“And tan and actually kind of burned.” Apricot was scowling. “You could get your hair done. I’ll take you! We’ll do it together.”

“She looks beautiful,” Mari corrected.

“Your hair turned white!” Powell’s voice was soft, as if in awe. “You look good, Mom.”

Ammalie smiled. “I feel lousy. No, I mean, I feel good. Temporarily lousy but overall good. But thanks. And it started turning gray years ago. Dye is an amazing thing, but I’m glad it’s gone. I feel more me now.”

Powell touched her arm, a bit awkwardly. “Mari caught me up on some stuff. I took a literature class too, you know. You’re like on a hero’s journey.” He sat on the bed and put his hand on her shin. “A heroine’s journey.”

“Exactly,” Ammalie said. “And it went pear-shaped.”

They all stared at her blankly.

“It’s a phrase they use here. Like, ‘Cheers,’ and ‘Done its dash,’ which means something has died. Pear-shaped.”

“Like a woman’s body.” Apricot patted her round rump, but Ammalie noticed with a start that it wasn’t very round at all; indeed, Apricot looked thinner than she ever had before, and in a way that didn’t look healthy. Ammalie felt a zing of worry; she’d ask about it later.

“Your life doesn’t seem so pear-shaped to me,” she heard Mari mumble. “Actually, it sounds quite interesting.” Then she leaned over and whispered into Ammalie’s ear. “I’m getting a lot of calls about you. From Levi. And from a sheriff wanting to do a well-being check. They called your work; your work gave them my number. Your car was found in Wisconsin. No plates but they tracked the VIN. And something about a possible break-in in a cabin? But then the homeowner dropped charges, took back his story. Seems the place was left in better condition than it had ever been, including some jewelry left there, and also, ya know, who wants to deal with the law when you don’t have to?” Mari pulled her face back and quirked an eyebrow. “Damn, Ammalie. When I told you to go forth and kick ass, I didn’t expect you to become an outlaw.”

Ammalie winked at her. “I’ve had the best adventure ever, my friend.”

—

Nan did not press charges. “Not only did you clean my cupboards and windows,” she said, “but some people reported seeing you picking up trash on the beach.” Then she added, “I like your jewelry. You can stay as an official artist in residence next year, if you wish.” She sat in a chair next to the hospital bed, more elderly and hunched than Ammalie had imagined, closer to the end of a life than she wanted to consider. Still, Nan was beaming a calm, unmistakable energy or life force or whatever it was that made humans glow.

“What a gift you are. What a gift you offer others.” Ammalie reached out to hold Nan’s thin hand. “That you help the world in that way, I mean. Thank you.”

“With great wealth comes great responsibility. I was gifted wealth. My grandfather made money chopping down kauri trees, and he was part of a society that took land from the Indigenous peoples. So I try to intelligently gift back my fortune by giving it to others in one form or another, and I could not be happier about that. I hope soon to be rather poor, in fact. I hope to die with nothing, as all people truly do. I remember your Vincent, a little. I’m sorry he is gone. He seemed a good man.”

Ammalie paused. “He was. It was complicated, but he was.”

Nan sat back. “Your son looks like him. I have a daughter. And I worry. How sad the future might be. And what should we do? Shall we sit now in the evening hours and simply take note? Shall we lodge the cool days into our memory, so as to conjure them up later?”

Ammalie tried to pay attention through the drugs. This woman seemed to talk in wisps. “Yes. I can’t…I can’t see what to do. Beyond that.”

But Nan was still on her own train of thought, distant eyes focused on the view out the window. “If we had new words and new stories, maybe we wouldn’t treat the planet so.” Her words were broken into fragments, as if she were lost in thought, or half elsewhere. “The smoke from Australia chokes us, those poor people. And then we got such heavy rains that the roads caved in. Floods caused septic tanks to spill into streams…landslides…”

She drifted into a silence, and to fill it, Ammalie ventured her newest thought. “I’ve been considering…the three wisdoms of growing older. One, if you feel irrelevant, well, what the hell, become relevant. Two, if you feel lonely, fall in love. Three, I forget three…Oh, to caretake. Yes. Caretake. That’s the word. Yes. Lose yourself and caretake. That’s what you do.” Perhaps it was the pain, or the painkillers, but she couldn’t quite complete a clear thought. But she did manage to get out the one most important truth. “I’m so very sorry I stole from you—you of all people! I took your sea glass…”

Above her, Nan fingered her necklace, which Ammalie could see was one of hers, and she thought it beautiful, more beautiful than any object she’d ever made.

—

In the quiet half hour before Ammalie left the hospital, while waiting for the doctor to sign papers, she shooed everyone out of her room so that she could jot down a new list. Things to Do Now

Go visit Apricot.

Spend time with Mari and Powell.

Apologize to Richard.

Call Levi.

After all, there was something with Levi. She wanted closure of some sort she couldn’t explain. She wasn’t a damsel in distress. She didn’t need him. He didn’t occupy her daydreams anymore. Perhaps she just wanted to tell him goodbye, one human to another, and in tribute to all the mealtimes they had sort-of shared.

Finally, she added:

Sell the house.

Buy Cave Valley Cabins.

Besides operating it as a rental property, she was going to do three things:

Offer free rooms to others seeking to learn about the natural world.

Offer cabins for artists or activists.

Offer a cabin to people working for humanitarian reasons on the border—volunteers doing water drops, for example.

The rest of the rooms would cover the taxes and insurance and upkeep and employees, she hoped. In this way, it would be a small society of sharing, based on community and care for the planet and her people. She would plant trees for future generations—and help others do the same.

Refugia.

She had to admit it now, finally, even if just to herself: She had money. She’d gone into a state of denial, pretended it wasn’t there. All those cheap cans of beans! All that homemade Chex mix! All the scrimping and saving on this trip! She could have rented three vacation homes. Fancy homes! But the wealth seemed so unfamiliar it was scary. It didn’t feel rightfully hers. And she hadn’t spent a cent of it.

Vincent had been Vincent, after all. A careful planner. A detail-oriented, responsible guy, and surely, some of those nights in the basement he had been tracking finances. Which is why he had a million in retirement, a million of life insurance. The life insurance would go to Powell. And the retirement would go to her, and she’d share it, which, she felt sure, Vincent would be smiling at. He would like this new her. Even though, contradictorily, their dynamic might have been what tamped down this version of herself. Forgive him, forgive self, move on, do good. Her mantra for the rest of her life.

With the support of the others, she’d find a manager, a bookkeeper, a lawyer to help her get going. She’d buy Cave Valley Cabins and would study hard to learn how to best run such a nonprofit. Rita and Rex would help. Nan had agreed to advise.

How best to provide a welcome, safe home—that was her purpose in life.

To hand out keys to others.

CHAPTER 22

While Powell and Apricot went to hike among the kauri trees—something she couldn’t do with her stitches—Ammalie took Mari on a very slow amble across the black sand beach. As they meandered along the shore, she caught Mari up on everything, although some of it was so hard to explain that Mari only laughed and shook her head at what she referred to as Ammalie’s “lovely lack of logical thinking.”

They stopped to stare at the swells and the waves peeling from the sea, and Ammalie gently drew a mandala in the sand with her walking stick. “Look, there are purple tones to the black sand, aren’t there? It looks metallic.”

“The natural beauty here is really amazing, I’ll grant you that. And it’s so quiet! Not like Chicago! It’s really freaking out my ears. And my eyes.”

“Ha! I know. The green.”

“Yes! The silence and the green.” Mari touched her shoulder gently. “Friend, you had me listed as your emergency contact.”

“Yes.”

“That’s how they contacted me.”