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Chapter ELEVEN

We hike for a couple of hours, then end by walking up the street to his house. "This is steeper than the hike!" I laugh.

"It is."

"How do you drive on this when there's snow?"

"I don't. I park at the bottom of the hill and walk up."

That would do a lot to give a person a great ass, that's for sure.

At his house, it's still easy between us. "Do you want to check your email? I'll get us some lunch." He slides the backpack off. "If you can stay?"

"I can stay."

He grabs a sleek laptop from a table, opens it on his arm and types in a password. "There you go."

He's opened a guest account for me. There are five responses from applications I've sent out, but they're all just acknowledgments. Or so I think until I get to the last one, which is from McDonald's. A real person named Betty.

We'd love to talk to you for an opening at our Weber store . The phone number you put on the application is not right. We have 555-321-4385.

The number is wrong-I transposed the last two numbers. It should be 58. Crap. I hit reply and apologize profusely and give her the correct number. Not that I am dying to work at McDonalds, but it's two more days 'til payday and I have no idea if I'll actually get that check. If I worked at McDonald's, I could work at the greenhouse, too, maybe. Why haven't I thought of that before?

Tyler is still doing something in another part of the house, so I fold my legs under me and go to Facebook. My inbox has the number 17 in red and I sigh-no one ever sends me email there, so I'm guessing the messages will all be from Rick.

There is also a new friend request. I go to that first.

It's Tyler. I find myself smiling gigantically, and I'm glad I changed my relationship status before he went looking for me. A rustle of pleasure goes down my spine as I imagine him typing my name into the search box. I click yes in response, but I'm not about to go to his page in his house. Instead I type in my own status box: Hiked this morning! Could eat a horse.

Then, if only to clean them out, I open the inbox. There's a long list of messages from Rick, all saying the same thing in different ways: I love u. I dont want to brake up. Ill do whatever you want. He's not the greatest speller and I always mostly forgave him, but looking at the messages today, some mean part of me is embarrassed that he's such a bad writer. Third-grade bad, even though he tries to disguise it with all kinds of texting abbreviations.

Lucy has also written an email. Seriously, Jess, Rick is totally losing it. Can you at least talk to him? He really really is falling apart. Call me!

I have no desire to do either one. Number 1 not see him and have him cry and beg to come back, or number 2, listen to her tell me all the reasons I should do number 1. The sad thing I didn't realize is that she was one of my only friends. The other is in a coma in the hospital. It makes me feel lonely.

Which makes me think of my dream when my mother told me to find my dad. I didn't look on Facebook the last time, and I type his name into the search box now. Again a long list of people pops up, most of them in England, a couple in Australia.

And then there he is. Keiran Pears in Marlborough, South Island, New Zealand. Again, his picture, so intimately familiar, gives me a strong emotional reaction. He has a big sunny smile on his face, and I have a sudden flash of his hands around my waist as he swung me into the air. I can see that face, below me, laughing.

It makes my chest ache in this weird, unexpected way, and I click on the page to see how much I can access. He only shares some things with his friends, but I can see a lot about the vineyard, photos of him working with the vines, tasting the wine. His wife's name is Helen, and she's not as pretty as my mom by any stretch, but I reluctantly like her round cheeks, her curly hair. She looks like a mom, like she should have a bunch of kids trailing behind her at the park.