The Uber driver was a stocky, silent guy who obviously preferred classic rock radio over conversation. Which was fine by me. My emotions were shrapnel in my chest, and I didn’t feel like talking. Not when I was an hour away from the moment I’d dreamed about for years.
So it really didn’t make sense that the farther we drove, the more lost I felt.
The landscape changed as we headed northeast. Mountains transitioned to flatland, punctuated by a few tired-looking hills. This was obviously not the pretty part of Nevada.
What were the others doing right now? Had they left Reno yet? We’d been supposed to hit the California state line today.
In the town of Blakely, the Uber driver cleared his throat. “Harvest Hill International, right?”
“Yes.”
He scratched his chin. “You go to that church?”
“No.” I gripped the seatbelt, trying to concoct an explanation for why I was visiting a church on a Saturday afternoon. “Just, uh—I know someone who works there.”
“My sister goes there.”
“Oh, yeah?” Maybe this was my chance to get the scoop. “Does she like it?”
“Yeah. I’ve gone with her a time or two. It’s not for me, though.”
“You’re not—religious?”
“Not the way they define it, I guess.” He gave a dry laugh. “Can’t serve God and money, but those folks sure are trying to please ‘em both.”
Before I could ask what he meant, some structure out the windshield caught my eye. A big domelike arena with a parking lot bigger than a shopping mall’s. Four smaller, but still enormous, buildings surrounded the main dome. Surely that wasn’t—
“Here we are.” The guy flipped on his blinker.
This was Harvest Hill? My expectations slid sideways. “All of this is the church?”
“Like I said.” The man’s smile was more of a sneer. “Big offerings. Big budget.”
A tree-lined road—a literal road—led into the campus. At the end, it keyholed around a landscaped area complete with a fountain and a stone sign engraved with HARVEST HILL INTERNATIONAL. A fountain in the parking lot? What was this, some kind of holiness headquarters?
“Um—who’s the pastor here?” Had I somehow made a mistake?
“Thad Harmon. Preaching the gospel and rolling in the tithes.” The man’s sarcasm made me flinch.
“You don’t like him?”
“Eh—well—let me just say this.” The guy jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Three blocks back, there’s a homeless camp. Big problem. Folks down on their luck, living in tents down by the river. And then here—” his gesture scornfully swept the whole church into itself—“is the biggest church in Nevada.” He shrugged at me. “Just seems like some of Thad Harmon’s religion might’ve spilled over three blocks, you know?”
Something defensive rankled in my chest, but it was blocked by something else. The same twinge I’d felt when Gran had told me how easily my father had given up. But before I could sort through my thoughts, the driver cruised to a stop right outside an impressive front entrance—marble columns flanking glass doors and overhung by a balcony from the second story.
I really wished I weren’t wearing a T-shirt and jean shorts.
The interior of the church was no less extravagant than the outside. Marble floors stretched to walls hung with pastoral paintings and lit with decorative sconces. Potted palms taller than my head bowed in the corners. An enormous globe statue rested in front of a statement wall rippling with an indoor fountain and ambient lighting. Brass lettering on the statue said BRING IN THE HARVEST.
Hallways sprouted in a dozen different directions. Which way did I go from here? Now that my initial resolve was waning, I was realizing what a crazy idea this was. My father wouldn’t be here on a Saturday afternoon, would he? What was I going to do if I couldn’t find him? Where would I even stay?
“Can I help you?”
I hadn’t noticed the woman sitting behind the wraparound desk. Was this the church secretary? She looked more like a hotel concierge. I shuffled nervously. “Um…I’m looking for the pastor. Pastor Harmon.”
She frowned. “He doesn’t see visitors on Saturdays. Do you have an appointment to see him?”
“I—no.”
“I’m sorry.” She adjusted her glasses. “He’s only available by appointment during the week, and he doesn’t see visitors on Saturdays.”
“Wait.” Desperation clawed in my chest. I couldn’t just walk out of the place. “I really, really need to see him. Is he here?”
“He is, but he’s in his office doing his final preparation for the services tomorrow. He can’t be disturbed.”
