The cotton sheets felt wonderful, soft and heavy.
Annie stretched her arm across them, toward the spot where Cal had slept, rubbing her palm over the threads.
It was still warm. Still smelled like him.
A book now occupied his space, its bookmark poking out. And she brushed her fingers over the hardbound spine of Infinite Jest and smiled.
Rolling closer to the opposite edge, she snuggled a pillow and pushed her toes past the end of the luxurious covers, letting a leg slip and dangle over the side of the bed.
Hmmm.
Yawn.
Stretch.
What day was it?
What time was it?
Her phone lay on the nightstand, screen down. It seemed God-awful early. Too early to chance a peek at it.
And it was Friday. Right?
Then, she noticed her suitcase. Not far from where she lay cocooned in the bed where Cal had ravished her with attention and plied her with orgasms was the red thing she’d left near the front door last night. Now it was on the floor, next to her, open, and her clothes appeared freshly laundered and folded.
Annie shut her eyes and opened them, blinking in disbelief, and then she heard … singing?
Dressed only in one of Cal's white T-shirts, Annie peered through the crack of the bedroom door — hiding behind it like a statue — toward the kitchen as she watched Rosa for a minute or two. Music played from a tiny radio on the counter, and Rosa’s body shook, lips and hips moving.
"Good morning." Rosa spun around, finally noticing Annie, or had she always known she was there?
"Morning." A leg and an arm and part of Cal’s shirt could probably be seen from where Rosa stood, and Annie inched back until only her head and neck stuck out, feeling a blush coming over her cheeks, her jaw, a nervous heat. "Thank you for washing my clothes.”
Rosa turned the volume down. "You’re welcome, my dear.” She smiled, continuing to work, giving Annie her dignity. “Are you hungry?"
"Where’s Cal?" Annie gripped the edge of the door and stretched her neck, looking around. The hem of his shirt tickled the tops of her thighs and her butt cheeks.
"He’s on his run. You just missed him.” Rosa set the table for breakfast. “He’s usually out about thirty or forty-five minutes."
"I need to shower.” Annie smelled like sex and Cal. Part of her hated to rinse it off. “But then I want to help you."
“That’s okay, mi querida." Rosa winked. "You take care of yourself. I have it almost finished.”
Fifteen minutes later, showered and dressed, Annie walked into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. Lingering at the damn fridge, she found herself — the way she had the first time she’d been here — staring at the photographs on it.
People’s eyes and faces — it mattered little that she didn’t know them, and it scared her how much she wanted to — commanded her attention.
The camera captured things the naked eye might not notice at first glance.
The nuance of regret.
The relaxed lines of humility.
…love.
"This is Michelle and her children." Rosa pointed a wooden spoon at a photo. "Cal’s cousin. Ah, and this one is Constance, maybe at Cal's graduation." She indicated a different rectangular print in color. The woman's eyes were blue and just as haunting as they were in the tiny, square, black-and-white photo.
Constance, huh? Constance Prescott.
Rosa was the star of a few pictures too. One that looked like it had been taken the same night, college graduation.
"When did you meet Cal?" Annie cocked her head and watched Rosa flip through a directory of memories.
"Hmmm, I met him when he was just a little boy." Rosa's eyes and voice seemed to fill with memories as she walked back to the stove.
Annie could feel her face stretch, knew she looked stunned. Since he was a boy… Jesus Christ. Her heart skipped a beat.
“What can I do?" Annie set her glass down, leaned forward, and breathed in the homemade sauce Rosa had just poured over a pan of lasagna. “It smells so good. I’m starving.”
“This is dinner. Your breakfast is over here." Rosa pointed to a skillet and lifted the lid. A different aroma crept into the air. Omelets smothered with vegetables and cheese. Annie’s stomach growled, and her eyes bulged.
"Could you please grab five or six oranges from the fridge? They're in the bottom right drawer."
"I had no idea you've known Cal so long," Annie said, beginning to wash the fruit off in the sink. “He doesn't speak to me much about his family."
"No." Rosa glanced over her shoulder, noticing Annie’s downcast eyes. "Cal is very private. Be patient, mi querida. I can see you are special to him. Don't give up trying to know him.”
Be patient. How long had Cal been denied patience from the people who knew him and loved him?
"What was he like … as a boy?"
