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“So, we’re going to do this, right? Meet up the day after tomorrow somewhere near San Francisco?”

“I’ll fly my plane into Monterey, rent a car. What do you say about meeting in Carmel? I think I promised you a date.”

“Since you’re coming through with your end of the promise, I’ll keep up mine. Meet you in Carmel.”

~
Twenty-three
~

The drive up the coast to Monterey was long and scenic and brought to mind songs that played in my head as I drove. The Pacific Ocean raged beneath a blanket of intermittent fog, but Avril and I ignored it, singing along with the radio and trying not to speed on the winding coastline highway. It was good to hear her laughter again. Really good. California suited us both.

“Thanks for coming with me,” I told her. “We should have thought of a road trip a long time ago.”

Avril rolled her head to face me, languid and at peace. She looked the best I’d seen her in weeks, flipping through radio stations searching for hit songs we knew the words to, her bare feet resting on the dashboard. It was barely warm enough to have the top down on the rented VW Cabriolet, but we weren’t putting it up for anything.

“I totally agree with you, Harper. This is the greatest idea you’ve ever come up with, possibly the greatest anyone’s ever come up with. I had no idea how much I missed California.”

Avril squealed, eyes closed, waving her hands over the top of the windshield as if coming down the first tall hill of a roller coaster. No more work, no more New York City snow. Only freedom, stretched out for miles in sea and sand.

The traffic was light. I slowed and changed lanes to allow an organic produce truck to pass us. Technically, we were both on vacation. Avril was taking a leave of absence from five years of constant work, and I had a day, maybe two, before Sydney called with news from Joseph Hagen. I didn’t want to think about anything.

Avril set her feet on the floor of the convertible and turned down the radio.

“Okay, catch me up on Luke. All I know is the two of you met on LoveSetMatch.com—uggh, I can’t believe I just said that
word
—and that you’ve been talking to each other for a couple of months. What else should I know about him?”

“Ah … he’s thirty-three, never married, no kids. His family is in the lumber industry. He works out of a base camp in Wasilla, Alaska.”

“Perfect. It sounds like the two of you have lots in common,” Avril said, sarcasm dripping from each word.

I exhaled. “
Oh, stop
. He’s just someone I have this
feeling
about. He’s also a licensed pilot who flies in needed supplies to missionaries and doctors in remote places.”

“Right, so tomorrow morning you and he—and I, as your very strict chaperone—will meet up to get to know one another. Does he know I’m coming along for the ride?”

“Oh, crud. I forgot to tell him. It’s not like we talk every day.”

“Well, we’ll just see how the boy does with minor adjustments. Now let me ask you the big question. How do you really
feel
about him?”

I paused to think about her big question, the open road ahead of us granting me a kind of early-morning clarity.

“I’m not going that far, not yet anyway. I somehow can’t let myself have feelings for someone I’ve never even met. Can I? Maybe I could. I’m just trying to follow God’s lead, which is to say it’s all still a mystery.”

“So, you really don’t care whether he turns out to be ‘the one’?”

Funny how one simple question can change the way you feel, or make you suddenly realize how it is that you feel.

“I wouldn’t say that exactly. I haven’t wanted to say this out loud yet, but there is never a time when I find myself
not
thinking about him. I don’t know when that started, but my wait-and-see attitude is in place because I don’t want to get my hopes up. And yet, sometimes I catch myself not being able to breathe whenever Luke crosses my mind.”

I expected Avril to tease me over how serious my answer sounded, but instead she only leaned against her headrest, exercising a degree of personal reflection, I guessed. A memory of what Avril thought she had in Jon. Her world had been a sunny tangerine dream, but sin had crept into it, a wolf in man’s clothing, and she’d learned that some fruit could be poisonous.

Our six-hour drive took roughly eight and a half hours with a short stop for lunch at a little roadside place that served crispy chicken tacos and ice-cold Coke in little bottles. I drove the first stretch, then Avril covered a two-hour shift in the late afternoon. We made a few stops to take photos and managed to somehow still be on the road at dusk. As sunset came and went, I moved the GPS from the floor to the windshield to keep a better eye on unexpected turns in the night.

