You might be thinking that the eclipse is the end of this story. And in a way, it was. But it was also the start of several more.
When we went back to the motel, I was still too electrified with wonder to calm down. So I walked back into the woods, drinking in the late-afternoon haziness sifting through the embrace of the trees. I walked for a while, my footsteps noiseless on the spongy carpet of moss and pine needles, pulling in deep healing breaths of the salty-spicy air. Finally I sat at the base of a generously sprawling tree and gazed up, past the comforting roughness of the trunk, all the way to where the branches arched protectively against the sky. And I knew that beneath the surface, deeper than even Jaz could see, the roots spread just as far. Anchoring the whole tree in soil and sky.
What if roots were also lines of light, even in the hidden darkness beneath the earth?
And because I knew about roots, I pulled out my phone and tapped the number.
She answered on the first ring, her voice as crisply professional as ever. “Jenna?”
I picked up a nearby pinecone, turning it around and around in my hand. “Hi, Gran.”
“Are you all right?”
And the fact that that was her first question let me know that calling was the right decision.
“I am. I’m good. We just saw the eclipse. It was amazing. We’re in California now.” I was rambling, sheer nervousness galloping to take up time and space between us.
“That’s wonderful.” She cleared her throat. “Your father called me. I gave him your number. Did he—did you talk to him?”
She was still trying to keep her voice cool and calm. But I could hear the way it quivered around her words. “I did. He told me you had talked to him.”
“Well.” She cleared her throat again. “Good.”
Silence settled like a shadow between us. I had the sense again, as I so often had, that there was something neither of us had ever been able to say. Something that desperately needed to be said. Maybe we’d never be able to find it, to fit words into the space between us.
“How long will you be in California?”
“We’re starting back tomorrow. Jaz has to get back. She has a couple of geology internships to consider.” I hoped Jaz knew now that she had the courage.
“Jaz—Jasmina? The girl I spoke with before you left?”
Gran remembered her? “Yes.”
“She seemed like such a nice girl.” Surprisingly, Gran’s voice softened slightly. “I was glad when she told me you were her best friend.”
Jaz had said that? Way back in Mount Victory, she’d already considered me her—
But Gran was still talking. “She told me this trip was what you needed.”
I pressed the phone closer to my ear. “Really?”
“Yes. She told me that you carried a great light, and that she believed that through this trip, you would learn to let it shine.”
You carried a great light. So that was what Jaz had seen with those clear eyes of hers? That was why she’d held unshaken faith in me from the beginning? My heart swelled until I couldn’t speak.
“That I don’t doubt, of course. I have always known you would find your way.” Gran sighed. “I—I want to tell you that I—well, I’m sorry, Jenna. I—I should have told you about your father. I see that now. I only wanted to protect you, and I didn’t think he was—but I shouldn’t have kept it from you.” Her voice was trembling harder now. “I realize there’s nothing I can do to correct that, but whatever I need to do to fix things, I—I will try.”
I’d never heard Gran apologize. Ever.
I pictured her there, on the other end of the phone, all the guilt of a works-based religion hanging over her head while she waited for my answer. But now, I knew a thing or two about grace.
“There’s nothing to fix, Gran.” I pressed my palm on the rich ground, the roots humming along right under my hand. “I forgive you. I’m sorry I was so angry.”
“You had a right to be. You have a right to feel and react and—” Gran sighed. “And just be. Perhaps I have not—perhaps you’ve needed more space.”
“Gran—“ The trees were listening, nodding, urging me on. “You were trying to do the right thing, and—” Why had I never told her this sooner? “I’m really glad I lived with you. Thank you.”
The sniffs on the other end of the phone surely did not mean Gran was crying. She never cried. And when she spoke, her voice was calm again. “Thank you, Jenna. I never regretted taking you in. You are a joy.”
You are a joy. And suddenly, all the warmth of the afternoon sun was hazy happy around me. I’d known I was Gran’s duty, responsibility, legacy, project.
But I had been her joy.
“I—“ I wasn’t prepared for a conversation like this, not with Gran. “I’m not sure yet what I want to do, but I’m working on a plan. I’m looking into a college near Dad.”
“Okay.” The lack of resistance in her answer shocked me.
“Well—there are several options. Kason—one of my friends is considering a different school, and—I need to look at all my options.”
