That was four years ago.
"I remembered what you said," she tells me now. "About starting points."
“Good.”
"I need one." A breath. "I don't have much money and I don't know where to go and I—" She stops. Starts again. "You said if I ever needed anything."
I look at the key on the counter.
Sofia is in the garden with Tomas, and I think about Anna giving me the key, and the truck sitting in Cedar Ridge for months while I tried to figure out what it was waiting for.
Now I know.
"Do you know how to drive a food truck," I say.
A very long pause.
"Yes," she says carefully. "Why?”
"Because my taco truck is sitting in Cedar Ridge, Colorado doing absolutely nothing, and taking it off my hands would be doing me a genuine favor. I loved that truck. The idea of it parked and collecting dust when someone needs a starting point is something I can’t sit with."
"Jennifer."
"I mean it. I’ll tell you the address, and tell my sister that you’re coming.”
“Your sister? Anna?” Dani asks.
“The one, and only. A lot has changed.”
I tell her about us being reunited, and that I’m living on an island. She sounds happy for me. I’ll feel the same way about her, when she’s sorted and away from that horrible situation.
"Call me when you get there,” I say.
“I will. Bye,” she says, and hangs up.
I set the phone down.
Matteo looks up from his laptop. He has been listening without appearing to, which is one of his better qualities.
“Your taco truck,” he says.
“Yes,” I confirm. “I’ll call Anna after dinner, and tell her what’s going on.”
He closes the laptop. "I will have the lawyer handle the transfer. Properly, in her name, all of it." He holds my gaze. "Done before she arrives in Cedar Ridge."
Santos appears in the doorway with soil on his forearms and Sofia on his hip, both of them looking extremely pleased with themselves about something that probably happened to the rosemary.
"What did we miss?” he says.
"Nothing. Everything. I'll tell you at dinner."
He crosses the kitchen and presses a kiss to my temple and hands me my daughter, who smells of sunshine and whatever she found in the herb garden that she was not supposed to eat.
I hold her against my chest.
Somewhere between Los Angeles and Cedar Ridge, a woman who has been standing still for long enough is about to start moving.
I hope she is ready.
The truck is….