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It’s a short kiss, but it leaves something behind—sweet and sharp and so distinct and loud that I half think people around us can smell it.

She smiles against my mouth.

Then she leans back.

“Okay,” she says as if to herself.

“Okay,” I echo.

She turns and walks away without looking over her shoulder.

I watch her go for exactly as long as I can justify.

Which is not long enough.

CHAPTER 9

taya

The drive from Wildflower Canyon to Ignacio takes three hours if you go straight south on 550 and don’t stop.

I always do.

There’s a pull-off just past Durango where the road curves and the whole San Juan Basin opens up to the west—mesa country, the sky going enormous, the light falling differently than it does in the canyon.

I pull over here every time I drive back from wherever I was.

Something in me needs the pause, the transition, the moment of standing between one place and the other before I commit to arriving.

I stand at the pull-off for five minutes with my hands in my pockets, the cold coming up off the mesa, and the smell of sage and juniper takes me home before I get there.

I’m coming, Wíitsin, I think even though she’s been gone three years, her home is just a house now—vivid with memories, but starkly dull because of her absence.

Then I get back into the Wrangler and drive the last thirty to forty minutes to Ignacio.

On a Saturday morning, the town looks exactly like it was when I left it a month ago.

The gas station on the main road has the same hand-lettered sign it’s had since I was twelve. The Sky Ute Casino Resort sits west of town—a well-managed operation that funds a significant portion of what keeps this community running.

Healthcare.

Education.

Infrastructure.

The kind of institutional investment most small towns in rural Colorado would spend decades lobbying for.

I pass the KSUT radio building and the community center where I used to take beading classes from Birdie Lorraine every Thursday after school until we mutually agreed that my gifts lay elsewhere.

I pass the clinic where my best friend Sienna works. Her car is in the lot, which means she has a Saturday shift, which means I’ll have to wait until she’s finished work.

I pull into the driveway of the house that is still called Delia’s.

It’s yellow with white trim.

It has a porch that gets afternoon sun. A garden that my grandmother kept immaculate and that I’ve been keeping alive with moderate success, considerable guilt, and the help of hired help.

The rosebushes are done for the season, cut back and mulched.