Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sam took them out to a fancy restaurant for dinner.
Not the patio dinner. Not the Campbell’s-and-cornbread dinner. A real dinner, at a restaurant in town that Sam had been talking about since they arrived—the one with the prickly pear something and the chef she knew from “a residency in Oaxaca, long story, incredible woman.”
Sam dressed for it. Stella hadn’t seen her dress for anything all week—Sam lived in linen shirts and paint-stained jeans and bare feet on the patio tiles. But tonight she came out of her bedroom in a dark red blouse and silver earrings and her hair down.
“You two look perfect,” Sam said, looking them over in the hallway. Bea was in the sundress Anna had packed for her. Stella was in jeans and a black shirt because Stella didn’t own a sundress and wasn’t going to start now.
“Stella, you could borrow something of mine,” Sam said, already heading for the door.
Stella checked her bag and pulled her shirt straight. “I’m good.”
“You’re sure? I have a—”
“I’m good.”
Sam drove them into town. The gas gauge sat where it always sat—just above the line, the same place it had been since the airport. Stella watched it from the back seat and thought about mentioning it and didn’t.
The restaurant was small, adobe, candles in the windows, the kind of place that didn’t have a sign because the people who ate there already knew where it was.
It smelled like roasted chili and warm bread and something dark and rich coming from the kitchen.
Sam walked in and the hostess said her name.
“Samantha. We have your table.”
“Maria, these are my girls.” Sam put her hand on Bea’s shoulder. “This is Bea. She’s a painter. She visited Carmen Sandoval’s studio and she’s still vibrating.”
Maria smiled at Bea. “Carmen is something, isn’t she?”
Bea nodded. “She really is.”
They were seated at a table by the window.
The rock was visible through the glass, lit by the last of the sun, going from orange to purple.
Sam ordered wine without looking at the list—“the Tempranillo, Maria, the one from last month”—and when the chef came out to say hello, Sam stood up and hugged her.
“Elena, this is my granddaughter Bea. She paints. She’s seventeen and she’s already better than I was at thirty.” Sam’s hand was on Bea’s shoulder the whole time, presenting her like a painting she’d just finished.
Elena shook Bea’s hand. She looked at Stella, who was sitting with the menu open. “And who’s this?” she asked.
Sam blinked. “Oh—this is Stella. Bea’s cousin. She came along for the trip.”
“Hi,” Stella said.
“Nice to meet you both.” Elena smiled and went back to the kitchen. Sam sat down and poured the wine and started telling them about the time Elena had cooked a seven-course dinner in a borrowed kitchen during a power outage using only gas burners and a headlamp, and the evening was underway.
The food was really good. Stella would give Sam that.
The lamb was the best thing she’d eaten in Arizona.
There was a salad with prickly pear and goat cheese that made Bea close her eyes.
There was bread with herb butter that Sam said Elena made fresh every morning.
There was a dessert involving chocolate and chili that arrived with three spoons and no explanation needed.
Sam was brilliant. She told stories about Oaxaca and the residency and a painter she’d met in Mexico City who worked with beeswax and fire.
She asked Bea about her influences. She talked to the couple at the next table about the rock formations and gave them directions to a trailhead they hadn’t heard of.
She held court—warmly, effortlessly. The whole room turned toward her.
She did not ask Stella a single question between the salad and dessert.
Stella ate her lamb and drank her water and watched her grandmother conduct the room. It was impressive. It was also a performance.
Bea was glowing. Bea had been glowing all week and tonight she was even extra—the food, the wine Sam let her taste, the evening Sam had made happen.
Stella watched her cousin’s face and thought, this is what Sam does.
She gives you the best night of your life and you don’t notice who’s sitting in the dark.
“Ready?” Sam said, signing the check without looking at it. “I want to take the ridge road home. The stars are better from up there.”
Sam pulled out of the lot and turned toward the canyon road instead of the highway, and for about ten minutes the sky was, in fact, better from the ridge. The road climbed and the town fell away and everything opened up and Stella shot three frames through the window without thinking about it.
Then the engine coughed.
Sam looked at the dashboard. Stella looked at the dashboard. The needle was below the line. Well below. Resting on the little orange bar that meant the car was running on fumes.
“Oh,” Sam said.
The engine coughed again. Sam coasted to the shoulder—if you could call it a shoulder, it was more like a wide spot in the gravel—and the car rolled to a stop and the engine went quiet.
The cooling engine ticked in the silence. The cold started creeping in without the heater. The sky above them was magnificent. The car was not running.