“Cal was..." Rosa smiled and glanced toward the ceiling. "He was … determined." She laughed and began to slice open the clean oranges. The smell of citrus filled the kitchen.
“Then not much has changed." Annie smiled as she took a glass out of the upper cabinet.
“No," Rosa said, chuckling, ready to juice the split fruit. “He always was a little man inside a boy’s body. That’s what I always said. That’s what I always told his mother.”
“How did you meet them?”
Rosa stopped juicing because the sound of the electric machine negated their conversation.
"I was probably around your age. I was newly married, and already had my first boy, Ivan. I had to find work. Times were tough, and my husband…” Rosa’s face flushed. “Well, his cousin was an apprentice for Cal’s grandfather. Everett was teaching him carpentry. He made the most beautiful things, Annie.” She paused, her eyes seeming to catalogue the items he’d once carved. “Anyway, we knew the family, and Constance needed help managing the house. I could bring my son with me too." Rosa sighed. "It seems like only yesterday."
What was that in her eyes? The tough woman looked as though she might cry.
"It was good for me then, and it never seemed like a job, you know? We were family. And now … now Cal takes care of me."
"It looks to me like you take good care of him." Annie put her arm around Rosa’s back.
"Mmmm." Rosa sighed. “Looks can be deceiving.” She shooed Annie away like a fly. "Sit. I have your breakfast ready."
Annie smiled, loving the ease of friendship she’d found in Rosa. True, they’d not spoken much, but some people felt like a place to call home from the start. Some people didn’t need to have shared a plethora of words or experiences to understand they were kindred.
Annie picked up her glass of water and walked to the table. "Does Cal see her often? His mother, I mean?"
Rosa slid breakfast onto her plate with a frown. "He does not talk of his mother?"
"No." A lump formed in Annie’s throat as a puzzle began to take shape in her mind.
"No, no. I suppose he would not." Rosa shook her head and made a clicking sound with her tongue. “Cal's mother … she … she has Alzheimer's, Annie.”
Jesus Christ. Puzzle complete. Pieces clicked together inside Annie’s head like a Rubik's Cube. The de Kooning print. The swimming out to sea lonely. The guilt behind his stellar grin.
“I … I had no idea." The pain she sometimes saw in Cal’s face etched a portrait in her mind, the pain and sharp remark he’d made when she’d asked about his mother only two weeks ago. I don't have to give you anything, Annie…
“I’m so sorry.”
"She has been sick for years," Rosa began as Cal walked in the front door, slipping off his shoes, taking his ear buds out, and setting his iPod on the desk.
Both women looked at him as he walked toward the kitchen, his hair damp with sweat. He pulled his shirt up and wiped his face with its fibers.
"Morning." He smiled at Annie and kissed her forehead. “Did I interrupt something?”
“No. Just girl talk,” Rosa replied, settling him with a smile. She began to work the juicer again.
"How was your run?" Annie asked.
"Good." Cal stood behind Annie's chair. He put his hands on the arms and leaned over her head.
“How was your sleep?”
Annie stopped chewing and looked up at him, fighting a smile as she rolled her eyes. The way he’d said the word was code for sex. He’d given her two more orgasms after the three.
Five.
One after the power nap and the other in the middle of the night when she’d woken to pee. She literally had died the little French death, and she was sore. She could walk, though. Barely.
God, his energy — last night, always, now — ignited her. Even the smell of his sweaty body so close to her skin did not inhibit her desire.
"I'm going to take a shower." Cal put his chin on Annie's head, and then he moved his lips toward her ear and kissed her neck.
She giggled and squirmed.
"Juice." Rosa signaled, arm in the air, palm around a glass of bright, pulpy orange stuff.
"Just girl talk?" he asked Rosa as he took the glass and raised his brows.
"No sabes todo." Rosa poured coffee into a mug. "You know?"
He finished in seconds, made a loud “Ah,” a little burp, and a thunderous "Thank you," then went toward his bedroom. "I do know everything." He grinned. "Todo." He emphasized the word as he smirked at Annie.
Rosa scoffed in jest.
"Have you been brushing up on your Spanish, Ms. Baxter?" Cal asked.
Annie smiled. "You are tonto."
"Ah, a good one, Annie." Rosa sat at the table, cup of coffee in hand. "He does not know all." Rosa waved her hand in the air, dismissing him.