We had a reservation to spend the evening at a bed and breakfast outside Carmel. I’d also gotten a call from Luke on the road. He was in California, and we agreed to meet the following morning for coffee at a breakfast place called Joe’s.

I told him that Avril was coming along for the ride, and he thought that was fine. I had more important thoughts swimming around my head—the white summer dress I was planning to wear, the wide leather headband I’d purchased on the beach in Malibu.

Avril and I drove along an unmarked country road, sometimes paved, sometimes not, until the night turned pitch black. Our headlights, two dissipating beams that lit up only the road before us, flashed on an occasional road sign. The female voice on the GPS informed us we’d arrive at the B and B in one minute, and I saw lights shining from the porch of Horsetail Ranch. I turned the wheel down a long, sloping driveway, past a pond and around the circle drive.

We parked the Cabriolet on the stony gravel driveway and walked up to rustic, wide wooden stairs, pulling our small travel bags behind us. The house at Horsetail Ranch was a cozy-looking two-story cabin, more Yankee colonial than Daniel Boone. Two porch lights were mounted on either side of the door, welcoming us onto the veranda.

Terry Dower, the owner of Horsetail Ranch, must have been working inside when she heard us on the porch, because she emerged wiping wet hands on her apron and opened the screen door for us to come in.

“You must be Harper,” she said, extending her mostly dry hand. “I looked for you both earlier. Did you have any trouble finding us?

“No, we just took our time getting here.”

“Thank you for making a place for us,” Avril said.

“Are you girls up this way on business or pleasure?”

“Definitely pleasure,” Avril said, having fun with my rendezvous with Luke.

Terry pulled open the wide drawer in the center of a dark walnut sideboard, an antique gold-leaf mirror hanging above it, and took out guest cards the size of recipe placards my grandmother used to keep in a tin box. I filled out the card in the warming beam of a Tiffany lamp on top of the sideboard.

“Well, you girls will love this part of the country. It’s hard to tell at night, but come sunrise, you’ll see how beautiful it is here.”

I signed the card and handed it back to Terry, wondering if it would be impolite to ask about dinner considering the late hour. It had been hours since our last snack break.

“You’ll be staying in Room B upstairs. I hope you like it. Do you know about the rooms here? Each of the rooms is themed and decorated after a classic Hollywood star. B is the Hepburn room. Some of her actual things are in there.”

“Katherine or Audrey?” Avril asked.

“Oh, Audrey,” Terry said, like there was a world of difference. “I purchased a few things at an estate sale, furniture, some of her personal effects. Do you girls like the movies?”

“Yes,” Avril told her, “the good ones anyway.”

“Oh, I love the movies. I used to go when I was a little girl. It’s hard to believe I saw Charlton Heston in
The Ten Commandments
when it first came out.”

“They don’t make ’em like that anymore, do they?” Avril said.

“No, they don’t, and I don’t know why. People would
love
to go see a movie they wouldn’t be ashamed of or embarrassed by. Why can’t people in Hollywood understand that anymore?”

Avril and I looked at each other and smiled. “I don’t know,” Avril said, “but if we ever get the chance to make a movie, we’ll make sure it’s a good one.”

Terry smiled like she knew what we meant and led us upstairs. A royal red and gold carpet track ran up the middle of the staircase, pinned down with brass tacks.

When we reached the second floor, she hit a light switch in the upstairs hallway. There was a grandfather clock standing tall against one wall between doors marked B and C. Terry inserted an old-fashioned skeleton key into the lock and twisted it to the right, pushing the door open and turning on another welcoming light.

“Are we the only guests tonight?” I asked.

“No, there’s a couple staying the night in C. That’s the Jimmy Stewart—I always loved him.”