“Can you please let him know I’m here?”
“I’m sorry, dear. You’ll have to come back next week.”
“No, please. Please, can’t you—call him? Or—oh, please. It’s—it’s really, really important.”
She frowned. “Does he know you?”
“He’s my—” Not yet. I took a deep breath, trying to look persuasive and competent and not like a girl who’d wandered in off the street crazed with desperation. “Yes. He knows me.” Oh, I could only pray those words were true.
The woman gave me a long, level look. “What’s your name?”
“Jenna. Jenna Monroe.” My knuckles were white on the edges of the counter. “Eva Monroe’s daughter.”
She sighed and picked up a phone on her counter. “Pastor Harmon?…Yes, I know, but this is apparently an emergency. There’s a young girl here who insists on seeing you today…Jenna Monroe…yes, Monroe. She said she’s the daughter of an—Eva Monroe?”
A long silence.
“Oh? Oh, I’ll tell her. Yes, all right.”
She hung up, and everything stalled. What had he said? Did he know me? Did he want me?
“Well.” She raised her eyebrows at me. “He says to send you up to his office.”
#
When I stepped off the elevator on the third floor—the suddenly friendly woman had given me directions—my feet sank soundlessly into plush carpeting. A tunnel-like hallway pulled me toward a mahogany door decorated with a shiny brass plate.
PASTOR THADDEUS J. HARMON, D. MIN.
So I did what I’d done all my life. I stood before a closed door and knocked, the wood hard against my knuckles.
But this time, the door opened.
And there he was.
Pastor Thaddeus J. Harmon.
Thad.
TJ.
My father.
He didn’t say anything, which was good, because I couldn’t say anything either. His face was more lined than it had looked like on TV, and his tie was loose. He had that auburn hair Mrs. Ingers had talked about, though it had some threads of gray at his temples. But it was the look in his eyes that I couldn’t quite name. Uncertainty? Resignation?
He cleared his throat. “Jenna?”
He said my name like a foreign word he might be pronouncing wrong. I opened my mouth to respond with something, anything, but what could I say? What should I even call him? Pastor? Dad? Sir?
I’d come all this distance in time and travel to tell him something. And now I didn’t know what it was.
“Um—” He glanced around, like an actor forced to go off-script. “Want to come on in?”
He stepped back, ushered me into a space as upscale as the rest of the building. Picture windows opened to a sweeping view of the city, allowing sunlight to touch the mahogany desk and the bookshelf of heavy tomes beside it. Across the room was a soft-lit space with a plush couch and two armchairs.
He dropped into one of the armchairs. “Have a seat.”
I tentatively lowered myself onto the couch. It was one of those ultra-soft ones that feel as if they’re swallowing you. I braced my feet on the floor, and suddenly, The Horse and His Boy was on my mind again. The part where Shasta finally meets his father, King Lune, and the king gives him a big hug and says—
“So—Jenna.” My father shook his head, then suddenly gave a soft laugh that sounded more nervous than anything else. “I—wow. All right.” He shook his head again. “You’ve—well, you’ve grown, since the last photo I saw of you, of course.”
Which was an obvious thing to say, but somehow seeing that he was at least as nervous as I was gave me the courage to finally speak. But I still think it’s strange, what the first words were that I said to my dad. “I didn’t know where you were.”
And for some reason, just saying that suddenly brought a lifetime’s worth of tears I didn’t know were right beneath the surface. I blinked them back.
“I—I know.” His knee jiggled nervously. “How did you, well, find me?”
The lines of light. “I came west on a road trip, and—I saw you on TV.” None of that made sense. “It’s—it’s a really long story.” Already I sounded stupid. I switched topics. “Gran said she talked to you after—after Mom died.”
“Yes.” He cleared his throat and looked down. “I was—well, I was very sorry to hear about Eva and—all of that. I’m sure you miss her.”
I couldn’t miss her, because I’d never known her. Only the hollow wreck the drugs had left behind. But I nodded anyway.
