by Jessi Kirby
I could remember being little, seeing his parents in the bleachers at elementary school football games. I’d always watch the pairs of moms and dads, wondering what mine would’ve been doing if they’d been there. His parents were the one couple I tried not to watch because his dad was always angry about something, and I felt sorry for his mom. She seemed too delicate and fragile to handle his loud, quick temper. I saw him grab her arm more than once, in a way that made me scared of him and angry at the same time. I could only imagine what it would’ve been like to be Rusty as a little kid. Or a grown one, for that matter.
All at once, I wanted to be gentle with him. “I didn’t mean anything like that,” I said softly. “I just wondered what you thought of him.”
“I know,” Rusty answered. “It’s fine.”
And I knew, from the shift in his tone, he was about to change the subject. He didn’t have to, though, because just then we rounded a curve that ended in a narrow dirt driveway. At the end of it was a house that looked like it had clung to the side of the mountain for years. Once again, I was speechless. But this time, it was because of the view.
Far below, the sparkling lights of Sedona spread out like stars on the valley floor, distant and quiet. And above us, in the moonless purple sky, the real stars felt closer than they’d ever been, like I could reach right up, pluck one from the night, and tuck it in my pocket. It was the kind of sky Finn would’ve loved. Almost in answer to my thought, a delicate trail of white light streaked low over the horizon.
“You see that?” I asked Rusty.
He nodded. “Make a wish.”
Had he said it to me a few hours earlier, I might’ve wished myself back home or wished that the envelope that contained Finn’s letter hadn’t been his last. But right then, I felt grateful we’d made it this far and that Rusty was with me. So I wished us all the way to Kyra Kelley.
Neither of us spoke. We just sat there a moment, and relief and exhaustion settled over me. A cool, fragile breeze drifted in the windows, carrying with it the rich, dry smells of the desert. The night outside lay so utterly peaceful, I wanted to sink into it and float off with the scent of the pines. I glanced over at Rusty, who seemed to feel the same way, judging by the way he leaned back against the seat, taking in the night sky.
He felt me looking and gave a half smile. “You ready?” When I nodded, he put the car back in gear and we rolled quietly down the driveway. Rusty pulled in next to a mudsplattered jeep and cut the engine. The Pala seemed to shudder with relief as soon as he did, and everything stood still and quiet until the front door of the house opened up, spilling out orange light and the small, unmistakable frame of Celia.
She moved fluidly down the stairs, jewelry jingling softly as she did, and made her way right to my open window. I sat up, too tired to care that I hadn’t seen her in years and I was showing up in my underwear with her son. When she reached the passenger door and bent down to the window, I knew it didn’t matter.
She smiled, gentle and warm, took my face in her hands, and said softly, “We’ve been expecting you.”
16
I closed my eyes and let the warm water stream down my face, hoping it would carry any traces of tears away with it. The look on Celia’s face, and her hands on my cheeks, and what she’d said, had left me so near undone I actually did ask right away if I could take a shower. And she’d been happy to oblige, because that’s what you do with people who are so upset they’ve lost their manners. I’d barely gotten the water on before the first tears, all full of fatigue and relief, spilled over onto my cheeks. I watched them swirl down the drain, wondering how in the world Celia had been expecting me when I had absolutely no business being where I was at the moment. I probably didn’t have enough money to fix the car and make it home, let alone get to California and Kyra Kelley in time. Lilah had to be wondering why I hadn’t returned her calls, and Gina probably had all of Texas searching for me, yet here I was.
What felt the worst, though, was that being this far away and this out of touch was exactly what I wanted right now—needed, even, because back home Finn was gone for good. Buried in the town cemetery. But in his car, with Rusty next to me and memories of him shared between us, it was like he wasn’t so far away after all.