Cal closed the door, but not before he’d scolded Annie with his swell green eyes and all-star motherfucking grin.
"No, and he's ridiculous." Annie covered her partially full mouth.
Rosa nodded and mmm'd.
"Thank you for breakfast."
Rosa patted Annie's arm, speaking her you’re welcome with her eyes as she sipped her coffee.
"You mentioned you have a son," Annie said. "Where does your family live?"
"Four sons. Three of my children live in California. One is in New Mexico. Three grandchildren." Rosa made a W with her fingers. "And my husband, well"—she tapped her nails on the mug—"he passed away a few years ago."
“I’m sorry." Annie feigned a smile, the smiling frown often accompanying death. “What was his name?”
“George." Rosa exhaled his name like a song. "Not long after my husband died, I started to do things for Cal — little things that turned into bigger things. And before I knew it, I’d offered to move to Florida.”
“You offered?”
Rosa gave Annie a sharp stare, indicating whatever reason they’d moved here might possibly have been due to some sort of desperation on Cal’s part. It had to have been if Rosa had just offered to pick up and temporarily leave her family.
“Luckily, he found me my own place right here." She tilted her head toward the front window.
"Here?"
"Yes. Across the courtyard." Rosa chuckled. "And Carl … well, he’s had good luck with him too."
Luck or timing? Annie knew exactly what Rosa meant. Annie recalled the conversation she’d had with Carl in the Tesla on the way home from the airport.
"Ah, yes, he told you this?"
"No, Carl did." Annie smiled. "But I told Cal we talked. He was really modest about the whole thing.” Hiring a veteran. A man suffering from PTSD. “And quiet. He hasn't always been so quiet?"
"Not what I would say, ‘quiet.’ Pensando. Thinking. Reflecting."
“It must be difficult being away from your family,” Annie said while admiring Rosa. The way she carried herself, the grace with which she held her cup of coffee, and the way her eyes always seemed to do an intimate dance with her words.
"Cal is my family, too. My hijo." Rosa looked Annie square in the eye, drilling home the point, and then she looked at her mug as she brought it to her lips.
Annie finally did the calculation in her mind.
Forty years of friendship?
More than friendship.
Cal is her family. Hijo. Son? She is a second mother to him. Or a mother to him? This woman moved across the country, away from her children and grandchildren to be here. Why? It was more than having to take care of the bigger things.
Rosa must have been a constant, steady presence in Cal's life. A mother, an aunt, a sister. And maybe she loved Cal more than anyone. God, what a thought. More than his own mom? Maybe Rosa’s love was just different, varied.
Rosa kept him grounded.
Annie was confident Rosa reminded Cal of where he came from, who he was, keeping the loneliness he hid from attempting to whisk him away. She keeps Cal whole. No wonder he needed her.
Did Cal Prescott need anyone?
The women spent several minutes making their own kind of quiet. Fulfilling their own needs via the comfortable silence. Annie eating. Rosa slurping. Annie thinking about photographing Rosa — her face, her spirit, her love.
It could be captured but not contained.
Annie longed to illuminate Rosa’s rare qualities through the scope of her lens.
* * *
"Excuse me, love." Rosa reached next to Annie's leg under the sink, grabbed a few supplies, and stood. "I told you, you don’t need to do these dishes.”
“I want to.”
“You’re a sweet one,” Rosa said, and Annie smiled and shut off the water. "I'm going to get out of your way and do some work up in the loft.” Rosa winked.
"You’re never in the way."
"Well, I see that look you two had in your eyes this morning, and I should be out of your way.”
Cal's look. The I'll-be-eating-Annie-alive look.
“Rosa..." Annie dried her hands on a towel. "Really."
“I remember what it's like." Rosa paused at the table and set her supplies down. "I remember what it's like when you first meet someone. I may be old, but I remember how I felt when I first fell in love with George."
Love...
Fuck.
Annie couldn't move. Her feet grew roots. Her throat tightened. Her stomach twisted.
Love.
The boy-man-guy she’d thought she’d loved, Daniel jerk-face Westerly, had never made her feel like this.
Roots. In. The. Ground.
Upside-down rollercoaster.
Mind in the sky.
Stifling.
Wind knocked from her chest.
Crazy.
Unable to make sense of words or questions or anything.
The temperature… Was it hot in the room?
Talk, Annie. Speak. Respond.
