Page 17 of Valley Girls
He was silent.
Rilla tugged her eyes away from his arms.
His jaw worked, eyes on Hico and Petra on the cliff. “Did I do something?” he asked tightly. “To upset you? Earlier?”
Oh.She hadn’t expected him to ask. She’d cried and frozen on the wall ten feet off the ground less than two hours ago. But now her mind was blank, staring again at the sun on his skin. He was tanner than he’d been at the roadside in Merced. It was only a few days and he’d managed to change. Meanwhile, she had traveled the span of the country and stayed the exact same person she’d been at home. “The rope upset me,” she finally said. “I’ve never climbed with a rope.”
“You don’t like safety?” He asked it as if it was a joke, but as he said the words, her spine straightened and she couldn’t look at him again. Before she could come up with a retort, he nodded and repeated in a serious tone, “You don’t like safety.” As if that said much more about her than she’d ever intended to tell him.
“You’re full of shit,” she retorted. “If you didn’t want to take me climbing, why didn’t you just say so? If I can’t trust you to tell the truth about how you feel, why should I trust you to tell the truth when you say I’m not going to fall? Why should I trust you at all?”
A muscle in his cheek twitched, and he looked at her. But this time, for real. The intensity under his skin gathered and fixed directly on her.
She forced herself against the urge to shy away, staring right back into his cornflower-blue eyes. They looked like the pool from above—the same fathomless blue water dropping into unseen currents and holes she might get sucked into and never escape. Her body hummed. Something passed between them—but what it was, she had no idea.
She wasn’t sure how long that moment lasted. Petra called for her, and Rilla ran off to climb, feeling all the while as if she and Walker were still sitting on the granite. The moment they’d accused each other of fear and deceit had left something massive and new, uncovered.
•
Rilla made it back to the house in mostly dried clothes and what she felt was a reasonable hour around dinnertime, half expecting Thea not to be home. But Thea was on the phone on the steps—still in her ranger uniform, with her shirt untucked, hair loosened from her braid, and bare feet. She lifted her head as Rilla walked up, eyes sunken with dark circles.
Rilla ducked her head, ashamed to think Thea looked haggard from her late-night rescue efforts.
“Mom wants to talk to you,” Thea said over the phone.
Oh. Rilla bit her lip and nodded.
“Mom.” Thea paused. “Mom,” she said again. She rolled her eyes. “Mom. Rilla’s here. I’ll let her hang up.” She handed over the phone.
Rilla’s stomach tightened, but she pressed the phone to her ear and looked at her feet in the dry grass. The rock had left scrapes on her legs, and she focused on the sting to keep from feeling the one in her chest.
“Hey baby,” her mom said. “How is California?”
“Good,” Rilla answered.
“Get all settled in with Thea?”
“Yeah.”
There was an awkward pause. “Daddy said to tell you he loves you. I’m doing all right,” Mom went on. “The house is lonely though. I went over to Ashlyn’s the other day just because I couldn’t handle the quiet ...” Mom kept talking.
Rilla looked up and found her sister watching her, chin in her hand, eyes dark and sad.
Rilla turned her back to Thea. “That’s great, Mom. I’m doing great. Thea has to wear a cowboy hat.”
“Oh really?” Mom was distracted. “Oh, that’s right, they wear Stetsons, don’t they? I’m not surprised, Dad ...” Mom meant Marco, Thea’s dad.Daddyalways meant Tom. Dad was Marco. Rilla had thought every family was like that, until somewhere in third grade when Alison Andrews said Rilla couldn’t be invited to anything because Rilla had three parents. “... always looked good in a Stetson. He had this black one ...” Mom launched into a story about a man that left her eight years ago, her tone bright and energetic as if it hadn’t meant anything at all.
Rilla listened to the story, laughing in all the right spots. It made her feel less homesick. “Your mother is many things, but first and foremost, she’s a survivor,” that’s what Granny had said before she died, and it’d stuck as the best way to summarize her mother even to herself. Rilla didn’t understand all her mother’s life, but she knew this was how she coped with loss, even though it made Rilla’s chest ache to feel the hole of a man she’d once called Dad. She could understand the sadness in Thea’s eyes—Mom probably talked to Thea the same way.
“You’ve been keeping out of trouble?” Mom asked, but with a conspiratorial tone. “I don’t know why I ask though. Your sister is such a hard-ass—everythingis probably trouble.”
Rilla looked down. “Yeah, we’re both ... uh ... adjusting.”
Mom laughed. “You’ll manage. I know you will. It’ll be good for you to be on your own a little. I was on my own at your age. Grandma kicked me out. I was pregnant.”
Not with Thea, but with a baby Rilla only knew of as having not made it.
“At least we know Thea gets it honestly.” She laughed again. Mom always had a great laugh. And hearing her made Rilla feel reassured this was all part of the process.