“At the time, I had just assumed the pastorship here, and when your grandmother contacted me, well, she indicated that it was best for you to remain with her, and I—I had to agree, given all the—circumstances.” He was rushing through the words, squinting at me as if offering something he wasn’t sure would be enough. “Your grandmother is a—she’s a very principled woman. I’m sure that was—was it good for you?”
My principled grandmother, who’d lied to me for years. “Yes. It was good.” It was good because I was good.
“Great. That’s—that’s great.” He shifted. “I know I never—but I did send funds, of course. I hope that—helped.”
Funds. The word was cold somehow, numbing something deep inside me.
I nodded without agreeing. Again. I was good at that.
“So—you understand, don’t you, Jenna?”
Nod.
“Well—”
Silence settled between us. Which was to be expected. Of course I hadn’t really envisioned a King Lune reunion, had I? It would be crazy to feel disappointed.
“Here.” With the relief of action, my father leaned forward and lifted the lid of a glass candy dish on his coffee table. “Do you like mints?”
I hated mints.
I took one anyway. “Thank you.”
The cool sharp taste of the mint and the silence of the office and no other words coming to save us.
“Do you—” He rubbed his nose. “I’m sure you have questions for me.”
Why was it that here, with all the answers waiting for me, I couldn’t even find the heart to ask the questions?
“Um—how did you and Mom meet?”
He rotated his shoulders. As if the story were a burden on his back. “My parents were church planters. They traveled across the country starting churches in different areas.”
I didn’t tell him I already knew that.
“Anyway, they moved to Mount Victory when I was in eleventh grade. I met your mom in school.”
“What was she like then?”
“Very pretty. Very smart, very—” He tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. “Well, very—unsettled too. But I suppose we both were, then. We were together all that year and the next, and then we—well, we made some mistakes, and—” He gestured vaguely toward me, then seemed to catch himself. “I mean, our choices, not—you.”
Something twisted in my stomach anyway.
“Anyway, my family and I moved to Albuquerque right after my graduation, and I lost contact with your mother. I heard later that she began to really—struggle after high school. I didn’t know she was pregnant, of course, or that—well, I didn’t know anything until your grandmother approached me after her passing.”
Somehow, I hated the way he could tell the details. With the calm detachment of a narrator instead of a character. I wanted him to feel something. Wanted to drag him back into the story and make him be that boy who’d loved my mother again.
My hand went to my meteorite, slipping the chain over my neck. “You sent my mother this.”
His eyebrows lifted, but his expression remained closed off. He turned it around in his hands, the gold chain glittering in the sunlight. “That’s right. I’d forgotten.”
Couldn’t he see how desperately I needed him to remember?
“You wear this?” He handed it back to me.
“Yes. All the time.” I dropped it back around my neck. I had once imagined myself telling him the story. About finding his letter, about rereading his words in the dark nights, about the promise of the meteorite around my neck and the answers close enough to hold like falling stars.
But now—
“Well, so, tell me about yourself.” He adjusted himself in the chair.
Just like that, I felt the Jenna of Mount Victory coming back. Holding out accomplishments like burnt offerings. “I—I just graduated high school in Mount Victory. I was a straight-A student.”
Subtle approval flashed over his face. “Good. That’s good.”
“And—” What else could I tell him? “I’m going to college this fall.”
“Good. Where at?”
“I’m—I’m not sure yet.”
His brow furrowed suddenly. “Will you be needing—uh—financial—”
“I have scholarships.”
“Oh.” His face relaxed again. “That’s nice. Uh—and, any hobbies, or—”
“Astronomy.” The word came out before Mount Victory Jenna could stop it. But it felt very right.
“Astronomy, like—”
“Stars and constellations and lines of light.” My throat pinched suddenly.
“Guess that explains the design, there.” He nodded at my arm with just a hint of disapproval in his face.
Oh, gosh. I’d forgotten the henna. I squeezed my hands together. “Uh—this is—temporary. It was for a—a festival.”
“I see.” He didn’t sound as if he did. “Science is very interesting to you, then?”
“Yes.” Too small of an answer to hold all that I wanted to say, but I was too tired.
“That’s fantastic.” He said it in the upbeat tone adults use when they’re trying to be encouraging. “Is that what you’re planning to study in college?”