“Of course. Whatever you think is best.”
“Yes, but, maybe—” I took a deep breath. She’d given me the sky, but I didn’t want to lose the soil either. “Will you help me? Maybe we could—I don’t know, talk it through? When I’m back home?”
“You—you’re coming back here?” Relief washed over her words.
“Yes.” I traced a design on the forest floor. I had the feeling we’d finally started putting words to whatever had needed to be said. “It will be good to be back home.”
#
After I said goodbye to Gran, I sat for just a moment longer on the forest floor, where so many sleeping things come back to life. Finally I made my way back out of the lengthening shadows, following the sound of the sea.
Just on the edge of the trees was a little stream chuckling to itself over a bed of stones as smooth and round as the one David had used against Goliath. They reminded me of someone else I knew who’d faced down giants, so I slipped one into my pocket and kept walking.
Just as I emerged from the trees, I saw her. Jaz, sprinting toward the woods, waving exuberantly. “Jen! Hey! There you are!”
“Looking for me?”
She dashed up and skidded to a halt, barely out of breath. “I had some exciting news to tell you. I mean, I’ll tell everybody tonight, but I wanted you to know first.”
“What happened?”
Excitement sparkled in her eyes. “I’ve just got off the phone, and—well—I accepted a geology internship. In Kentucky. I’ll be working at Mammoth Cave. Mammoth Cave! Can you believe that?”
“Jaz!” My whoop echoed off the forest behind us. “That’s awesome!”
“Yes, well.” She grinned, her excitement refusing to let her play it cool. “You’ll have to come visit me, you know.”
“Hmm.” I pretended to ponder the idea. “And let you drag me into a cave?”
“Oh, it’s nothing to worry about! You’d have a headlamp!”
“A headlamp, great. I’m sure that’s all I need to survive in America’s largest cave system.”
She joined my laughter, and the fun felt good, whirling like sea spray into the sky that was finally cloudless. When we were both calmer, she peered at me. “But what about you? Are you okay, up here by yourself?”
“Yeah.” I leaned against one of the redwoods. I could almost feel the strong steady heartbeat of the tree. “I’m good. I just talked to my grandma.”
“Oh, yeah?” She waited expectantly.
“I’m going to stay with her again when we get home. Not forever. But for now.”
She smiled, nodded. “That’s good, Jen. Really good. She loves you.”
I could almost taste those Sunday-morning waffles. “I know that now.”
“Yeah, because—well, you know, sometimes you start looking at who’s not there. Know what I mean? The people who should be there, or used to be there, or whatever. But the people who come into your life and stay—” Jaz shrugged. “Those are the ones who love you. The ones who stay. Even if they don’t always get the words right.”
And I knew it was true, and I knew she’d lived that truth—she who had found her belonging in the redemptive curve of a once-broken story, who had been working to draw me with gentle grace into the light even before we’d left Mount Victory. And suddenly I wished I had words bigger than the ones I said.
“Thank you, Jaz.”
She blinked. “What for?”
I rubbed a hand over the story she’d drawn on my arm. “For—” Only one thing fit. “For seeing deeper.”
Her smile told me she knew what I meant. “It’s kind of my thing. Getting to bedrock.”
“You’re good at it.” I tilted my head, studying her expression. “How do you know these things, anyway?”
She grinned, the last of the light catching her eyes. “I just see things, Jen. Little things.”
Little things that had piled up like the sand. “But—how did you know, way back in Ohio—how did you know I needed this trip?”
“Because you were searching.” She shrugged as if that should have been obvious. “And I just know that sometimes, you find things when you look in a new place.”
“But how could you tell?”
“Because.” She glanced out at the ocean instead of at me. “You just had a—a look about you. And—I can recognize that look.”
Of course she could. “I wouldn’t have left Mount Victory without you.”
“Well.” She looked down, poking the toe of her sneaker underneath an exposed root. “Actually—I might not have left without you. I was—” She smiled in a way that didn’t fool me. “I was scared to go, and I was—well, I was relieved you were going to be there.”
All this time. She’d led me along my lines, and I’d been part of hers as well. The pattern woven by the hands of love had pulled perfectly for both of us.