“Come here, my child,” Rosa said in a sweet hush.
Annie moved forward without ease, uprooting herself, pressing her fingers into her dress, pressing and walking, terrified of the four-letter word applying to the just the summer just the summer just the summer. The June, July, and August of no relationship plans or what-ifs. No room for love. No sequoia trees. No safety. No thinking.
“George, my husband, he was older than me too, you know?" When Rosa spoke, she meant business. Her eyes told the stories. Her hands followed. "Don't let anyone give you a hard time about that."
“How much older?” Annie asked, a lump in her throat, elated Rosa was validating her feelings, her fears. Things she couldn’t or refused to articulate. Whatever they were.
But they couldn’t have been love. She wouldn’t even think the word. Love love love love love love love. Stop!
“He was almost ten years older. He was…" Rosa trailed off, eyes wet with memories.
Annie rubbed her fingers across Rosa’s upper arm, but the fearless woman pretended to regain her strength.
“Mmmm. My George was a pistol, and I loved him all the more for it. I was never afraid to love him. Time is precious, Annie. You will see.”
“I know." The two words contained the grieving and sorrow, an exhausted breath. Her voice may have cracked.
“Who have you lost?”
God, Rosa might have been the wisest woman Annie had ever met — and she’d met a lot of people she considered intellectual — but Rosa took the cake.
“My brother,” Annie replied, swallowing her tongue.
“What was his name, mi querida?”
Annie met Rosa’s eyes. Say it. Now. Say it.
“Peter." Annie pronounced it with a stark boldness despite the fissure in her voice box.
“Ah, Peter,” Rosa said in her thick, beautiful accent. Did every word she pronounced sound like a symphony? “This name means rock. He was your rock, yes?”
Annie’s eyes gave Rosa the answer she desired. They lit up with fire. They drowned in the ocean. They filled with all the tears she numbed with pills — and her father's grief, and her mother's faux concern — but she contained it all behind the dam she’d built many, many months ago.
It won't break.
Not now.
Rosa spoke several sentences in Spanish as she looked heavenward, eyes and head tilted up.
“What was that all about?” Annie marveled at her pure, unadulterated passion.
“That?” Rosa asked, pointing to the ceiling as if what she’d done was obvious. “I talk with God. I told him how I feel about this — this senseless business of a man dying so young.”
Senseless. No reason. Rosa had read Annie’s mind. Talk to Rosa about God, Annie, Cal had said. But Rosa talked to God, and there still were no answers.
“You go. You go be with Cal." Rosa nodded toward the closed bedroom door and smiled. Then, she made her way upstairs.
Annie hesitated. Go be with Cal. Wise woman or gentle tyrant? Love Cal. Simple. Comfort Cal. Let him comfort you. Be patient with Cal.
It's. One. Summer.
All that nonsense required thinking. And she wouldn’t allow herself to imagine anything beyond the summer. Annie wasn’t ready to think about making a life with someone.
She was too busy trying to find her own.
As Annie walked closer to the door, she heard what sounded like a cell phone ringing. It broke the noise inside her head. Thank God. She’d had enough of it.
She wanted her camera — needed her camera. It's me and the camera. Always.
As Annie entered the bedroom, Cal's voice seemed to grow louder with each step. It carried a strong determination to have his way, and it gave her a slight chill behind her neck. All over, actually.
He sat at a desk to the far right corner across from the bed, his hair damp from the shower, his laptop open in front of him.
What if she straddled him right now?
He held his reading glasses by an arm as he continued to speak in a way which showed the caller he would not take no for an answer.
He could breathe those damn determined words down her neck as she rubbed her crotch against his jeans. Then, she would slide a hand inside his pants and jerk his hard cock. Make him lose control while on the phone.
This was ridiculous. She’d already had five. Five orgasms! Why was she daydreaming about sex? He’d turned her into a fiend.
After Annie grabbed her camera and phone, she turned around and met his eyes. He now stood across from her on the other side of the unmade, sex-rumpled bed — an open briefcase and a few papers were spread out across it.
Cal was not unmade.
He was fully and neatly dressed, complete with socks and shoes.
And he was single-mindedly focused on his phone call, or so she thought.
Glasses on, he held one of those damn number-filled pieces of paper near his head. He peered at Annie over the top of it, watching her as she began to walk away. She could feel his eyes on her skin.
