Between Us Girls (38 page)

“There isn't one. I mean, it was really nice to hug him, but I'm going home.”

“ ‘Nice?' That's what
whooshing
and
whamming
is? Nice?”

Jasmyn blushed.

Sam smiled. “I guess it was more than nice.”

Jasmyn shrugged. Then she shrugged again. She swallowed. “All right, yes. It was more than nice.” She stopped talking.

Sam stared at her. “You're in love with him?”

“No! No. We hardly know each other. Honestly, this is Keagan we're talking about. Antisocial, odd, no first name. I mean, he has a first name. It's Sean. But nobody uses it. And I'm going home. I shouldn't have said anything.”

“But you did. Jasmyn, you're morphing into a lovesick teenager, and I signed up to spend the next five days with you. If it's not a crush and you're not in love with him, what is it?”

“I don't have a word for it.” She paused and bit her lip, looking more uncomfortable than even the day Sam had met her.

“You have two words for it,
whooshing
and
whamming
. What is that?”

Jasmyn sighed. “It's sunrise and sunset and the ocean. It's the desert. Remember where you took me? Where we stood on the overlook and could see absolutely forever?” She stopped again. “That's the feeling.”

Sam started to shrug and then, suddenly, she understood. Her shoulders went down.

In her mind's eye she saw again the desert floor, its massive display of valleys and mountains and rocks and vegetation. She saw the sky above it all. She felt the enormity of creation, the mystery of life, the promise of terrifying goodness.

And she saw herself with Beau, being snarky or stammering because in his presence she felt exactly the same way.

Sixty-Six

Liv heard Keagan's motorcycle roar to a halt in the alley all the way from her living room with the door shut.

Although it was out of character for him to be obnoxious with his bike, she assumed it was him. Typically, no other motorcyclists used the alley. He could be parking in Samantha's vacant spot for some reason.

He gunned the engine again.

“Good heavens.” She put down her book and went outside to the courtyard, half expecting to hear Louis yelling. His patio backed up to the alley fence.

The motorcycle was turned off. Liv waited, curious. She heard the gate open and shut. A moment later Keagan appeared on the walkway.

He was in his all-black mode, wearing jacket, pants, boots, and sunglasses with even a stocking cap and gloves. It was a cool morning, no doubt cold while going seventy on the freeway.

He veered her way, removing his hat and gloves. There was no little bag in his hand.

“Thank you,” she said, referring to the cookies he had insisted on rushing down to the airport. Earlier that morning, he had happened to pass her the exact moment she realized she'd forgotten to give them to the girls. She had said to herself, apparently aloud and with much feeling,
Oh, applesauce.

His overboard reaction had been to insist on delivering them.

Now she wondered if his engine revving and totally unnecessary trip were related. “You found them.”

He nodded and stood before her. “Okay if I park in Sam's spot for a while?”

“Of course. I am sorry for making you drive all the way to the airport, park way over in the lot, and track down the girls, and then come all the way back home. My goodness.”

His chuckle was more a puff of expelled air. “Liv, it wasn't a problem.”

“Oh?”

He stuffed his hat and gloves into his jacket pockets and kept his hands in them as well. “How are you doing?”

“I'm fine. How are you?”

“Fine.”

She pulled her cardigan more closely about herself, crossed her arms, and gazed at his sunglasses. “Sean Michael Keagan, I have never known you to speak an untruth. You are no more fine than the moon is made of ricotta.”

His mouth twitched. “Or provolone.”

“Or Muenster.”

“Or Jarlsberg.”

“What happened?”

He turned aside for a moment. He slid the glasses on top of his head and looked at her. “I told her goodbye.”

When Jasmyn and Samantha had left for the airport before dawn, no one was up and about, excluding herself, naturally. But she had expected at least Keagan to appear. “You missed her earlier.”

“I was at the gym. Issues came up about three a.m.”

She understood. During the winter and on extra-cold or wet fall nights, he and his co-owner offered the gym as a sleeping shelter to a handful of homeless men. They had been doing it for a few years now. Once in a while there were problems and Keagan was needed.

No wonder he had insisted on rushing down to the airport. He had wanted to tell Jasmyn goodbye.

And their parting must have jarred something inside of him. Well, wasn't that curious?

She hated to pry, but— “So, you told Jasmyn goodbye.”

“Mm-hmm.” His eyes were focused behind her, in the direction of Jasmyn's cottage. “Big mistake.”

She touched his arm. “Sean, it's never a mistake to show you care.”

“No, it's not. The other part is. When it's given back to you.”

Liv's spirit sank and jumped at the same time. Keagan and Jasmyn? Yesss. He was admitting it. But…

But Keagan's heart had been broken. Liv had seen that the very first day he showed up. He was not a cold man, simply a cautious one.

“Why are you afraid?”

He looked at her again, his face softening. “It's too trite and maudlin, Livvie. Let it rest. I am fine.”

She straightened her shoulders and held up her chin. “I'm fine too because she is coming back. I know this for a fact. Just don't ask me how I know.”

“It really doesn't matter. We're here. She's not. Life goes on. See you later.” With that, he walked off.

She stared at his retreating back, watched him cross the courtyard toward his cottage, and disappear around the large bird-of-paradise.