I hadn’t thought about it, but—“Maybe. I’m still deciding.”
“Mm. Well, very nice. Very nice.”
I waited for him to ask me something else. Something besides grades and plans and resume bullet-points. But instead he just nodded. “Well, it’s—I’m very glad to see you’ve become such a diligent and motivated person. I know you’ll excel in whatever you pursue.”
Diligent. Motivated. Excel. Mount Victory words. “Thank you.”
And suddenly I just wanted Jaz and Kason. Jaz, who’d painted the prayer of the stars along my arm. Kason, who’d reached through darkness and shown me the lines of light.
Neither of them had ever asked me about my grade-point average.
“Well, I’m very glad you found me, Jenna.”
Was he? After all, he’d known where I was all along.
But I nodded.
His cell phone jangled on the coffee table. He glanced at it and snatched it up. “Um—excuse me just a moment.” He ducked into a smaller adjoining room and closed the door.
Late-afternoon quiet seeped into his office like the slanting sun. I sagged back and let the weariness pull me down into the couch. I could hear my father’s voice, rising behind the closed door. Whoever he was talking to must have been arguing with him.
The sun was slipping low. I needed to start making plans. Where I was going to spend the night, what I was going to do from here.
Instead, I stared at a stain on the ceiling and thought about King Lune.
What was wrong with me? Wasn’t this what I’d wanted? The moment I’d dreamed of all my life? So maybe it wasn’t shaped exactly as I’d thought. That didn’t matter, right?
“All right.” The door opened, and my father strode back in, pocketing his phone and glancing at the clock behind his desk. “We need to be heading home for dinner.”
Home for dinner. And suddenly, the solid normalcy of those words reversed some of the ache of the last half hour. “Oh—if you don’t mind—”
“Well, of course not.” His smile was cautious, but it was the first one I’d seen. “I was going to suggest—would you like to stay tonight? I’m leaving tomorrow evening for Florida. Preaching a week-long revival there. But you’re welcome to stay with us till then.”
He wanted me. He wasn’t going to disappear again. The relief swirled dizzily through me before I could register his word choice. “Us?”
“My wife and our daughter.” His smile was stronger this time. “Your half-sister.”
Something warm bloomed in my chest. I had a stepmom. I had a sister!
And suddenly, the whole thing felt more possible. The awkwardness would wear off. The story would start to feel right again. And until then, I’d do whatever it took to make sure that this time, I didn’t lose what I’d searched for all my life.
A place to belong.
#
My father seemed as jumpy as the jackrabbits back in Amarillo as we left the church together and headed toward his car—a slick BMW in a RESERVED FOR PASTOR parking spot. Watching him glance around the empty parking lot, I could understand why. I’d read enough news stories about disgraced pastors to understand what some people would assume if they saw us together. But as soon as he told everyone I was his daughter, that would set the record straight, right?
“Okay.” He seemed to relax as we turned out of the church driveway. “Like the car?”
I shifted on the leather seat. “It’s very nice.” The car had a touchscreen display and a slick modern dashboard and more USB ports than anyone should need in a vehicle. For just a moment, I thought about the alleged homeless camp three blocks away. I shoved the thought down.
“I’m not picky about a lot, but I do like a nice car.” He glanced at the clock. “We’re about fifteen minutes from home.”
Home. I savored that word. Clinging to its promise. “Okay.”
The road wound through layers of society—first past a row of apartments, and then through comfortable neighborhoods, and finally into a suburban area where houses sprawled on rippling green lawns and the landscaping alone probably cost more than college tuition. Finally my father pulled up to a sharp-toothed iron gate and rolled down his window, punching some numbers on a keypad. “Here we are.”
The double gate swung open like stage curtains, revealing an ornate—mansion is really the only word that fits. I mean, this place could have swallowed five or six copies of Gran’s little ranch-style house in Mount Victory. The exterior was a soft gray brick with all these fancy touches—sweeping picture windows on all three floors, decorative sconce lighting on the corners, even a graceful arch over the front door. And the landscaping—well, let’s just say these gardens could have kept Gran busy for several summers.
