Chapter 4: The Last Light

Lila kept one hand steady on the wheel and the other curled under her thigh, like she used to when she was a girl — back before leaving had become her only instinct.

The desert was still the same: flat where it needed to be, jagged where it didn’t ask permission. Even in late summer, the light burned bright enough to hollow you out. And the wind, ever dramatic, carried sand and secrets in equal measure.

The house appeared like a mirage, tucked between a line of Joshua trees and a sun-baked ridge that once caught fire when she was twelve. It looked smaller now. Like time had exhaled and left everything slightly deflated.

She parked in front of the gate and sat there for a moment, letting the engine tick its way to silence. From the passenger seat, the box of her mother’s things — labeled Estate, Maree, L. — stared up at her like a challenge.

Inside the house, the air was dense with disuse. Dust curled in the sunlight like smoke. Her mother’s scent — lavender oil and old books — had mostly faded, but it lingered faintly in the hallway, as if it had chosen not to leave completely.

The kitchen table still bore the ring from Lila’s first coffee cup. The one she drank from the day after she told her mother she was moving away for good.

There’d been no shouting. Just the stillness. That awful, echoing stillness that clung to Lila’s bones for years after.

She wandered outside near dusk. The sky was doing its usual trick — bleeding oranges and hot pinks into deep indigo, like it was trying to outdo itself. The sun was low, but still blinding.

She walked out past the dry well and toward the bluff that overlooked the arroyo. There, she used to sit for hours with her mother in silence. Not uncomfortable silence — the kind that let your shoulders drop and your mind unspool.

Tonight, she sat alone.

“I’m here,” she whispered, as if the desert might respond.
“I came back.”

The wind shifted.

A hawk circled overhead.

And the light — that impossible, golden, too-much light — stretched itself over the rocks, warming everything it touched until it glowed. It made her think of forgiveness. Not the kind you ask for, but the kind you offer yourself.

Her mother had always said the desert didn’t give answers — it just made space for better questions.

Lila sat with that for a while, the radiance of the setting sun burning against her closed eyelids like a quiet truth.

She had come home to bury things.
But maybe she was here to remember, too.
Maybe even to begin.