Right now I wanted to just be here in silence with my best friend. And somehow, I don’t know how, but Luna sensed it. So we sat there for what felt like two hours but was probably a lot less, until I opened my eyes again. Her eyes were closed, too. I watched her for a while.

When she opened her eyes, it felt like she took something away from me.

“Let’s jump,” she said.

“I’m quite fond of my limbs, Moonshine.”

“Stop being such a big baby.”

“Big, quarterback baby who just finished a football season in one piece and would like to keep all his body parts intact.”

She crawled out of the treehouse and settled on the branch. It was thick, but I doubted it could carry my muscular ass for more than a few seconds before snapping. I rolled my eyes and settled next to her. She slipped her hand in mine.

“Three, two, one.”

It was a short, sweet way down.

The next day, I sat on a bench, watching the sun slink into the ocean like a wounded animal disappearing into the woods to die alone.

I knew the woman sitting beside me had made one hell of a journey to come here, that she’d been waiting for days, weeks, months—who knew? who cared?—for me to pick up the phone and tell her to come here. Then she’d hopped on the first available flight to do just that.

And still. And still. And still. I was barely able to look at her face, gold-rimmed by the sun.

Pretty.

Young.

Lost.

Found. Maybe.

That was her version of the story, anyway.

She smoothed her summer dress over her thighs in my periphery, sniffing the sea brine in the air. The action was compulsive. And annoying. And too close to the way I chewed on my tongue ring whenever I was nervous.

“I was sixteen.” She still spoke to the hands in her lap.

Sixteen when she gave up on me.

Sixteen when she handed me to my parents.

Sixteen when they asked her if she wanted them to send her updates and pictures.

Sixteen when she replied no.

She’d said so herself, in her letter to me, apologizing and assuring me she knew what I looked like now. I didn’t ask how, because I didn’t care.

“Boo-fucking-hoo.” I flicked my joint between my fingers, throwing it to the ocean and tucking my fists into my jacket.

“I didn’t have a choice.” She shook her head, again, looking at her lap.

“Bullshit. Choices are all we have.” I felt like our conversation had started from the middle. We’d hardly exchanged any pleasantries before we dove headfirst into the real mess.

“But Knight…”

“Really? You drag your ass across the country, and all you have to say to me is a weak ‘but Knight’?”

She burst into tears. I turned my head to watch her, my face dripping nonchalance. She was tall, with blue eyes and blonde hair. I wondered just how dark my dad had been to dilute the Reese Witherspoon genes she was sporting. We looked nothing alike, and that made me happy somehow. Proud.

“Don’t send me any more letters.”

“But…”

“Call me again, and I’ll take it to the police. And never, fucking ever, bypass my parents when you want to get to me, eighteen or not.”

“But…but…”

“Stop with the buts! I didn’t want to open the case. You sure as fuck don’t deserve to make that decision for me.” I stood up, plucking a bunch of bills from my wallet and throwing them in my birth mother’s general direction. “Cab fare back to the airport. Ciao, Dixie.”

I tried to ignore Knight’s existence for the next few days.

I went surfing with Edie every morning, took Racer to the mall twice, and caught up on reading material for college. I rode my bike. A lot.

Even though I didn’t actually see him, Knight was always there, hovering in the back of my mind. Everything I did was tainted with the vision of his face. To silence the demon with stabbing green eyes, I decided to dig deeper into Val.

Last night, I’d gone into my father’s walk-in closet when he wasn’t home, risen on my toes, and slid out the shoebox where he kept everything Val-related. There were mainly legal documents, most of them about me—my birth, my heritage, and the documents proving he had full custody of me. I didn’t know why he still kept them. I was nineteen and wasn’t going anywhere.

Nowhere near Val, and nowhere at all.

The more I dug into my biological mother’s case, the more I realized how much of a mystery she was to me—no address, no background, no relatives I knew of. She had a mother—wasn’t my grandmother curious to meet me?—and not much else.

I decided to talk to Edie about it. Edie was a better bet than Dad because she didn’t have an allergic reaction to the name Valenciana. I wasn’t really sure why, because when I was four, she hadn’t been immune to being screwed over by Val.

I found Edie in the kitchen, making sugar cookies with Racer. They turned around when I entered, both of them wearing matching Why Are You All Up in My Grill? aprons. Edie took one look at my face before she dropped a kiss on Racer’s head.

“Go help your dad in the garage.”

“Help him with what? He’s watching a football game.” Racer frowned.

“Well, he’s old and nearsighted.”

“No, he’s not.”

“He needs you to read the score for him. Go.”

I plopped down on the barstool by the kitchen island, rubbing my face. Edie walked over to the fridge and took out two Bud Lights, popping them open and sliding one in my direction. I loved how she put the Mom cap on when I needed her to be the responsible adult, and the Friend cap on when I didn’t want to be lectured. She could always sense which version of her I needed and slipped into the role like a chameleon, changing her colors but still staying the same, sweet Edie.

“What’s the story, morning glory?” She tipped her beer bottle up, taking a sip.

“Val,” I signed.

Edie gathered her long blonde hair into a messy, yet somehow perfect bun.

“All right. I’m listening.”

There was always a dash of guilt thrown in when I mentioned Val to Edie. After all, one of them was an MIA birth mom who wanted nothing to do with me, and the other was a girl who’d met me when she was a teenager herself—nineteen, as I was right now—and immediately took me under her wing, sacrificing her youth for Dad and me.

“Have you ever tried to find out where she was?”

Edie shook her head, peeling the label off her beer bottle. “Your dad doesn’t like talking about her. I doubt she’s in the country anymore. Last we saw her, when you were four, she was deeply troubled.”

“I want to find out.”

“Why, Luna?”

“Why?” I threw my hands in the air, wanting to punch someone. “Because I can’t move forward! Because I have no roots, so how can I know where to grow, in which direction? Because she is my past!”

“Exactly. You can’t do anything about your past. Focus on your present. On your future. Hell, on anything other than that woman.”

I shook my head. I needed to know.

Edie looked around. Her shoulders sagged with a sigh. “If we open this can of worms without telling your dad, he’ll be devastated when he finds out. And he will find out. I can’t betray him, Lu. You realize that, right?”