I followed right behind her, double checking to make sure I fastened the door tightly behind us. If it wasn’t for the shoebox window above the sink, we would have had complete privacy.

“My childhood stomping ground,” Emma said, watching me over her shoulder, examining me as I took in the backyard.

I had tomato gardens bigger than this back in Montana, and this is where five children had spent their formidable years exploring and challenging nature.

Like the front yard, it was more dirt than grass, but even more so back here, and the only sign that someone had put any effort into the yard was the leaning fence surrounding it with a plank missing every four or five spaces. The fence was the eeriest part of the whole set-up.

I don’t like fences. I don’t like the premise of them keeping something locked in or out. I don’t like being fenced. I wasn’t sure if that was because I’d lived in wide open spaces my whole life or because that was just me, but I could almost feel the stirrings of hyperventilation when Emma hung her head, toeing the ground.

“It’s not much, but it was what we had,” she said. “When you grow up without a whole lot, you become very industrious. This was like our own Neverland, somewhere we could escape, somewhere we could be safe. Somewhere we could be somewhere else.” Running a fast hand over her eyes, she smiled into the dark. “We didn’t realize backyards came landscaped and with pools and barbeques and things other than dirt and spotted grass until we got invited over to Ty’s parents’ house when I was in kindergarten.”

Whether it was the memory or thinking of Ty that had brought a smile to her face, I didn’t like it. Not because she was smiling, this was the steady state I wanted Emma to be in every moment of forever, but because Ty—or a memory of him—had made her so happy.

“I dig it,” I said, finding it was quite a nice place when the silver light of the moon cast its mirage on her face. The leaning fence, the arid soil, the brown grass, it morphed into a secret garden that was as beautiful as her sweet face and as boundless as her goodness.

“Come here.” She gestured at me to follow her as she crossed the lawn toward the back corner. “I want to show you what got me through my teenage years.”

Intrigued by that promise and the sway of her h*ps floating into the darkness, I ran after her.

She was already sliding out of her sandals when I reached her, using a metal spring to balance herself on.

“A trampoline,” I said, crossing my arms. “This has got to be some story if this is what got you through your teen years.”

Tossing the other sandal to the side, she leaned against the rusting metal, looking up at the sky. “You ever notice when you’re staring at something as vast as the sky, it’s impossible not to feel absurdly small?”

I didn’t get how this realization had helped a teen who, as a species, is trying to express independence and identity. “Sure,” I answered, “all the time. But how was this your saving grace as a surly teen?”

“Well, along with feeling utterly insignificant in the scale of the universe, so did my problems. If I was nothing more than a speck in the scale of things, then so were my issues.” Lifting a shoulder, she said, “That’s what got me through when I didn’t think I had anything left to . . . get me through.”

When she looked at me, that’s when I got it. Really got it. Emma’s life had been tainted by the monsters and black spaces that position, love, and some luck had saved me from. I didn’t doubt those three things were in short supply in Emma’s life.

Her eyes swept skyward once more, tugging mine along for the journey. “Perspective, you know?” she said. “Sometimes that’s all you need to overcome anything.”

I had a desperate urge to cross the space separating us and fold her into my arms and attempt to leech out every dark moment from her memory. I was just getting after putting intention into action when a sharp rapping interrupted us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jackson wave a “big brother” hand in front of the window.

Emma flapped her hand at him in a go away gesture until the window went vacant.

“You wanna jump?” I asked, wondering how many moments would pass us by before the powers that be stopped wasting them on us. I untied my shoes and tossed them where hers were scattered in the center of the yard.

Pausing once she had hoisted herself over the springs, she glanced at me before running her eyes down her length. Mine had no issues in following. “Sorry, but girls in shelf bras and wispy skirts don’t bounce on trampolines. At least, not ones who don’t spend their nights working for tips.”

The heat was too instant and too intense, so I knew it had to be diffusing over my face.

“Blushing,” she said, surveying me. “I didn’t take you for the blushing kind. Red’s a good color on you.”

Looking for a distraction, I launched onto the trampoline in one leap, bumping into her not by accident. “So what did you have in mind then? If it doesn’t involve using a trampoline to bounce on. I don’t know why I’d be so foolish to make such a suggestion.”

She let me hold the non-existent space between us, our bodies rocking against each other as the vibrations of my cannon-ball jump evaporated.

Without warning, she crashed down on the trampoline, stretching out her legs and crossing her arms behind her head. “I was thinking we could get a little perspective for awhile,” she said, her eyes bouncing between the stars. “I’ll provide the location.”