His eyes were hands.
Before she opened the door to exit, she peeked over her shoulder. Cal looked as if he wanted to leap across the bed, pin her body against his, paper in hand, phone tucked under his chin, and fuck her against the wall.
Hmmm… A wall fuck would be nice.
She smirked, acknowledging his silent desires by tipping her imaginary hat to him, and then she exited the room and made her way to the loft.
"Cal got a phone call." Annie answered the surprise on Rosa's face before she had a chance to ask why Annie had already come upstairs. Even a wall fuck would have taken longer than that. "He's working. Do you mind if I play some music?" Annie took a seat in front of the media cabinet, legs crossed on the floor.
"I see. Cal works too much.” Rosa made circles on the window with her towel. “Yes, play one of those cosas viejas. Some of those records are probably older than me.”
They both laughed.
Annie opened the cabinet’s double doors and started to thumb through the albums one by one. When strands of hair fell across her face, instead of twirling them, she pushed them behind her ears.
Rosa's towel squeaked against the glass.
Air squished between the record cases as each one fell against the next. A smile formed on Annie’s face while she fingered the vast assortment of vinyl.
So many. So varied. The smell of old cardboard mixing with a barrage of memories she didn’t know but wanted to.
INXS
Nat King Cole
The Temptations
Van Morrison
Sam Cooke
Cole Porter
The Beatles
Mozart
Ella Fitzgerald
Bob Dylan
Lead Belly
The Bee Gees
Wait. What? The Bee Gees? That cannot be his, she thought as she suppressed a giggle.
Annie finally settled on one and pulled it from its sleeve. But first, she held the record up and looked at it. The light from the window glistened on the grooves. She could see the imperfections, the particles of dust. It always amazed her how an hour or so of beautiful songs could be stored on an LP or a CD — and now on a chip in her phone.
Annie was seized with the need to photograph it.
She wanted to remember his collection.
Remember this moment.
What it felt like to be on the precipice of so many different things at once.
After taking her camera from its case, she began to capture the different ways the light bounced off the big black circle. She shot stacks of albums, separate and together, in the sleeves and out. Then, after photographing the naked turntable, she dressed it with the record and carefully dropped the needle onto track ten.
Taking the sheet out of Use Your Illusion I, she set the camera aside a moment and began to read the lyrics to "November Rain".
She knew the song. She’d chosen it, after all.
She knew a lot of before-her-time songs. Mainly because her brother or father had introduced her to them. But she didn't know these particular lyrics very well, and she wanted to know them. And after sharing songs with Cal, she didn't think she would ever look at any lyrics the same way again.
The incessant piano, the crashing, violent sounds, and the words filled her mind — words she applied to Cal, herself, and life. Especially the stanza at the end. The words she knew Axl would repeat over and over, a mantra after her own heart.
The closed off places.
Did she have those?
Would Axl's scratchy, pleading-with-you voice be enough to make her believe those throaty, begging words? Did Cal believe them?
Rosa had been quietly watching Annie from near the bookshelf in the corner, wiping around novels with a cloth, hips moving to the rock-n-roll beat when Annie caught her eye and lowered the volume. "Is it too loud?"
"I like this. Guns N' Roses. Yes?"
"Yes." Annie laughed, then held the camera up. "Can I take your picture?"
"I am not dressed for a photoshoot.”
"You look stunning.”
Annie remained on the floor, stood on her knees, and photographed Rosa in her orange capris with a cross around her neck pointing into the V of her satin blouse — basically in her prime and ready for any impromptu photoshoot any time.
God... Her skin. The chunky curls. The jaguar eyes. The age lines.
Snap. Snap. Snap.
"Cal took me to the gallery by the beach," Rosa interrupted. "I saw your photographs." Annie stood and lowered the camera as Rosa finished speaking. "They’re beautiful."
A clothespin pinched Annie’s tongue or something.
He’d taken Rosa to the gallery.
Words weren't forming. Forget the clothespin. Her tongue was a brick or something else heavy, and it was pasty. Thick. Nothing about her could move. No hands. No feet. No breath.
Axl continued, though, singing about needs.
Annie couldn’t need anyone.
Cal didn’t need anyone.
The eight-minute song had reached the crescendo, the climax, the part that had affected her as she’d read the lyric sheet. Perfect timing. And by perfect she meant not perfect. Singing and pleading mixed with the sound of the instruments. It colored her disbelief that Cal would do something so intimate with someone he loved dearly.
