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“That was True St. John. Pauly and Ruby Jean’s granddaughter.”

For some reason, hearing who she was related to made invisible puzzle pieces click in place. Ms. Ruby had the same magnetic pull about her, making it impossible not to feel something in her presence.

But why hadn’t I run into True before?

“She come here often?” I asked before Trinity could turn away to serve someone else.

The bartender’s smile slipped just a fraction, and her words were cryptic when she said, “We’ll see.”

We’ll see.

I sipped my beer, remembering the way she’d lost herself in the music, wondering what it felt like to completely submit to something and let it move through me.

It seemed freeing. Cathartic. Peace-inducing.

Halfway through that second beer, I tapped out and settled my tab, knowing I needed to drive to the other side of the mountain to get home. I wasn’t a lightweight, but I didn’t need anything impairing me while I pushed my truck to make the climb up to the resort.

For the whole twenty-minute trip home, I repeated True’s name over the soft hum of the radio.

“True St. John.”

Ruby Jean’s granddaughter.

Liked Sade.

Liked to dance.

It wasn’t a lot, but it was something.

Where had she gone tonight? Was she safe?

I didn’t know why the answers to those questions mattered so much. She didn’t even know me. So why was my mind obsessing over whether she was okay?

As much as I tried, I couldn’t shake the sight of that damn tear from my head or the way she looked when it fell. There was melancholy clinging to her, but peace hadn’t been far behind. She didn’t look upset, she looked resolved. And I wanted to know what that was about. Even though I knew the chances of me seeing her again and getting to ask her were slim to none.

Still, I tucked the questions away in the back of my mind in case the universe was listening and we crossed paths again.

What I didn’t know was the next time I saw True St. John, she would be on my best friend’s arm.

I couldn’t believe I was moving to a place where the air hurt my face in winter.

Truth be told, I’d only thought about it for a millisecond before I packed up my car in King’s Town and started the four-hour drive across the state.

Desperate times called for desperate measures.

I could not endure another second in that house with my parents hovering over me like I would combust at any moment.

How I’d made it a year was anybody’s guess.

Granted, I’d been heavily subdued for the first six months, so lost in a cloud of my own grief that I hadn’t known what day it was for weeks at a time. But I’d climbed my way out of that hole and I needed the people around me to catch up.

I wasn’t fragile. I wasn’t going to break.

They were treating me with kid gloves when all I wanted to do was get back to my normal routine. Such as it was without my other half anyway.

Guilt tried to squeeze the organ in my chest.

My parents had their own grief to deal with and I knew watching over me let them redirect that energy to the only remaining child they had.