I rage-cried, as quietly as I could, into a pillow that was clean and smelled like the lemon detergent Francine used once a week for linens. Every Friday. A familiar, happy scent I had begun to look forward to. Comfortable. Warm. Safe.

I cried harder and slammed the window shut.

Chapter Twenty

THE SUN WAS NOT YET ABOVE the trees when Sean walked up the Salishwood road and found me drinking lukewarm tea on a boulder beneath the trees.

I’d left before Francine was up and walked nearly five miles of trails already. “Hey, paid employee,” he said, and sat beside me. I leaned against him.

“Sorry I mansplained your own life to you.”

“I never heard a Well, actually, so I’ll give you a pass. This time.”

“I’m being selfish. I want you to stay.”

“I would stay if I could.”

“You would?”

“Of course I would. This island is like living in a snow globe. It’s disorienting. You, and Kira, and Salishwood, the forests. The toast.”

And Francine.

“So…okay, I’m confused. Are those good or bad things?”

“In theory they’re good.”

“Okay.”

“In reality, I will never get to live in a place this beautiful, in a life so full of all this…”

“Muir, I hate to break it to you, but you do live here. You live here and you work here and we don’t want you to go. Everyone wants you to stay; everyone loves you. I love you.”

My heart went still.

“Look up and away and around and anywhere but at me all you want, but if I love you that’s my business. I know you don’t owe me anything back, and you don’t have to respond at all. It’s just the truth. So.”

For now.

No one, in all my life, aside from Joellen, ever told me they loved me. He was right. I could not look at him.

“And come on, a snow globe? If you need to be miserable, replay the greatest hits of Natan and Tiana and Katrina—throw in some of Barb’s racist bullshit and mope all you want—just stay. Please.”

“I can’t.”

“I don’t— What about what my mom said? What about the foster extension—you could stay with Francine until you’re twenty-one?”

I put my head in my hands. “I just want to walk. I want to walk all day, every day in the woods alone. Why isn’t that a job?”

“It is,” he said, brightening. “That’s a wilderness ranger. Like a forest ranger but…in the wilderness. Without a gun. If you had a degree in environmental science they would be begging for you. There’s wilderness in the Cascades, and the Olympics….”

I put my head on my knees. “Francine wants to adopt me.”

“What.”

“Yeah.”

“She said that? Out loud?”

“Yes.”

“But—you’re an adult.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t— Can she do that?”