The cure for anything is salt water—sweat, tears, or the sea.
(ISAK DINESEN, OUT OF AFRICA)
Brenna slams the fridge door. “There’s nothing good to eat in this house.”
Naysa and their father glance at each other. “Put whatever you’re craving on the grocery list and I’ll pick it up next time I’m shopping,” he says. “You know the deal,” he adds quietly.
“Are you hiking today?” Naysa asks. She’s doing homework at the kitchen table.
“No, I gave that up.”
“Oh.” Naysa glances at her father again. He shrugs.
Brenna stomps back to her room and checks her phone. There’s a message, a sad-face emoji, from Ryan. She throws the phone onto her bed.
The weather has cleared overnight, so she grabs her biology textbook, Kia’s journal and a soft blanket and goes outside to the sundeck. Pulling a lounge chair into a sunny corner, she snuggles down under the blanket, opens the textbook and turns to where she left off, but even though her eyes skim the lines of print, nothing reaches her brain. She leans back in the deck chair and closes her eyes. The sun is warm on her face.
An hour passes. She’s aware of the doorbell ringing but has drifted into a dreamlike state. It’s probably a neighbor dropping off yet another casserole. Or brownies. She’s grown tired of casseroles—they still receive a few each week. But she also knows that when they stop coming, she will wonder if it means people are beginning to forget her mom. She’d happily continue eating casseroles if it kept her mother’s memory alive. Gifts of comfort food are symbols of love—
“Hello, Brenna.”
A deep voice startles Brenna out of her light nap. Sitting up, she swivels around and finds Ryan standing on the deck behind her.
“Your dad let me in.”
“Oh.” Brenna slumps back down in the chair, embarrassed. “Hi.”
“Can I join you?” he asks.
She nods and uses a foot to push a chair toward him.
“I came to see if you’re okay,” he says, “and to find out why you suddenly quit hiking.”
“I never actually liked hiking—you know that.”
“Maybe not, but you were willing to give it a try, and you liked being on the mountain.”
She doesn’t answer, and for the first time since he’s arrived she looks up and meets his eyes. He’s studying her face.
“Was it something I said?” he asks. “Or something I did?”
She knows he’s referring to the hug and kiss on her cheek. “No,” she says, quickly looking away. “It’s just too hard. I don’t have it in me right now.” She closes her eyes again.
“Is that Kia’s journal?” he asks, referring to the small book on her lap.
“Yeah.”
He doesn’t respond. After a moment Brenna opens her eyes to see if he’s even still there. He is.
“We could do a different hike today,” he says. “An easier one. I was probably being a tyrant about doing the Grind so often when you haven’t worked up to it.”
Brenna shrugs.
“There’s a really nice one just down the road. Quarry Rock.”
“I’ve done Quarry Rock. The whole world has hiked Quarry Rock.”
“Then you know it’s not hard. Come on. We could be done in an hour and a half and you could get back to your book.” He takes the biology textbook off her lap and scans the cover. “Obviously a riveting read.”
She smiles a little despite herself.
“So, what do you say?”
She hesitates but then looks into his face. The warmth of his smile melts her resolve. “Okay. I’m not getting much studying done anyway.” She climbs out of her chair. “Let me get changed.”
Ryan holds up his hand for a high five. “Attagirl!”
She smacks it, but her hand is limp.
After sliding into some yoga pants and a T-shirt, Brenna finds that Ryan has joined Naysa at the kitchen table. “Your little sister is a math genius,” he tells Brenna. He hands her a sheet with 10/10 scrawled across the top. “This is her first math quiz of the year, and she nailed it.”
“Yeah, Naysa got all the brains in this family,” she says, then realizes how stupid that is. It isn’t like they share the same genes.
At the Quarry Rock lookout they find at least a dozen other hikers sprawled across the flat outcrop, enjoying the view. Ryan takes Brenna’s hand and pulls her closer to the cliff edge. “Want to sit here for a bit? Soak up some rays?”
She nods but she hardly notices the rays. A pulse of electricity had jolted her entire body at the touch of his hand.
The sunlight sparkles on the water far below them. Indian Arm, as the fjord is called, is speckled with recreational boaters enjoying one of the last Sundays of the boating season.
Ryan lets go of Brenna’s hand as they sit down, but he takes it again and squeezes gently. “I never get tired of this view,” he says.
Brenna wonders if her hand is sweaty or if she should squeeze back. Why did he even take her hand?
“It’s so different than the view from Grouse,” he continues. “Up there, you see the city with the high-rises and bridges, all the engineering genius of humankind. Here you see only ocean, sky and forest.”
“The engineering genius of Mother Nature.”
Brenna senses, rather than sees, Ryan’s smile. “Or God’s genius,” he says.
“Different names, same thing.”
He squeezes her hand again. “That so sounds like something your mom would have said.”
She laughs. “She did. I stole the line from her. I’ve been waiting years for the chance to use it.”
Ryan lets go of her hand and wraps his arm around her shoulder, pulling her against him. “You’re too funny, Brenna.”
She leans into him and tries to relax, noticing how her dark mood has lifted. All her senses have heightened, and she can practically feel the endorphins bouncing around in her bloodstream. Breathing in a lungful of fresh air, she watches as a sailboat comes about in the water below the lookout. It seems to be heeling precariously low in the water.
Ryan leans his face against her hair. She senses him inhaling deeply, breathing her in. “Did something not so good happen this morning?” he asks.
Brenna feels those same endorphins scramble back to where they came from. She sits up straighter. “Not really.”
Ryan remains quiet.
“I got an email from Angie last night,” she admits finally.