“This is—very pretty.” I hugged my backpack to my chest, suddenly keenly aware again of my T-shirt and jean shorts.
“Well, thank you. The Lord has been good to us.” The words sounded more like a standard preacher reply than a genuine conviction. He made the loop of the circle drive and pulled next to the freestanding garage. As soon as he parked, he turned to face me. “Okay.” That jackrabbit look was back in his eyes. “So, um, there’s something I need to—”
Movement by the front door caught my eye. An angular woman with frosted blonde hair was slowly crossing the wraparound porch. A girl who looked like a younger, shorter version of the woman was on her heels.
“Oh.” My father opened the car door and nodded at me. “Come meet my wife and daughter.”
Come meet my daughter. I had that shrinking feeling in my stomach again, but I followed as he led the way down a stone path to the porch. “Hi, honey.” He smiled at the woman and kissed her quickly in what felt like an obligatory display of affection, then wrapped an arm around the younger girl’s shoulders. “And hey, Sophie.” He looked back at me. “Girls, this is Jenna. Jenna, this is my wife, Monica, and our daughter, Sophie.”
The awkwardness I’d felt in my father’s office was itching like a rash. I shuffled nervously. “Um, hi.”
“Hi, Jenna.” His wife’s embrace was quick and stiff. “Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too.” Did either one of us mean the words?
“Hi.” Sophie gave me a quick wave. She was three or four years younger than me and looked more confused than anything else. I couldn’t blame her.
“Anyway—” My father squeezed Sophie’s shoulder and wrapped his other arm around Monica’s shoulders. The perfect American family. “Are we ready to eat?”
I’d never had less of an appetite in my life, but I followed them inside the mansion, down a long tile hallway to a dining room with a table massive enough for five times the people who’d be eating there.
“Jenna, have a seat.” Monica indicated the chair next to my father before taking her place across from me, on the other side of Sophie. She lifted the lid on a serving platter—some kind of delicious-smelling steak. “Thad, will you pray for us?”
“Of course.” He bowed his head and cleared his throat, slipping into the voice I’d heard him use on TV. “Lord God, we thank You for providing our daily bread.”
I cracked one eye open to see the decorative lighting glittering inside the chandelier. God had provided for a lot more than bread for this family.
“And we thank You for the gift of Jenna’s presence with us this evening. Bless this meal and bless these people who share it. Amen.”
“Amen.” I muttered the word along with Monica and Sophie. But from the expressions around the table, I was pretty sure no one considered my presence a gift.
My father scooped up a helping of meat and glanced at Monica. “I told Jenna she could stay until Monday.”
Monica’s hand froze for just a second on her water glass before she nodded. “Of course.” There was barely enough enthusiasm in the statement to be polite.
“Thank you.” No need to tell them I didn’t have anywhere to go after that. Best to cross that bridge later.
“So, Jenna.” Monica’s smile was far from reaching her eyes. “Thad says you were on a—road trip?”
“Yes.” And suddenly I missed it all. The restless rhythm of driving and the blurring landscape and Jaz’s license plate games and Adam’s dragon and the way I slept at night between the ground and the stars. I stared down at my plate. “I was with—my friends.”
“That’s nice.” Her tone was barely lukewarm. “Where all did you go?”
What was she hoping to learn from these questions? “We followed Route 66 through Oklahoma and Texas to Albuquerque.” I looked at my father. “I knew your parents had planted the church there. I checked, but the secretary wasn’t able to tell me much. And then we went north to the Rockies, and through Nevada, and in Reno, I saw a Harvest Hill service on the TV. Once they showed your name, I knew.” I traced a finger through the condensation on my water glass. “I left my friends and came up here to find you.”
“Sounds like quite an adventure.” Monica was keeping her tone light, holding the distance between us. I didn’t blame her. What wife wanted to have her husband’s illegitimate child in the house?
My father nodded absently, his attention mainly on cutting his steak. “So where were you all headed?”
“To California.” At least the road trip was a safe subject. “We were going to see the solar eclipse day after tomorrow.”
“There’s a solar eclipse?” My father frowned. “Hadn’t heard about that.”
