Magic Hour

The silence turned awkward. Julia must have noticed, too, because she finally turned to him and said, “Tell me something real, Max. I don’t know anything about you.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Why are you in Rain Valley?”

He gave her the answer he gave everyone. “One too many gang shootings in L.A.”

“Why do I think that’s only part of the story?”

“I keep forgetting you’re a shrink.”

“And a good one.” She smiled. “Jumping to conclusions notwithstanding. So, tell me.”

He shrugged. “I’d been having some personal issues, so I decided to make some changes. I quit my job and moved up here. I love the mountains.”

“Personal issues?”

Of course she picked up on what mattered. “That’s too real,” he said quietly.

“Sometimes you have to get away.”

He nodded. “It was easy to leave Los Angeles. My family is crazy enough to be carnival workers, every one. My parents—Ted and Georgia, before you ask—are currently on leave from their jobs teaching at Berkeley. They’re traveling through Central America in a motor home called Dixie. Last I heard they were looking for some bug that’s been extinct for eons.”

Julia smiled. “What do they teach?”

“Biology and Organic Chemistry, respectively. My sister, Ann, is in Thailand. Tsunami relief. My brother, Ken, works for a big-time think tank in the Netherlands. No one has seen him in almost a decade. Every year I get a Christmas card that says: ‘My best wishes to you and yours, Dr. Kenneth Cerrasin.’”

Julia laughed so hard she snorted. At the sound, she laughed harder. Max found himself laughing along with her.

“And I thought my family was strange.”

“Pikers,” he said, grinning.

“Were they there for you when your . . . trouble happened?”

Max felt his smile fade. “You sure know how to throw a punch, don’t you?”

“Hazard of the trade. It’s just . . . I know how alone I felt during the mess in L.A.”

“We’re not that kind of family.”

“So you were alone, too.”

He put down his drink. “Why are you here, Julia?”

“In Rain Valley? You know why.”

“Here,” he said, letting his voice soften.

“Alice spoke tonight. She said stay.”

“I knew you’d do it.”

A smile overtook her face; it came all at once, as if she hadn’t expected it. The porch light bathed her skin, tangled in her hair, made her lashes look spidery and fragile against her cheeks. She moved slightly. Water rippled against his chest. “The thing is . . . I’ve been waiting every day for weeks for this to happen. . . .”

“And?”

“And when it happened, all I could think was that I wanted to tell you.”