Page 21 of Open Road

“Okay.”

“Do you think he’ll like it?”

“Sure.”

Rose stands, dusts her hands on her pants like she’s wrapped up paperwork, and moves on to the next thing.

A woman catches up to us near the common room doors.

She’s bright in a way that catches you off guard, brisk and warm in the same breath, a woman who moves through a space and rearranges its energy without seeming to try. She has brown hair with blonde streaks, sharp eyes, and the kind of face that laughs easily and means it. She looks at me and doesn’t do the thing I brace for, the careful assessment, the eyes going to my jaw, the recalibration of how to speak to me. She looks at me like a person who has arrived.

“You must be Janie.” She holds out a hand. “Lucy. Reaper’s mine, God help me.”

“Janie.” I shake it. “Rose is mine, God help me.”

Lucy grins, drops her eyes to Rose. “Hi, baby girl.”

“Hi,” Rose says. “I named the dog Gerald.”

Lucy looks at Roam, and he shrugs.

“Gerald it is,” Lucy says.

A woman comes out of the common room behind her carrying two mugs, quieter than Lucy the way a river is quieter than the sea, not less deep, not less present, moving differently. She hands a mug to Lucy and looks at me with dark, careful eyes and the expression of someone who has done their own reading of the situation, arrived somewhere private, and decided.

“This is Jet,” Lucy says.

“Janie.”

Jet nods and looks at Rose with something that is not pity or distance, but the particular regard of a person who has been afraid before and knows what safety looks like on a child’s face when it appears.

“She take milk?” Jet asks, meaning Rose.

Rose giggles. “I’m not allowed coffee.”

“Good thing I wasn’t offering coffee.” Jet’s mouth curves, barely. “Milk?”

Rose considers this with appropriate gravity. “Yes, please.”

Jet goes back inside.

There’s a quality to the way these women exist in this space. They are not decorative or managed. They take up the room they want and move through it without asking. Two years of making myself smaller, wearing clothes a size too big, keeping my voice at a register that wouldn’t provoke anything, and these women are standing here with coffee in their hands in the morning sun as though the ground belongs to them, because it does.

I’m aware I’m staring. I stop.

Roam appears at my shoulder, gesturing a small nod toward the yard. “Showing them the compound.” A beat. “Bikes next.”

Lucy raises her mug at him. “Thrilling itinerary.”

Roam’s expression doesn’t change. He turns toward the yard and walks, which appears to be the signal that the tour is resuming, whether we’re ready or not.

Rose is already moving.

The bikes are the promised destination, and Roam delivers with all the enthusiasm of a man escorting someone to a location he could find in the dark, which he probably can.

“This is a Softail,” he says.

Rose puts both hands on the tank. Apparently, this is a ritual now, and she’s already moving toward the row of bikes along the wall with the focused intention of someone who intends to touch all of them.