Chapter Twenty
Idid not sleep well that night. I awoke in the middle of the night with Bear’s voice in my ear and my fingers balled into tight, sweat-filled fists. After that, sleep eluded me.
I was anxious, too, to see my home. In my memory, Horseshoe Cliff glowed as though in amber, a place of powerful and ethereal beauty. The ocean there was larger and more soulful, its crash more in rhythm with my own heart, than any other ocean. But now that I had seen the beauty that could be found in so many other parts of the world, and now that I had my own house by the sea in San Francisco, would Horseshoe Cliff still offer the same enchantment? I was not entirely sure I was ready to find out.
In the morning, Amir picked me up in a truck that was the same color as the stones we used to stack on the beach. The city looked different from its cab. The buildings seemed thin and huddled, the people small. Amir turned out to be a confident driver, but he took his time. There was something gallant in the way he halted for dawdling pedestrians who approached thecurb, making eye contact and nodding politely to the elderly and to the young mothers with toddlers in tow.
I looked at his profile, the cut of his cheekbone, the beautiful shape of his dark-lashed eyes. Nine years had changed him, but in his eyes I would always find the boy he had been. It was a relief just to be near him again, like a wrong had at last been righted.
“You have a new admirer,” I told him. “Emma.”
Amir steered the truck onto the Golden Gate Bridge. I sensed the water far below us, churning where bay met sea. He glanced at me with a sidelong smile. “Are you jealous?”
“No. She’s nineteen.”
“That’s practically ancient compared to how old you were when you met Will.”
“Will and I didn’t start dating for years after we met.”
Amir raised an eyebrow but did not shift his gaze from the road ahead. “She’s not my type,” he said after a moment.
I could not help smiling at this. “No? She’s beautiful.”
“I’m sure a lot of people think that. But the woman I’m meant to be with has a different sort of beauty. She’s not like anyone else.”
I could not pull my eyes from his face. The corner of his mouth settled into a small smile as he continued. “The woman I’m meant to be with is a strong swimmer, and she can ride a horse without reins. She’s moved by how the needs of children are as simple as they are profound. She’s happiest by the sea. She loves, and knows how to tell, a good story. Oh,” he said,his eyes flicking over my face for too short a spell of time, “and she has a sixth sense for unlocked windows.”
I swallowed. “That’s very specific. She might be hard to find.”
“Finding her,” Amir said, “has never been the problem.”
I studied him. “You know, in these years that we’ve been apart, there have been moments when I’ve felt like someone was watching me.”
“Your mother? You used to sense her watching you when you were on the beach.”
“It wasn’t you? You haven’t followed me?”
He shook his head. “Do you think I could have seen you and not said anything? It took everything in my power to keep my distance from you. I thought it was what you wanted. When I heard you tell Rei that you were leaving, it didn’t sound like you planned to look back.”
“Then why seek me out now?”
“Your engagement. There was something about it in a magazine.”
I was confused for a moment before remembering that a local magazine had published a piece about Rosalie’s philanthropic work, and she’d insisted that I be included in the family photograph that ran with the profile. I was listed as Merrow Shawe, fiancée of William Langford.
I looked through the window. Suburban neighborhoods gave way to cow pastures and rolling hills.
“Iwasalways good at finding an open window, wasn’t I?”
Amir’s smile lit his entire face in the way the light from therising sun used to burst through the cracks of the shed. “You needed to see how other people lived. You needed to know.”
It had been Amir who had led me into that first house, knowing how it would distract me from the grief I experienced when Pal died, the rage I felt for my brother, the swirl of darkness that had risen within me.
“I don’t think I understood just how little we had until I walked around those homes,” I said.
Amir’s smile faded. “I don’t think I ever understood howmuchI had until I saw how mesmerized you were by those houses. I realized then what the stakes were, and what exactly I had to lose. Breaking into those houses never felt harmless to me. Even before we wound up at the Langfords’, I sensed where things were headed.”
His words worried me. “I hope you don’t think I’m marrying Will just because he’s rich.”