I took a giant leap, going supine in the air before crashing down beside her. We’d be feeling the aftershocks of the jump for awhile.

“And I’ll provide the sparkling conversation,” I said, adjusting my body when it popped up so I’d land shoulder to shoulder with her.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.”

The trampoline quieted beneath us. I wished my heart could have followed suit.

“I’m waiting for you to wow me with your vast knowledge of the cosmos,” Emma said at last. “Sorry if my continued silence didn’t make that clear.”

I pretzeled my arms behind my neck, my elbow overlapping hers. “Forgive me. I’ve never been good at reading minds. Let me clarify. I’ve never been good at reading your mind.”

“And you have no problem reading everyone else’s mind, is that what you’re saying?”

“Pretty much. A woman’s mind is a tough nut to crack, although not impossible, but we men are simple creatures who only have one of three things on our mind at any given time,” I said, feeling like I was about to betray some code we kept secret so the women wouldn’t use it against us. “Once you realize that, all you have to do is inspect the eyes and you can tell with one hundred percent accuracy what he’s thinking.”

“The eyes,” she said like she didn’t believe it.

“They are the windows to the soul, you know?” I said, bouncing her elbow below mine. “I’ll give you the knowledge—you test it to see if it’s true. So if a man has those wide, kind of manic, kind of desperate eyes, he’s hungry. If he has sunken, glazed over eyes, he’s tired,” I continued, realizing how pathetically predictable we are when I verbalized it to a woman. “And if he has that partially narrowed, pupils dilated, tortured look in his eyes, he needs, wants, or desires sex.”

“Wow,” Emma breathed. “You men never left your caveman roots behind.”

Nodding my head, I said, “Sad, but true. Don’t get me wrong though, there are varying degrees of those three male essentials.”

“How evolved of you,” Emma said, nudging closer to me. Unlike me, she didn’t try to disguise it. “Now that you’ve got me convinced that we’ve got nothing more than a band of suit wearing monkeys running the country, why don’t you get back to telling me everything you know about the stars?”

“I’m afraid our conversation would end in about five seconds flat,” I admitted. “If you want an astronomy lesson, you want to talk to my brother William. He’s the modern renaissance man you women love, but he’s good looking too—I mean, he’s my brother, so he’d have to be—so that combo makes him irresistible.” Was that a sour ring I just detected in my voice? “I can get him on the phone, provided he has cell reception wherever he is in the world, and you can ask him any star related question you like and he’ll give you a full and informative answer.” The sourness in my words wasn’t because I knew William was a better man than me, it was because I wanted to be the best man I could for Emma. I wanted to be as good as William because that’s what she deserved.

“Thanks, but I’m good with the present company,” she said, settling her head in the triangle of my arm. I didn’t dare look over for fear of confirming it wasn’t really her head resting in my arm, but a figment of my colorful imagination.

“Do you mind?” she asked suddenly, when I stayed quiet, tensed and fumbling for words.

“Of course not,” I said immediately. “My arm, along with any other piece of me you need, is at your beck and call.” My eyes squeezed shut when I realized what I’d said and how it could be construed, especially coming from someone who’d just admitted men had one of three things on their mind. Real smooth, Patrick. Way to pave the path with romance.

“Thanks,” she said, missing, or ignoring, the double meaning. “Sometimes it’s just nice to be close to someone for the sake of comfort. No expectations, no assumptions, no sense of give and take.” She sighed, like she was preparing to say something else, but nothing else came, so I bridged the silence.

“Your mom seems nice,” I said, because I couldn’t think of any other way to describe Mrs. Scarlett, and she had to be pretty great to raise a woman like Emma.

“Yeah,”—another heavy sigh—“I suppose that’s a politically correct way of saying she’s . . . unusual.”

“Has she always been so quiet?” I asked, chancing a look over at her.

She was looking at me, her head curved into the slopes of my arm, her expression tight like there was an internal debate waging war deep inside. “As long as any of us can remember. Although when we were younger and needed fed and bathed and such, she was a tad more attentive. Thankfully.” Her eyes stayed on mine as the lines of her face flattened, indicating some side had won the internal feud. “Before she had any of us, she was class president, homecoming queen, valedictorian—the world was at her fingertips, she had only to choose which fairy tale life she wanted.”

The Mrs. Scarlett I’d met and the be-all-you-can-be version Emma was describing didn’t compute. I couldn’t imagine what could take the life out of a woman previously bursting with it. In fact, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, so of course I had to ask.

“What happened to her?”

A pause, and then a clipped response. “My dad.”

“Your dad?” I repeated, really not wanting to go deeper into this tunnel, but I couldn’t let Emma fall alone.