Chapter 2 Caro
CARO
“IS THIS HOW YOU pictured it?” Caro asks the other two. Her voice is almost reverential.
“Yes,” Ash says. “No.”
Caro’s heart is full. The three of them are standing on a plateau, red dirt at their feet, an enormous evening-blue sky above. Earlier they were talking and laughing, breathless and giddy to be together in person, in the flesh, but now they’ve quieted.
The landscape stretches out before them like a living thing, like many living things.
The colors and the view shift, according to the weather and the light.
The mesas turn red, pink, purple, orange, white.
The sky changes—it can be vast, calm, empty, swept with clouds.
It’s blue, gray, black as obsidian, spotted with diamond-bright stars.
Sage, rabbit brush, cactus, and ephedra grow green, gray, silver.
Only those who didn’t know the desert could ever call it barren.
It’s ripe with life, particular with geography both large-scale and minute. The others are staring in wonder.
Caro grew up less than an hour away from here, in the desert town of St. John. Although she now lives several hours away, she visits home often. It always comes back to her quickly: the desert, the way it feels. How dry the air is here, how beautiful the bones.
“What about all of us?” Hope turns away from the view to smile at the other two.
She’s wearing a faded orange hat and sunglasses that offer the right amount of concealment without being obvious.
Ash smiles back, her freckled nose wrinkling, looking younger than the mom of three teenage girls has any right to look.
What do they see when they look at me? Caro wonders.
“Gorgeous,” Ash says, with the sincerity Caro has come to know so well, even at a distance, even through a screen. “You’re both so gorgeous. I love you two so much!” She throws her arms around Caro and Hope, herding them into a group hug. “I cannot believe this is happening!”
“Thanks for suggesting that we come here, Caro,” Hope says as they draw apart. She pulls off her sunglasses and Caro is faced with the full effect of her Hope Hanover green eyes. “It’s perfect.”
“I don’t know that I can take the credit,” Caro says. “It was your idea to come to southern Utah.”
“But you found this resort,” Hope reminds her.
“It’s so beautiful out here, I can’t believe it’s real,” Ash says. “It’s so different from Oregon.”
“Film directors love this part of the country,” Hope says.
“It’s cheap to shoot here, and the landscape is ridiculous.
” She takes a deep breath, and everyone else follows suit, Caro included.
It’s a pleasure to inhale the clean air of this place, the smells of pines and sage and rivers carving their way through rock.
Hope glances at Caro. “I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, I’m sure. ”
“Hollywood does like to film Westerns here,” Caro agrees. “And use Utah as Mars or Generic Desert Planet.”
“I get that,” Ash says. “It’s so… otherworldly.”
“But it’s our world.” Hope’s voice is warm, and so is her arm around Caro’s shoulders. “How lucky are we?”