Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Bea was asleep in the other bed, one arm over her face, breathing deep and slow. Ice cream after dinner, no regrets.
Stella pulled on jeans, sweater, boots, grabbed her bag, and slipped out without a sound.
The house was quiet. Sam’s door was closed.
The kitchen still had the sundae evidence—a smear of hot fudge on the counter, the sprinkles container with the lid off, bowls in the sink Sam had apparently decided to deal with tomorrow.
The whipped cream can was on its side near the stove.
The whole room smelled like sugar and last night’s coffee.
Stella let herself out the front door and headed for the trail.
The morning was cold and clear, and the rocks turned from gray to pink to orange the way they did every dawn, in about twenty minutes.
She’d been photographing it every morning since they’d arrived, standing at the end of Sam’s dirt road with her camera aimed at Cathedral Rock, trying to figure out what Carmen Sandoval saw in it that made her paint the same formation over and over for thirty years.
She walked past the end of the road and onto the trail that went up the ridge behind the house.
The light was good. She shot a few frames—the rocks, a juniper against the sky, the shadow of a fence post on red dirt.
Her hands were cold. She tucked one into her jacket pocket and kept the other on the camera.
She found the flat rock she’d been sitting on every morning—the one about fifteen minutes up the trail, where you could see Sam’s house below and the canyon opening up to the north. The wind was still. No ocean. Just the dry quiet of a desert morning and somewhere down the ridge a bird starting up.
She sat down, set the camera in her lap, and took out her phone. She called Tyler.
It rang three times. He picked up sounding like he’d been awake for a while, which meant he’d been in the water already.
“Hey, kid.”
“Hey.” Stella pulled her knees up and looked at the view below her.
“You’re up early.”
“I’m always up early here. How’s the surf?”
“Flat. Completely flat. I went out anyway because Luke said there was a south swell coming and Luke was wrong.” She could hear him moving—a towel, a zipper, the truck door. “How’s Sedona?”
“It’s good. Bea’s happy. Sam took her to Carmen Sandoval’s studio and Bea almost passed out.”
“I heard. Anna told me.”
“Sam called Carmen in the morning because Bea mentioned her at dinner. Just picked up the phone.”
“That sounds like Sam.”
They were both quiet for a second. A bird crossed the canyon below her, low and fast.
“She did an ice cream bar the other night,” Stella said.
Tyler laughed. “She did not.”
“Three kinds. Hot fudge. Marshmallows. Sprinkles from a container that has survived multiple state lines.” Stella turned a pebble over with her boot. “I had mint chocolate chip.”
“In a cup.”
“Obviously. Cones are structurally unsound.”
“That’s where we got it,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“The ice cream thing.”
“Yeah.”
Another pause. The canyon was getting lighter. The orange was deepening toward amber.
“Dad?”
“Yeah.”
“She walked Bea in and introduced her to Carmen—‘this is Bea, she’s a painter, she’s working on light.
’ And I sat by the door the whole time.” Stella picked up the pebble and held it.
“When they were leaving, Carmen finally noticed me and asked who I was. Sam was standing right there and didn’t say a word. Bea introduced me.”
Tyler didn’t say anything.
“And last night Bea asked Sam if she wanted to see my photos. Sam said yes, she’d forgotten.
So, I laid them out. Six prints.” Stella turned the pebble over.
“She looked at them for about about thirty seconds and said ‘these are good, you have your father’s eye.’ And then she asked Bea about her series. ”
“I—I’m sorry, Stella.”
“I’m fine, Dad. I’m not—it’s not a crisis. I just—” She set it down on the rock next to her. “I wanted her to see them the way she saw Bea’s paintings. I wanted her to see me. And she didn’t.”
Tyler was quiet for a long time. Long enough that Stella checked her phone screen to make sure the call was still connected.
“When I was twelve,” Tyler said, “I made the all-star team for baseball. I was so excited I called her—she was in New Mexico somewhere, or maybe Colorado, I don’t remember.
I told her about the team and the ceremony and she said ‘that’s wonderful, Tyler, I’m so proud of you. ’ And she sounded like she meant it.”
“Did she come?”
“She said she would. She didn’t.” He paused.
“But that’s not the part I remember. The part I remember is that she said she was proud, and it sounded real, and it lasted about thirty seconds before she started telling me about a ceramic artist she’d met in Taos.
And I was sitting on the kitchen floor holding my MVP trophy, listening to her talk about ceramics, and I thought—she’s not being mean. She’s just somewhere else already.”
Stella looked at the ridge across from her.
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s exactly what it’s like.”
“I know.”
“She gave Bea something amazing. She remembered Bea sitting at the foot of her bed at six years old. She just doesn’t do that for everyone.”
The line was silent.
“Don’t be sorry. You didn’t do anything.”
“I did, actually. Sixteen years of something.”
Stella pulled her jacket tighter against the morning cold. “That’s different.”
“Is it?”
She thought about it, sitting on the rock with the light going gold below her. “Yeah. It is. You didn’t know I existed for two years and then you showed up and you’ve been showing up every day since. Sam knew I was coming and she didn’t introduce me at all.”
“She didn’t even say your name?”
“She didn’t even say my name, Dad.”
Tyler made a sound that wasn’t a word.
“I’m okay,” Stella said. “I really am. This is Bea’s trip. I came because I wanted to and I’m glad I came.”
“Are you?”
“Yeah. Because now I know.” She picked up her camera and looked through the viewfinder at the light, the gold going white at the edges. “And knowing is better than wondering.”
“That’s very Australian of you.”
“It’s just true, Dad.”
He laughed—she could hear his ears going pink from the next state over.
“Text me tonight,” he said.
“I will.”
“And Stella?”
“Yeah?”
“Your photos are good. They’re better than good. And she should have lit up.”
Stella stood up and brushed the red dirt off her jeans.
She held the phone against her ear and didn’t say anything for a second because her throat had decided to do something she hadn’t authorized.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Go take pictures.”
“Going.”
She hung up and sat on the rock for another few minutes.
The light had moved past gold into the flat bright morning that would last until afternoon.
She raised the camera and took three frames—the last of the color, the shadow line, the wide open space between the walls where the light poured through.
Then she put the lens cap on, slid the camera back in the bag, and walked down the trail to Sam’s house, where Bea would be awake by now and Sam would be making coffee and the day would go on, which was fine. It was Bea’s trip. Stella had come because she wanted to.
She was glad she had. And she was ready to go home.