We stepped into the comfy space of Room B. It was small but impeccably clean and tastefully decorated. A tall double bed dominated most of the room, with a dresser on one side and a table with a washbasin on the other. I’d imagined I’d find a movie poster hanging somewhere, but instead a beautifully framed color photo of the star hung on the narrow wall by the bathroom door.

“This is my favorite room,” Terry said. “This one and the Jimmy Stewart. There’s also a Humphrey Bogart-themed room and a Doris Day. I was going to originally give that one an Alfred Hitchcock theme, but thought that was probably too scary for people to sleep in.”

Avril and I laughed.

Terry showed us around the room, pointing out the items belonging to Audrey Hepburn that she’d purchased at the estate sale: a jewelry box, a comb and brush, a vanity with a short stool and needlepoint seat cushion.

“It’s beautiful,” Avril told her. “You’ve really done a wonderful job decorating, and I’m sure we’ll enjoy our stay.”

“Please do, girls. And if you need anything, just knock on my door downstairs.”

With that, Terry left, leaving the door open, a gesture that made us feel like the house was ours to wander around in with the memories of Hollywood past.

“Oh, Harper. Check out this bathtub.”

I set my luggage near the foot of the bed and walked to the bathroom. Inside was an antique iron bathtub on feet. The faucet was a silver wheel with spokes. A small display of fragranced salts and scented soaps were arranged on a bamboo floor stand.

Avril and I took turns in the bathtub, enjoying the quiet, relaxing time. Then we started talking and couldn’t stop. Around midnight we snuck down to the breakfast table looking for snacks. Terry had set up a minifridge with soda, breakfast bars, and small bags of SunChips.

The next morning I wasn’t hungry, so I just sipped green tea at the breakfast table and watched Terry and another woman tend to other guests. When Avril came down, she grabbed a cup of tea to go, and we both wished Terry a good day, leaving the way we’d come in the night before.

The morning was warm enough to drive with the top down. We circled the driveway and pulled out onto the narrow road, on schedule to meet Luke in just under an hour. Avril waved at a farmer riding on a tall tractor; he waved back, and it dawned on me just how rural this area was.

Forty-five minutes later, we parked curbside near a blue metal mailbox on a street landscaped with trees that looked liked they’d been there longer than the city. We left the convertible with the top down and walked to Joe’s. We were a little early, so we took our time, sauntering, window shopping, and thinking we’d arrive early enough at the coffee shop to get the lay of the land.

I shouldn’t have been taken aback to find Luke already waiting inside Joe’s, standing next to his table in the middle of the checkered floor, but I was. He was different from his photographs, I’d expected that, but I knew him instantly, a two-dimensional image moving into the real world. He smiled to me from where he stood, a blue canvas awning behind him giving backdrop to his face. Avril would tell me later he looked like a young Harrison Ford in his best dress shirt and jeans.

Luke stepped forward to greet me like a boy who’d been taught manners that the man couldn’t deny. He looked like someone the wilderness had formed over a lifetime of living free, someone who’d broken camp earlier that morning, leaving a fishing pole and canoe outside his tent on the banks of a lake.

“Harper?”

“Hi, Luke,” I said, pretending to be calm, in control. In actuality, my insides were caving in like walls of wax inside a hot candle. Instinctively, I held my arms open, wanting, needing more than a firm handshake. Suddenly we were holding one another, like the first, simple touch of a high school slow dance.

“Thanks for coming,” I said, a whisper close to his ear. “Carmel is a long way from Alaska.”

“Or New York.”

“Yes …”

Avril cleared her throat and Luke and I broke apart our embrace.

“Oh, I’m sorry. This is Avril,” I said, hiding the excitement I felt at Luke and me suddenly being in the same space together.

Avril reached out and shook Luke’s hand. “Hi, Luke. You look just like your photos.”

“Nice to meet you, Avril,” Luke said, his resonant baritone sounding even more compelling in real life than over the phone. “Would either of you like breakfast? Coffee?”

I looked at Avril, who I knew wouldn’t be interested in breakfast yet. “Do you just want to tour around Carmel for a while?” I asked.