“Oh.” Ryan doesn’t say anything for a moment. His arm begins to feel heavy on her shoulder. “You didn’t like what she said?”
Brenna shrugs. She feels her eyes begin to well up with tears, but she blinks hard, forcing herself to remain in control. “Apparently, Kia, my birth mom, works for Aid-A-Child. She oversees volunteers who work in orphanages.”
She feels Ryan sit up, and he pulls his arm off her shoulder so he can turn to look more closely at her. “Is that a bad thing?”
“No. But she’s working in Africa. With kids who have AIDS.”
“Whoa! That’s so cool!”
Brenna shrugs. “And Angie didn’t think Kia would be happy that she had contacted me.”
“Did she say why?”
“No.”
“It could be for a lot of reasons.”
“I guess.”
Ryan picks up her hand again and cradles it in both of his. She stares at the white crescents at the base of his nails.
They continue to watch the boating activity in silence. A breeze sends little ripples across the water, while a shiver ripples up Brenna’s spine.
“You’re cooling off,” Ryan says. “We should head back down.”
Brenna nods, but she’s reluctant to let go of Ryan’s hand. Sometime in the last few minutes their fingers have intertwined. She likes the feel of his strong fingers squeezing hers, and she no longer cares if hers are sweaty. Ryan doesn’t seem to mind.
As she follows him down the twisting trail she wonders about his life, feeling a twinge of guilt that they’re always talking about hers. “Did you say you never actually finished high school?” she asks.
“No, not actually.” He smiles at her over his shoulder. “Another reason I appreciated your mom for hiring me. It’s hard to get a job without a high school diploma.”
“You didn’t want to go to school in Vancouver?”
He shrugs. “I never intended to stay in Canada this long. I always thought I’d go back and finish school at home.”
“But you haven’t.”
“Not yet. But I will.”
Brenna thinks about that. Another person who will eventually leave her. Her mood plummets further. She doesn’t respond.
“When my mom is released from the treatment center she’s in, I’ll go help her out. And I’ll have saved up enough to take care of her for a while. That’s the plan anyway.”
Treatment center? Brenna decides not to ask. “And you’ll finish school then?”
“Hopefully. Or do it through distance education.”
They have reached a wooden bridge that spans a stream meandering down Mount Seymour. As they lean against the rail they look up at the trickling water. Ryan puts his arm around her shoulder again.
“I think I’ll contact the minister,” she says. “He was Kia’s friend, and he encouraged me to contact him if I wanted to talk. I’ll see what he can tell me about Kia. Maybe we can meet at a coffee shop or something.”
“Let me know if you want me there,” he says. “Moral support.”
“Thanks, that would be nice.” She leans into him. “I guess I’m opening that can of worms, aren’t I?”
“Yes, I’d say you are.” Ryan turns and leads the way back down the trail. “But I always rather liked worms.”
Brenna rifles through her desk drawer until she finds what she is looking for—the business card she was given at the chapel where her mom’s service was held. It has all of the minister’s contact information on it. She decides to send him an email and chooses the more informal-looking address of the two that are listed.
From: brennayoko@gmail.com
To: justintime@yahoo.com
Hello Reverend Reid,
After my mom’s service, you said it would be okay to contact you if I wanted to talk about anything. I hope that offer is still open. I was wondering if maybe we could meet and include Angie Hazelwood. I have some questions about my birth mom, Kia.
Thank you.
Brenna Yokoyama
Sept. 15
Ryan has “mother issues” too. What else do we have in common?
Kia wrote about that instant/magnetic/physical pull between her and Derek. (My father. Weird.) It’s different for me and Ryan. Ours is like a friendship that is becoming closer. It felt so good to hold hands, to feel his arm around me. If Dad hadn’t been in the yard when we got home, would he have kissed me again? A real one this time?
I think so.
Did I want him to?
Yes.
Mom’s only been gone 2 months. Is it wrong to feel this way???
“Whatcha doin’?” Georgialee slides into the chair next to Brenna in the school computer lab.
“Nothing.” She quickly exits the website she’s been browsing, but it’s too late. Georgialee has seen it.
“Aid-A-Child?” Georgialee asks.
“Just researching a project for the Social Justice Club,” she says. Her skin burns with the lie. She can’t meet Georgialee’s eyes.
“Are you joining again?”
Brenna shrugs.
“Why Aid-A-Child?”
“I’ve always been interested in them.”
“You have?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I didn’t know that.”
Brenna can hear the skepticism in her friend’s voice. “They do good work.” She knows she should tell her the truth, but she’s not ready to do that. “Did you know that 2.4 million children under the age of fifteen in Uganda have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS, the most of any in the world? And many of those children also test positive for HIV.”
Georgialee studies Brenna’s face. “Social Justice Club is starting up again on Thursday,” she says. “Will you be there?”
“I’m thinking of it.”
“That’s great, Brenna! Everyone will be glad to see you again.”
Brenna knows she should tell the truth now, before the lie grows any bigger, but she can’t find the words.
“And are you going to the school dance on Friday night too?”
“No. I’m not feeling it.”
“Too bad. I was hoping to meet Ryan.”
“What makes you think I’d bring him?”
“Wishful thinking, I guess. I think it’s time I meet him. Make sure he’s good enough for my best friend.”
“I’m his service project, Georgialee.” She knows she’s stretching the truth again, so she changes the subject. “Keep an eye on Naysa for me.”
“Oh. My. God.” Georgialee shakes her head. “I can’t believe Naysa’s actually old enough to go to a school dance. I still think of her as a little pesky kid.”
“I know. Me too.”