“Oh, good, another inspirational talk,” Quinn said. He looked over his shoulder, and she might have been offended, if not for his smile.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. You can’t help it. And I might miss it a little when I move.”
“Why is your dad sending you away?”
“He thinks I need to focus. I talked him into letting me stay through football season, but after that . . .” He shook his head. “He’s not budging on the Naval Academy.”
“Seems like a good place to hone those hero qualities,” she said.
“I thought out of everyone, you’d be against it.”
“Why?”
“Because . . . you always follow your heart. You don’t live by the rules. You do what you want. Sheesh, you grew up in a commune. That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard of.”
Hardly. “You know what growing up in a commune is like? My mom renounced her parental role, and suddenly, I only had my own rules to follow.”
“Awesome.”
“Not really. Imagine you have no one to turn to for advice. No one who pays attention to what you’re doing—or not doing. No one who shows up to make sure you’re okay. Quinn—your dad is a United States senator, and yet he shows up in your life. He’s been at the hospital, he led the parents in their vigil to find you, to pray, and frankly, the fact he cares enough about your future to hound you should tell you how much he loves you. It takes energy to show up—and yeah, maybe you don’t like his influence, but he’s not doing it to wreck your life. He’s doing it because he cares.”
Quinn said nothing.
“You have no idea what it feels like to know that there is no one who would go looking for you.”
She made a face at her own words. She sounded a little too needy, too pitiful.
Too much heart pinned to the outside of her body.
“You have someone who would look for you, Willow,” Quinn said.
She glanced at him, away from the breathtaking mountain views.
“When Sam was dying on the side of the mountain, he still begged Pete to let him go back to where you were waiting.”
Um, where she wasn’t waiting. “If he had, he would have died,” she said quietly. “They wouldn’t have gotten him out in time.”
Now all the sunshine had gone out of her day.
Quinn stopped at the overlook and stood at the outcropping, staring up at the magnificent rise of Huckleberry Mountain.
“My dad talks to our football team every year, and he tells this story about his life in the SEALs during Operation Desert Storm. A buddy of his was wounded and they called for an extraction but were pinned down by the enemy and couldn’t move. All he could do was wait for help. Said it was the longest six hours of his life as he waited for his fellow SEALs to get to them. But he talks about patience and trusting your team—he uses it as a metaphor for cooperation and teamwork.” Quinn looked at her. “You’re always helping everyone else. Maybe you should let someone else help you?”
She stared at him, her mother’s words finding her, winding in from a week ago. “Isn’t that what you Christians call grace—letting God love you, and letting that love change you?”
“When did you get so smart?” she said.
“Hey. I listen.” Then he offered a crack of a smile. “Is this where we sing?”
She gave him a push. “Let’s find that necklace for your one true love.”
Funny, he didn’t contradict her.
“We were sitting here,” he said, moving over to a boulder, a natural seat in the overlook. “I had the necklace box in my hand, and that’s when I spotted the bear. I don’t remember much after that.”
Willow had walked over to the boulder and began to search around it, then into the woods.
“You know, we all listen, Willow. Like Vi—she outed Dawson to their parents, and he’s going into counseling, as well as getting a tutor. Zena applied to some photography school in Missoula. And Maggy and Gus are dating. Riley is organizing some kind of youth group event. I think even Josh listened to you. He told us in youth group meeting this week that we should remember that God kept us safe. And that if we think we can save ourselves, we’re missing the point of the whole Bible, or something to that effect. It sounded like something you would say.”
Quinn was on the other side of the trail, kicking through the weeds. The wind picked up, rushed through the woods, stirred up a scent.
Something feral.
She lifted her head.
“I found it!” Quinn said, bending to work from the wet soil the damp and mangled box.
“Quinn.” She stepped toward him, searching for the source of the smell.