I breathed in the steam, wishing I could stay in the shower forever and not have to deal with any of it. I could only imagine the conversation happening about me between Rusty and Celia out in the living room. But I actually did remember my manners, and I couldn’t let go of my curiosity about how she’d known we were coming, so I finished up and shut the water off, then took a few deep breaths as I put my fresh clothes on. At least I’d be fully dressed to give her a proper greeting and meet Bru.
Which I did, as soon as I swung open the bathroom door. I ran right smack into him in the middle of the hallway, almost knocking both of us down.
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t see . . . I . . .”
“That’s all right, darlin’.” He laughed. “You didn’t hurt me none.”
Rusty hadn’t been kidding about the crusty mountain man thing. Bru stood not much taller than me, his faded jeans and western shirt almost completely covered in red-brown dust. He tipped his head and smiled warmly, past his scruffy white beard, all the way up to a pair of sparkly blue eyes. “You must be Honor.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Bru. Pleased to meet you.” A scraggly gray ponytail slipped over his shoulder as he leaned forward. “My condolences about your brother.”
“Thank you,” I said, shaking his hand and hoping he’d leave it at that. “And . . . thank you for having us here. Sorry to just show up like this, but—”
He waved a dismissive hand. “We’re happy to have you two,” he said with a wink. “You all done in there? Cece doesn’t like me to show up to the table all dusty.”
I nodded, still fumbling around for something more to say. “Yeah. I’m finished. Thank you.” I stepped aside and motioned that the bathroom was all his.
“All right then. Kitchen’s down the hall and through the living room. Just follow the smell of whatever crazy thing she’s cookin’ in there.” He winked again, then stepped past me. “Lord knows what it is this time.”
“What is that?” Rusty said as I stepped down into the kitchen. Now dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, he leaned over the pan that sizzled on the stove, face scrunched up at the smell of it.
Celia reached up to his shoulders, which made her look even tinier, and steered him toward one of the kitchen chairs. “That is our dinner—organic quinoa with sprouted nuts and leafy kale. You just sit down and don’t bother yourself about it now.” Rusty did as she said, with a look that said he probably wouldn’t bother with it at all.
Celia was about to say something else but noticed me and crossed the kitchen in about two steps, then stood looking me over, shaking her head. “Oh, Honor darlin’, look at you all grown. You’re every bit as beautiful as your mama was.”
I looked down at my toes on the wood floor, a mix of self-conscious and happy at the comparison. “Thank you, ma’am,” I said, looking up into her hazel eyes. “You look just the same as I remember you.” And she did, with her long curly hair and olive skin that made her look more like she could be Rusty’s sister than his mother.
She waved a dismissive hand, then smiled as she brought it to my arm. “Aw, sweetie, I’m just happy you’re here. Happy Rus went down there after you. I knew it would work out for the best.” My eyes went straight to Rusty, but he didn’t meet them, and Celia’s sentence hung there in the space between us.
She gave my arm a pat, then turned her attention to the pan on the stove, which was starting to smoke. “Oh, lord!” she said, hurrying over to it.
Went down there after me?
Rusty still wouldn’t meet my eyes. I looked to Celia, about to ask her what she meant, but she was too busy fussing over the pan that was now filling the room with putrid-smelling smoke. Went down there after me . . . For what? And how did she know tha
t? And why wouldn’t Rusty even look at me?
The contents of the pan crackled, then ignited. Celia jumped back with a shriek. Rusty was on his feet and across the kitchen in one quick motion. He grabbed the handle of the pan, threw it in the sink, and spun the faucet on, sending a hiss of steam up like a rocket. I sat glued to my chair in the little swirl of chaos, absorbed by question after question and the unsettling feeling that everyone here knew more than me about something.
Just then, Bru stepped into the kitchen all showered up and smelling like patchouli oil. Enough to compete with the pungent burning smell that now blanketed the room. He took the situation in like it was nothing out of the ordinary, grabbed a set of keys hanging on the hook by the door, and said simply, “I’ll go get the pizza, then. Combo okay for everybody?”
I nodded, eyeing Rusty across the kitchen. He smiled at Bru. “That’ll be fine.”