I stepped forward and wrapped her in a hug. When I stepped back, her eyes were shimmering. She cleared her throat. “You know I love you, Jen.”
“I know. I love you too.” Sophie wasn’t bad. But it was Jaz who would forever be my sister.
“You wanna go back to the beach?” She nodded down the hill. “I want to look for sea glass while there’s still some daylight left.”
“Absolutely.” I pulled the rock from my pocket and handed it to her. “But before I forget. For your collection.”
“Ooh!” She took it, spinning it in eager hands. “Dolomite.”
Of course she knew what it was. I smiled. “Is it something rare and amazing?”
“Rarer than you might think.” She tapped the rock with a lime-green fingernail and smiled at me. “And far more amazing than you know.”
#
Kason, Adam, and Brooklyn joined us in our beachcombing effort. We didn’t find any sea glass, but we did find plenty of shells and sand dollars and even, feebly feeling its way, a starfish—which Jaz immediately scooped up and flung back out to sea. We walked along the line of the land until the sun streaked fire across the water and then died into coals. As the others headed back toward the motel, Kason touched my arm. “I’m going to look at the stars. Want to watch with me?”
The answer was the easiest one I’d given all day. “Of course.”
I waited while he ran up to the motel for his telescope. The ocean held the last silver shine of the fading light, and the trees blurred shadows against the darkening sky. In the deepening dusk, the sound of the surf was louder, the song of the waves that always returned and returned to where they belonged.
“Here.” Kason jogged up beside me, cradling his telescope. “The stars should be great from here.”
Already I could see three or four lights sparkling above the dark expanse of water. “Yes. It’s perfect.”
His hands moved deftly, even in the darkness—unfolding the tripod, adjusting the lenses. “We’ll see a lot.”
I breathed in the wild tang of the ocean, under a sky I now knew was never empty. “I know we will.”
He tipped his head back, eyes going, as always, upwards. “Look.”
I looked up, the way I’d learned to do. And there they came. The stars that had waited with folded wings backstage of the sun were soaring now. And between them, I knew, were the lines. The lines of power that pulled every corner of the universe together. The lines of faith that mapped out patterns where others might see only chaos. The lines of love that had never, for a single instant, let me go.
“Isn’t it amazing?” The wonder that Kason tended so well was shining on his face. The wonder that had reshaped my own world.
“Yes.” The word came easily, because it was all amazing, all the unfolding miracle in which I found myself. And I suddenly knew that if I didn’t say something now, before we headed back tomorrow, I never would. “Kason?”
“Yeah?” He turned to face me, the full gift of his attention on the moment.
The music of the waves rose and fell beneath us. As though we were once more in the moment when we’d danced in the dusk. But that had been sunset, and this—
This was moonrise.
The lines were pulling strong, and I wasn’t fighting anymore. I stepped closer and rested my hands on his shoulders, on the place where I now knew he bore his mark of belonging, and I let myself lean into the warmth and strength of his chest. When his arms came around me, it was as natural as the tide itself. And when his lips met mine, I could taste the ocean salt in our perfect kiss.
“Jenna—” He pulled back but kept his arms around me. Looking at me with the reverence he gave to all things wondrous.
“Yes?” I soaked up his gaze, his care, the light that never left his eyes.
His smile tipped shyly. “I—I just want to say—I mean—may I—may I kiss you again?”
My face was certainly redder than my hair, but here in the sheltering darkness, I didn’t have to hide anymore. “Most definitely.”
He bent toward me again, once more telling me how he felt without any fragile words. When he pulled back, he laughed, suddenly, surprisingly. “Jenna, you’re wonderful.”
Wonderful. I shivered from the sheer beauty of the word.
“I don’t know where your lines will lead you.” He traced a hand gently along my face, my hair. “But I want to be part of them.”
“You are.” My heart might burst from all that I felt for this amazing man who’d first taught me to see the stars. “And the lines of light—I’m going to be following them, Kason. No matter what happens next.”
“I know.” He pulled me to him again, holding me in the safe circle of his embrace.
“Kason?”
“Yes?”
I looked up into the sky higher than I would ever know. “Let’s stay here for a few more minutes.” The stars were pulsing with the power of a fierce and faithful joy. The same power I would carry east with me tomorrow, the same power that I already knew would hold all of my unwritten days. “And let’s look for the light.”