“This has happened before,” Sam said, like a woman describing weather. “There’s a station on 179. I just need to—” She patted the center console. Checked the cup holders. Looked in her purse. “My phone. I think I left it at the restaurant.”
“You left your phone at the restaurant?” Stella asked.
“I set it on the table when Elena came over and I must have—” Sam turned around in her seat. “Bea, do you have yours?”
“No service,” Bea said, holding her phone up. The screen glowed in the dark car. No bars.
Sam tried the ignition. Nothing. She tried again. The engine turned over once and quit.
“Okay,” Sam said. “This is fine. Someone will come along.”
“We’re on a ridge road at ten o’clock at night,” Stella said. “Nobody is coming along.”
“Someone might.”
“Nobody is coming along, Sam.”
Stella reached into the front pocket of her bag. The pocket where she kept her wallet, her backup battery, and the small laminated card Tyler had put in her hand the day before she left.
“What’s that?” Sam asked.
“AAA.” Stella held up the card. Tyler Walsh, Member Since 2019. “My dad gave it to me. He said ‘you never know.’”
“Tyler has AAA?”
“Tyler has AAA and a jumper cable kit and a flashlight in every vehicle he owns. He’s Tyler.” Stella pulled out her phone—no service either, but she’d downloaded the offline emergency number before the trip because Tyler had told her to. She tried it. Nothing.
“We need to get to higher ground,” Stella said. She looked at the ridge above them.
“Stella, you are not walking up a ridge in the dark.”
“I’m walking up a ridge in the dark to get one bar of service to call AAA with my dad’s card to get us home. Stay here.”
She took the flashlight from her bag—the small one she used in the darkroom—and got out of the car. The air was cold and smelled like juniper and dust.
She walked up the ridge. The beam of the flashlight caught the red dirt and loose gravel under her boots, each step sliding a little before it held. It took about four minutes. She held her phone up and watched the bars. Nothing. Nothing. One bar. One bar flickering. She stood very still.
She dialed. It rang. A voice answered.
“AAA roadside assistance, how can I help you?”
“Hi. My grandmother’s car ran out of gas on a road outside Sedona. Member number is on the card.” She read off Tyler’s number. Gave the location as best she could—ridge road off 179, about two miles past the turnoff, dark Subaru on the shoulder.
“We’ll have someone there in about forty-five minutes, ma’am.”
“Thank you.”
Sam and Bea were standing outside the car now, looking up at the sky, which was the only thing to do when your car was dead and the night was that big.
“Forty-five minutes,” Stella said.
“You called from up there?” Sam asked, looking at the ridge.
“Barely any signal. Had to stand very still.”
Sam looked at her—not sideways, not brief, not on the way to Bea. She looked at Stella like she was seeing something she hadn’t noticed before.
“Your father taught you that,” Sam said.
“My father taught me a lot of things.”
Sam didn’t say anything for a moment. Stella’s flashlight was still in her hand, the beam pointed at the ground between them. Then Sam pulled her cardigan tighter and looked at the sky.
“He was always the practical one,” she said. “Even when he was small. The other two would be running around the house and Tyler would be in the corner making sure the flashlight worked.” She was quiet for a second. “I should have paid more attention to that.”
It lasted about four seconds. Then she turned to Bea and said, “Did you see the Milky Way? Look—right there, above the ridge. It’s extraordinary this time of year.”
And the moment passed.
But Stella had heard it. And she filed it in the same place she filed everything—carefully, without comment, for later.
The tow truck came in thirty-eight minutes. A man named Ray with a gas can and a Diamondbacks cap who filled the tank and checked the oil and said “you ladies be safe out here” and drove away. Sam tipped him forty dollars because Sam tipped like a woman who had once been tipped herself.
They drove home on the highway, not the ridge road. Sam talked about the stars. Bea fell asleep in the front seat with her head against the window.
Stella sat in the back and texted Tyler.
used the AAA card.
The reply came in under a minute.
what happened
ran out of gas on a canyon road. Sam forgot to fill up. also left her phone at the restaurant.
that is the most Sam thing I have ever heard. are you ok?
we’re fine. Ray from AAA saved us. your membership dues at work.
tell Ray thank you.
I tipped him. well, Sam did. forty bucks.
that’s also very Sam.
Stella smiled in the dark back seat. She put her phone away and watched the desert go by through the window and thought about her father in Laguna with his AAA card and his jumper cables and his flashlight in every vehicle, being practical from one state away.
She was his daughter. That was something Sam could see now, even if she’d forget by morning.
That was plenty.