Celia blew a loose curl off her forehead, smoothed her dress, then smiled a thank-you at him. “You’re the best, baby. I don’t know what went wrong that time, but one of these days I’ll get this whole cooking thing, I will,” she said, wiping her hands with a dish towel.
Bru walked over and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Hopefully I’ll live to see it.” He put his hat on and looked from me to Rusty. “Anybody need anything else while I’m out?”
We were all quiet.
“Okay, then. I’ll be back in time for the star show.”
17
The “star show,” as Bru called it, was enough to make me forget everything else the moment I looked at the sky. When he got home with the pizza, he herded us all out onto the deck. It jutted out over the side of the mountain and left the impression we were floating between the valley and the stars. We settled around a circular wooden table lit by a single candle so we’d have enough light to see, but not so much that it drowned out the light of the falling stars that streaked fast across the sky every few seconds.
“They’re called the Perseids,” Bru said through a mouthful of pizza. “Because they all look like they come from Perseus up there.” I remembered Perseus from English. He was the one who killed Medusa and saved Andromeda and tamed Pegasus—all these impossible things that made him the kind of legend that got his own constellation. Another faint tail of light skimmed over the mountaintops, and I tried to trace its path back to the bigger-than-life hero in the sky.
“All these shooting stars come from the same place?” I asked, searching for the next one.
“Yes and no,” Bru answered. He set his slice of pizza down. “They’re not really stars, but they do come from the same place. It’s a big ol’ cloud of comet dust. Little bits of rock and ice no bigger’n the grains of sand on the beach.”
I considered this as two more, fainter than the ones before, etched barely visible lines across the black of the sky. It didn’t seem possible that something so tiny could make light that we could see all the way down here.
“Just beautiful,” Celia whispered.
Rusty leaned forward, elbows on the table, and said exactly what I was thinking. “I don’t understand.”
Bru thought about it for a second, then turned to face us. “Without gettin’ too tricky, it’s like this. Every August, the earth’s orbit crosses this cloud of debris left behind by a comet that swung by years ago. When those little bits hit our atmosphere and burn up, they put on quite a light show.”
I glanced at Rusty and wondered if that’s what we were—the little bits left behind to burn up and fall after the bright streak of a comet had come and gone. We’d definitely put on a show the last two days.
We sat eating in silence for a little while, watching the pieces of comet dust flare up and rain down delicate white light. When the box was empty but for one last slice, Bru leaned back in his chair, patting his round little belly. “Somebody’s got to finish that off, and it shouldn’t be me. Honor . . . Cece?”
“No, thank you,” I said. Celia shook her head.
“Rusty?”
“Nah, I’m full.” He stretched his arms above his head and yawned. “And I gotta go to bed soon. I wanna be up early to work on the car.” He glanced over at me. “We’re on a deadline here.”
Bru leaned forward and grabbed the piece of pizza. “I can help you out with it after I get back from my a.m. tour. I’ll be back early. Some crazy tourist lady booked a sunrise Vortex tour. Which means I gotta get up at four to get the jeep ready.”
“Bru does jeep tours around the mountains here,” Celia explained. She reached around the table for our empty paper plates and unused packets of parmesan cheese and pepper flakes. “The Vortex tours are his most popular ones.”
“Vortex?” I asked.
Rusty leaned his head back on the chair and put his face to the sky. “Oh, damn, here we go. Thought we already had our cosmic lesson for the night.”
Bru turned his attention to me, ignoring him. “A vortex,” he began in his teacherly kind of tone, “is basically a spot where you can feel the energy the earth gives off,” he said, crunching his last bite of pizza crust. “But amplified. For reasons we don’t really know about. The Indian tribes around here found ’em and used ’em for all their spiritual ceremonies. And now people visit them for all different reasons—meditation, peace, clarity . . . what have you.”