“Yes, you did.” The look Monica shot him was hard to interpret. “Remember? It was coming through Vegas. We were supposed to go down there to see it.”
“Oh, yes. That was before the revival came up, though.”
Monica was folding her napkin in precise pleats. “You didn’t have to say yes to the revival.”
My father glanced at me as if he hadn’t heard her words. “Well, so did your friends go on?”
“Yes.” Why did that hurt to admit? I’d been the one who ran away, not them. I picked up my fork and forced myself to stab at my food. “I might meet them somewhere later.” Which was as likely as summer snow but would hopefully save me from the explanation right now.
“And your grandmother?” Monica was apparently determined to keep plodding diligently through conversation. “How is she?”
“She’s all right.” Other than being a liar and a hypocrite.
Sophie leaned forward with her first remark of the conversation. “Hey, is your grandmother Mrs. Monroe?”
“Yes.”
“Oh!” She glanced at my father. “That’s who you send that money to.”
Monica’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Money?”
My father scraped his fork along his plate without looking up. “You remember, Monica. Part of the, well, agreement.”
“I thought that was only until she turned eighteen.”
My father glanced at me and back at her in a way that was far from subtle. “Let’s, uh, talk about this later.”
“Later never seems to come with you.”
“Monica.” His fingers tightened around his fork. “Please.”
She sighed and stared down at her plate as if weariness were heaped across her shoulders. Sophie bit her lip and pushed her food around. Only my father kept eating with apparent unconcern.
Discomfort crawled along my spine in the silence. What shock waves had my appearance sent through all their lives? Monica had obviously known about me, but what about Sophie? Why had I hoped either of them would welcome me? I was nothing more than a time bomb sitting at their dinner table.
When dinner was finally, mercifully, over, I joined Monica as she stacked plates with more clatter than may have been necessary. “I’ll be happy to help with the cleanup.”
“No, I’ve got it.” Her answer was quick enough that I knew she just wanted me out of sight. “Why don’t you go talk to Thad? He’s in the living room.”
She hadn’t referred to him as my father. Was that intentional? I wandered back down the elaborate hallway until I reached the living room, but the only person I saw was Sophie, sprawled on the couch with her cell phone.
She glanced up. “Oh. Hey.”
“Hey.” I tucked my hands into my shorts pockets. For a single snap of a moment, I had the disorienting sense that I was looking at an alternate reality. At the girl I would have been if my father had—
“Looking for Dad?”
Of course she would call him that, but it still sounded—weird. “Yeah.”
“He’s in his office upstairs.” She shrugged. “Saturday nights, he’s never around. He’s got to get ready for tomorrow. He preaches three services total.”
Shouldn’t the night his daughter finally came home have been an exception? Even Gran had known church didn’t always come first.
A memory flashed back, just a quick breath in my mind. It was the first year after I’d come to live with Gran, and I’d awakened sobbing after nightmares about Mom. She’d come and sat on my bed, tried to soothe me, but finally said, “Tell you what. Just come downstairs and I’ll make waffles.”
I’d looked at the clock. “It’s Sunday morning. You have to go to church.”
“No, I have to do what God wants.” She’d gazed at me with a rare moment of tenderness. “I think this morning, God wants me to make waffles.”
The memory was uncomfortable, like a pebble in my sandal. If Gran were here right now—
I frowned and tucked the memory away beneath the rocky resentment in my soul. After all, even then, she’d known who my father was. Whatever good moments she might have shown were, in her own favorite phrase, water under the bridge.
“You wanna go see my room?”
I glanced at Sophie and relaxed slightly. At least someone here seemed to accept my presence without questions. My father and Monica might be wrestling over my existence, but to Sophie, I was just another kid to hang out with. I nodded. “Yeah.”
Sophie’s room, as it turned out, was an explosion of pink. Pink quilt, pink curtains, pink cushion on her desk chair. I settled cross-legged onto a pink floor pillow. “You must like pink.”
“Yeah. It’s my favorite.” She ran her finger over a line of pink teddy bears on the back of her bookcase, then dropped to the floor next to me. “So, you’re Dad’s girlfriend’s daughter?”