Cal had taken Rosa to the gallery.
To see her photographs.
Axl's voice. The shredding of the piano, fingers across several keys, raking-raking-raking until Annie went blind with fright.
I don't need someone.
We have to move on.
Nothing is permanent.
"Annie..." Rosa touched her arm.
Annie tried to smile. Had it worked? "I'm sorry." Tongue untwist. Please. "I'm just..." At a loss for words. In shock. Making a big deal out of nothing.
"I didn't think… I didn't know he cared about…"
"You didn't think he cared about what?" Rosa pushed Annie’s hair behind her neck and cupped her chin.
"My photos." Liar.
"About you, Annie." Rosa spoke as if the answer to the question was so completely obvious, as usual, but Annie must have somehow missed the bulletin, or she refused to acknowledge it.
Annie looked away.
"You know he cares for you." Rosa placed Annie's hand over her heart. "Here."
Annie met Rosa’s eyes, which was a terrible mistake because now Annie might cry. She refused to cry. And the fault would lie with this woman and her onyx, all-knowing, truth-seeking jaguar eyes.
There had been no mistaking in Rosa’s tone.
Or her stance.
The truth had been in her words.
Her eyes...
Annie moved her fingers away from her heart and shook her head. She looked at the floor.
It's a fling. Tab said don't overthink it. I say don't overthink. I say.
Annie teetered on the edge of erupting, of embarrassing herself, of crying, but instead, she held it all inside and locked it away, afraid entertaining any kind of future with this man would eat away at whatever time they had left. They’d discussed this. Rational and adult-like. They’d made a decision.
Be in the now.
No talk.
No plans.
No what-ifs.
Only the summer.
An end.
"He bought one, you know?" Rosa had gone back to the shelf. Annie seemed to still be choking and tripping over the new piece of information.
"Oh, I'm always telling you things I shouldn't." The fragile lines next to Rosa's eyes creased.
Why shouldn't Rosa have told her? Why hadn’t Cal told her?
Privacy...
"Which one?" She slipped her thumb nail past her teeth. The cove.
"Pfeiffer Beach."
"Where is it?" Annie looked around the room even though she knew it wasn't there.
"He sent it home." Rosa's eyes said more than her words. "It was a gift."
Annie's heart hit the floor with a thud.
"He wanted her to see something she used to love. To be able to look at it every day."
This time, Annie cried. Not blubbery, but quiet. Tears slid down her cheeks.
"Oh, mi amor,” Rosa said, waiting for Annie’s gaze, and when it came, it was haunting. "Your heart, preciosa, is opening his back up. He has been waiting for you."
Annie wiped away the tears and allowed Rosa to pull her into an embrace. She tried to escape, but it was pointless. Useless. Her throat, tighter than ever, had sealed shut. Her body remained rigid, unsure, afraid.
The phone in Annie’s camera bag made a ping.
The women released each other.
Rosa placed her palm against Annie's cheek and sighed, and then she whispered in Spanish as she returned to the tasks she seemed to do only because she loved him.
Annie checked the text message.
Cal: You haven't left me?
"It's getting late," Annie said to Rosa, phone in palm as she walked over to the large, sparkling-clean window.
The noon sun made its way through the leaves on the trees, shining into the loft, and some of the things in the room reflected off the glass. Annie leaned her head onto the pane, closed her eyes, and just felt the vibration of the song as it played. She didn't recognize it, only Axl’s screech.
"Where is your family, Annie?"
"Seattle."
"You are from there?"
"Yes."
Annie’s phone chimed again.
"Hmmm," was all Rosa said, looking as if dots were connecting in her mind.
Cal: I'm sorry I have work today.
Annie dismissed Cal's second message and opened the Uber app, knowing he’d be mad. She should’ve let him call Carl, but she needed to go — and now — before her feelings completely consumed the lot of her.
Annie placed the needle on the holster, put the record away, then stood.
"I won't see you the rest of this week. I'm going home to visit my sons and their family." Rosa gave Annie’s bicep a squeeze. "I like talking with you." She winked. "It’s easy to tell you things. I can tell you are different than…" Rosa made herself laugh.
“Than what?”
“I came here, Annie, because Cal had lost the light.”