He wiped his mouth with a napkin but missed a few crumbs that fell to his beard, and I tried not to watch them move up and down as he talked. “The spots affect everyone different, just depends on what you’re there for and how open you are to it.” Rusty snorted, but Bru went on unfazed. “They’re all over around here, around the whole world, actually, but you gotta know how to find ’em, and that’s where I come in.”
“So, you take people up to these spots . . . and then what?” I asked. He said it all so matter of factly, I was genuinely curious. Men who wore turquoise jewelry and talked about the earth’s energy weren’t exactly common in Big Lake, where oil and football were at the top of the accepted list of conversation topics.
“And then they pay him a lot of money and say they’re enlightened,” Rusty answered.
Bru chuckled. “I don’t know about a lot of money, but some of ’em do come back with the insight they were looking for.”
I nodded like I understood, but I was still a little hazy on how it was supposed to work. Bru waved his hand. “Anyway, that’s just work stuff. When I’m done with that, we’ll get to work on your car, so don’t you worry about it.” He stood and patted me firmly on the shoulder. “We’ll get her all fixed up tomorrow, and you can be on your way.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate it.” And I really did. He had a calm about the way he spoke that was reassuring all on its own.
“Sure thing,” Bru said with a wink. “See y’all in the mornin’.” He pushed himself out of his chair with a grunt, then leaned down and gave Celia another kiss on the cheek and shuffled back into the house, leaving the three of us out there in the cool night air with comet dust falling all around.
After a moment when we were all quiet, I turned to Celia. “Have you gone to one of those places? The vortexes?”
She smiled a warm, soft smile. “I have. They’ve helped me work through a lot of things in my life. Met Bru at one of them, as a matter of fact. That’s a story for another night, though.” She leaned her head back and sighed. Then, after a long moment, said, “We should probably all be getting to bed soon. You two must’ve had a long day. Probably could use the rest.” Neither of us said anything, and I wondered if it had seemed as long to Rusty as it had to me. Watching the sunrise with Wyatt, the fight with Rusty afterward, the monsoon and the car crash, all of it felt like years packed into the space of a day.
Celia lay a soft hand over mine, and I could see out the corner of my eye she put her other one on Rusty’s. She breathed in deep and closed her eyes, chin lifted up to the starry sky, and the glow from the candle made her long, soft curls shine gold. “I think that car breaking down on you is a sign,” she
said dreamily. Rusty shifted in his seat, but she kept her hand on his. “I mean it. I think the two of you are supposed to be here together right now, sharing this.”
I glanced over at Rusty, curious if he thought it was crazy, what she’d just said. And also kind of wondering if I was a little crazy for liking that she’d said it.
“Don’t get started with all your New Age crap,” he said, drawing his hand away. “We’re supposed to be to the California state line by now.”
Celia sat up. “I’m sorry, honey. It just came out.” She turned to me. “Rus doesn’t like it when I talk like that. Doesn’t believe in his own mama’s intuition. But I tell you what—some things are so true you can feel ’em right here.” She put her hand to her chest. “And that’s one of ’em. You two are meant to be in this together. Here.”
She nodded to herself, then her hand went from her chest to my arm. “Which reminds me, Honor, I think it’s just perfect that you’re taking those tickets Finn gave you and going to see Kyra Kelley. I’m sure he would’ve wanted you to.”
I shot a thanks a lot look over at Rusty, but Celia didn’t seem to notice. She was too excited right then, her hands all aflutter as she spoke. “Have you been reading about what she’s going through, with her boyfriend cheatin’ on her and her manager stealing from her and all? That is a girl who needs someone genuine in her life right now!” I looked from Celia to Rusty, who was leaned back into the shadows, trying to hide a smirk. Celia hopped up from her chair. “Matter of fact, I just read an article about her that you need to read for yourself—it was all about how she’s at this complete crossroads in her life right now, you know, looking for the right path to take. A lot like you, probably, and . . . I’ll just go and get it.” Without waiting for a response, she disappeared through the sliding glass door into the house.
