a working photographer,” Stella said. “He has clients.”
The words sat there on the patio between the salad bag and the candle Sam had lit when the light went.
Sam took another sip, set the glass down, and turned back to Bea. “Tell me more about this show. June second? Where is it?”
And Bea told her—about the Laguna Art Center, about Mr. Reeves, about the series she couldn’t decide on—and Sam listened and asked questions and poured more wine and the evening went on. Stella ate her berries and watched her grandmother light up for Bea and step back for everything else.
After dinner Sam refused help with cleanup. “You traveled. You just sit. I do this with music on and it’s the best part of my day.” She carried the soup pot and the pan inside and put on something that sounded like Cuban guitar from a speaker on the kitchen counter.
Then she came back out with three bowls and a bag from the freezer.
“I also have ice cream,” Sam said. “And I have—” She went back inside and returned with a jar of hot fudge, a can of whipped cream, and a bag of sprinkles in a container that looked like it had crossed state lines more than once.
She set everything on the patio table. “Dessert. Which is also an apology for dinner.”
“Dinner was fine,” Bea said.
“Dinner was Campbell’s. This is the real course.” Sam scooped ice cream into bowls and pushed the toppings toward them. “Help yourselves. Don’t be polite about it.”
Sam’s bowl ended up with hot fudge and whipped cream in a pile that collapsed sideways. Bea had hot fudge and the last of the sprinkles. Stella had mint chocolate chip, plain, no toppings.
Stella looked at the spread on the table—the ice cream, the toppings, the grandmother she’d never met handing out bowls on a patio—and something clicked.
“So, this is where it comes from,” she said quietly.
“Where what comes from?” Sam asked, licking hot fudge off her thumb.
“Nothing.” Stella took a bite of her ice cream. “Family thing.”
Bea caught Stella’s eye across the table. The look that meant I caught that too. Stella looked away first.
“She’s amazing,” Bea said after Sam had taken the bowls inside.
“She served us canned soup and cornbread without an egg and then gave us ice cream for dessert.”
Bea pulled her knees up on the chair. “Stella, come on.”
“I’m just saying.”
“She’s amazing.”
Stella picked up her water glass. “She’s something.” She took a sip and left it there.
In bed at eleven-thirty, in the room with the two twin beds Sam had made up with what felt like real linen sheets—which, Stella noticed, were nicer than anything else in the house.
Nicer than the towels, which were mismatched.
Nicer than the dishes, which were rental-generic.
As if Sam had bought the sheets specifically for this visit and hadn’t bothered to make the rest of the place match. Hosting in a burst.
The room was quiet in a way Laguna never was. No ocean. No surf breaking and pulling back. Just the wind chimes on the porch and the silence underneath them.
Stella took out her phone.
got here safe. she made dinner. and by made I mean Campbell’s and a box of jiffy.
The reply came back in under a minute. Tyler was awake.
please tell me she at least added water.
milk. she’s not an animal.
how’s Bea?
in love already. jury’s out for me.
text me tomorrow.
She scrolled to Margo’s number. Thought about it for a second. Then she sent the photo she’d taken at the turnout—the formations in the late light, the one that looked like the canyon was on fire. No message. Just the picture.
Margo’s reply came back two minutes later. Two words.
Beautiful, Stella.
She set the phone face down and stood at the window.
Cathedral Rock was there in the dark with the moon on it. It would be there tomorrow. Sam would be there tomorrow too, with her linen shirt and her turquoise pendant and her questions that went to Bea first and Stella second and Tyler not at all.
Stella stood for a minute. Then she got back in bed and closed her eyes and waited for the sleep that took longer than she’d expected to come.