My cheeks stung with a sudden inherited guilt. “Uh—yes.”
“Okay.” She nodded slowly, tracing a design on the pink carpet. When she looked up, her eyes held uncertainty. “Dad had never talked about you. Momma told me while he was driving home tonight.”
“Oh.” Wow. Now that was a bombshell to throw at a kid. I searched for something to say. “I—I’m sure he would have told you, in time. Maybe he was trying to protect you.” Now I was offering Gran’s own flimsy excuses. I frowned. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” She lifted one shoulder in a partial shrug and gave me a lukewarm smile. “Now I have a sister. Half-sister, but yeah.”
“Uh-huh.”
We smiled awkwardly at each other without the excitement our connection might have been expected to produce.
“That’s a neat tattoo.”
“Oh—” I cringed. “This is just temporary.” I still couldn’t believe that the one time, the one time, I’d done something outrageous to my body, I’d ended up in the most important moment of my life. “It’s henna.”
“Cool. Did you do it?”
“No.” My throat tightened. “My friend did.”
“That’s neat.” Sophie nodded. “I’m really into stuff like that. I’m going to be an aesthetician when I’m older. All my friends let me do their makeup.”
“That’s—” Boring. “Cool.”
“Yeah, like, I just got this new foundation that I’m obsessed with.”
So, my sister was a version of Brooklyn. Great. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, it’s actually a mineral base, so it’s—well, here.” She hopped up and scurried over to her dresser. “Let me just show you.”
Do you know how many different kinds of beauty products there are in this world? I didn’t. Not until Sophie, for the next thirty minutes, gave me a detailed sales pitch on every single one of them.
“—so basically the serum is more moisturizing, but the face oil minimizes pores. You really need both in a dry climate like this.” Sophie wrinkled her nose and rejoined me on the floor. “The desert really doesn’t do favors for skin.”
“I bet not.” Why couldn’t I see deeper? See beneath, the way Jaz could? Or was it that there just wasn’t anything deeper in Sophie?
She grabbed a teen magazine from a messy stack on the floor and started flipping through it. “Ooh, there’s Harry Styles. Gah, he’s so gorgeous.”
Wasn’t Harry Styles, like, thirty? What was he doing in a teen magazine?
She propped her chin on her hand and glanced up. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
And just like that, I could see Kason’s slow smile, hear the hushed wonder in his voice, smell his night-sky scent, feel his hands pulling me gently into the dance. I sucked in a breath and blinked back to the image of Harry Styles prancing across the magazine page. “No.”
“Oh.” The disappointment in her voice might have been funny under different circumstances. “I don’t either. But Kirk Logan might be asking me to prom this year.”
“Really?” I forced a grin. “Is he cute?”
She shrugged. “Not super cute. But cute enough to make flirting fun.”
Kason had never flirted with me. He didn’t have the razzle-dazzle of these pop-star men. But even from thousands of miles away I could feel the pull of his gravity.
What was he doing right then?
“Anyway, Jenna.” Sophie smiled at me. “It’s nice we got to meet.”
“Yes. For sure.”
But I think that’s when we both realized we were out of things to say to each other. We kept working at it for a while, but the conversation was so exhausting that it was a relief when we finally let it drop. Sophie turned back to her magazine, and I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes.
Sophie was nice enough, and definitely the most welcoming person in the house. But still, I could already tell we would have never been friends under any other circumstances.
Let alone sisters.
I looked down at my hennaed arm. Jaz wouldn’t have been trying to interest me in fancy Hollywood men and high-end beauty products. If I were at her house, she’d be showing off her rock collection, no doubt. Maybe taking me on a hike. Or even trying out a new henna design.
And suddenly, what I really wanted was to call her. To tell her that my hopes had turned out to be the flip sides of all my fears. To ask her what, during the whole trip, she’d been saying without words. What she’d spoken of with rocks and art and stars and stories. What she’d believed was so important for me to know.
But I couldn’t call her anymore.
I ran my thumb over the henna and noticed for the first time that it was just beginning to fade.