Page 79 of The Lonely Road

We get out of the Wrangler and stand side by side on the lip of the vista point—the basin opening up below us.

Light here falls in the most unique way—it’s not golden or dramatic, but it showcases the wide, wild beauty of nature.

“Why do you stop here?” I’m aware that I ask more questions of Taya than I have of anyone else—except if they’re a job.

Taya is the job, Brooks!

“Because Wíitsin used to. She said from this point on, we were home.”

I look at the mesa, aware that taking tangents like Taya does is not who I am.

In Toledo, there were no pull-offs or vista points. The landscape of my childhood was flat and industrial. I left at eighteen and didn’t look back, and I’ve spent twenty years being very comfortable with the fact that I have nowhere that holds me. That has never bothered me—but right now, right here, I wonder what it would be like to have a sense of home.

She looks at the basin for another moment and then turns and gets back into the Wrangler. I follow her.

As we drive the last leg to Ignacio, we talk more—the landscape isn’t something I’ve gotten used to, no one can because it’s immense and larger than life—but it’s occupying less space in my vision.

“You’ve done this drive a lot…does it change?”

She’s quiet for a moment, thinking about it properly rather than saying the first thing that comes to her mind, which is one of the things about her I cannot get used to—the way she takes questions seriously instead of answering before she’s considered them.

“It’s a journey for me to come back to Wíitsin.”

I taste the word Wíitsin in my mouth. She’s used it before in passing. I know what it means. Grandmother.

“The first part looks like leaving,” she continues. “The canyon, the valley—that’s Wildflower Canyon country. But when the road drops and the basin opens up….”

“It changes.”

She smiles as if to herself. “It does. And that’s when it starts looking like coming home.”

I look out the window at the basin. “Two homes—one you leave and one you come to.”

“Yes…both on my way to Ignacio and the way back to Wildflower Canyon.”

She tells me about her grandmother. I’ve read about Delia Morningstar, but I know what’s in a file is never the whole truth—case in point, Delia’s indomitable granddaughter.

“She was…amazing. She was always so sure about things—not rigid, mind you, but certain. Like she’d done arguing with herself a long time ago and arrived at her truth.” She smiles, looking at the road. “She’d think about things carefully and then make a decision, which always made me feel safe with her, because I knew she’d looked at every angle of a situation before imparting advice.”

The road curves. The light shifts. “You’re like that.”

She glances at me and frowns.

“You take your time and then you decide, and that’s the end of it.”

She considers this. “Maybe…at least, I hope so.”

I look at her profile. The braids. The silver at her ears. Once again, my truth, which I can’t seem to be able to negotiate with, speaks to my heart—the truth I’ve been fighting writes itself on the enormous sky: I am in love with this woman.

It’s not a revelation—more like a recognition, the way you do a street you’ve been on before and simply didn’t name. It was already true a minute ago. It’s been true for some time. I’m just done arguing with it. And the recognition, when I finally let it land, brings something I wasn’t expecting: joy.

Uncomplicated and irrational and sitting in my chest like it’s always been there, and I’ve been working around it without noticing.

I haven’t felt this in a very long time. Possibly ever.

I have, for the first time in my reprobate life, fallen in love.

I don’t know what to do with this knowledge—especially because it seems so unreal. I always wondered what being in love meant, and now I know.