Oh, Lord, don't let him shut down. Please don't let him shut down.

Sixty-Seven

Driving through Illinois at midnight was a trip. The word
trip
had nothing to do with travel.

Sam chalked up her catty response to the long day: three plane changes, a late arrival in Chicago, a line at the rental agency, and a drive on an endless stretch of interstate that offered less exits than Arizona highways and was twice as dark.

She exaggerated. How could anything be twice as dark as dark?

Jasmyn directed her to an exit in the middle of nowhere. They followed a narrow highway that felt more like a path through a forest of cornstalks. Sam's eyelids itched.

Jasmyn flicked her hand toward the left. “That was part of our land.”

“It's too dark to see much…” Much? She couldn't see anything but a ribbon of road and weird-looking figures reflected in the headlamps alongside.

“I don't want to see much yet. Construction started already. It's not my idea of a welcome back.”

They drove on for several more minutes. Sam imagined that if a strip mall went in where Jasmyn had indicated, travelers would easily stop there rather than continue on.

“Here we are,” Jasmyn announced.

“Where?”

She giggled. “Sammi, you crack me up. Where do you think? See the lights up ahead?”

“That distant glow?”

“Gas stations. We have two now. Talk about controversy. I guess they all lived through it. No dead bodies have turned up, anyway.”

The headlamps flashed on two signs.
Reduce speed ahead
, and
Welcome to Valley Oaks, Established 1867, Population 1100.

“You'll want to slow down here.”

Sam eased up on the pedal. “It's after midnight.”

“They roll up the sidewalks at eight, but old Deputy Kropp can't sleep so he sits out here. The man is ancient, but he'll catch you three feet past the thirty-five speed limit sign if you're going thirty-six. Yup, there it is and there he is. Hey, Rudy!” she called out as if the man could hear her and waved. “Sheriff Cal won't let him carry a gun. Turn left here, between the stations.”

Sam would have blown right on past the turn. There was no obvious indication of a street or a town beyond it. Maybe the dark hid everything. It was so dark.

Jasmyn chattered. She had grown more excited the closer they got to town and now seemed almost ecstatic. She lowered the window a crack and cold air flowed in. “Mmm. Smell that? Sycamore. There's a grove in that yard. That's the Westin Mansion, built in 1914. Remind me to take you out to see Wharton Castle. It's a real castle. Oh, look. That's the Pig.”

They passed a nondescript building with a parking lot to one side. Sam could not read the low sign in front. In spite of streetlights, it was too dark.

“My home away from home. At least before I landed at the Casa. Here's our downtown. Post office, library, Lia's pharmacy, Ron's barber shop, Dottie's beauty shop. Dottie's been gone for twenty years but the name stuck. Keep going straight here. See the water tower over there? That's really old. There's a little park down that way.” She pointed right and left and behind them. “Oh my gosh, it all looks so small.”

“Compared to San Diego, it is small.”

“Teeny-tiny. I haven't been gone that long, have I— Oh! Listen!” She paused and whispered, “It's so quiet.”

There was absolutely no sound, no movement, no traffic.

“See the big building on the left?”

Surprisingly, it was big, perhaps three stories and made of brick.

“You can turn in here. This used to be Wilmington School. My great-grandparents and my grandparents went here. Do you believe it? I hope you're not allergic to chalk dust.”

Sam pulled into a lot where about a dozen cars were parked and found
a spot. Before she had turned off the engine, a squeal erupted and a shape streaked past the windshield.

Jasmyn added her own squeals and jumped out of the car. The blur must have been Quinn.

Sam unhooked her seat belt and pocketed the key, giving the friends a moment. From the intensity of their hug and the shrieks of laughter, she understood they were true BFFs, a dozen levels beyond what she and Jasmyn teased about sharing.

Sam's resolve wavered. What had ever possessed her to make this spontaneous trek to the Midwest? She had enjoyed Jasmyn's company back in Seaside Village and more so during their day of travel. Jasmyn possessed an ability to make her laugh and think and feel comfortable. She coaxed a better version of Sam out into the open. She made Sam believe that tracing down Hannah Carlson was a Big Deal.

But Jasmyn needed to get on with her life back here. Sam was going to be an intrusion. Not to mention a fish out of water. What was she going to do for five days in the middle of nowhere?

Ew.
It was beginning to feel like her hometown. Small and cramped with a tight-knit circle of people that never slipped a stitch to allow space for her to enter in.

A knocking on the side window startled her.

Quinn motioned for her to get out.

Sam did so. “You must be—”

“I am.” Quinn was short, like Jasmyn, but she threw her arms around Sam's shoulders and drew her into a fierce hug. “And you are you.” She rocked her back and forth. “Any BFF of Jasmyn's is a BFF of mine. Welcome to Valley Oaks.”

Sam almost melted into tears.

It had been a long day.

Quinn was a flightier version of Jasmyn with short blond curls and, thank goodness, a lower voice. She seemed in perpetual motion, carrying more than her share up to the second floor to Jasmyn's studio apartment.

Jasmyn had not overstated the dreariness of her temporary home. The ceiling light cast shadows on drab walls and thin carpet, both nondescript.