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August nudges up behind her at the sink, and Jane reaches back automatically, tangling their fingers together.
“Brush your teeth,” August whispers in her ear. “We have time for a round before breakfast.”
Later, August watches her.
There’s this thing Jane likes to do when August kneels over her. August will be a few feet down the mattress, straddling her waist or sitting on her heels between Jane’s legs, trying to work out where she wants to go first, and Jane will do this thing. She closes her eyes and stretches her arms out on either side of her, skims the back of her knuckles across the sheets, arches her back a little, moves her hips from side to side. Naked as anyone in the world has ever been with a silent, broad, closed-lipped smile on her face, wide open and reveling. Soaking it in like it’s the ultimate indulgence to be here in August’s bed and under August’s attention, unblushing, unafraid, content.
It makes August feel trusted and powerful and capable and admired—basically the whole list of things she’s spent twenty-four years trying to figure out how to feel. And so she has a thing she does in return, every single time: she spreads her hands over Jane’s skin and says, “I love you.”
“Mm-hmm, I know,” Jane says, eyes half-open to watch August’s hands on her, and that’s a familiar routine too. A happy, familiar routine.
A week after she graduates college, August gives Jane a file.
Jane frowns at it, finishing her swig of coffee over the kitchen sink.
“I figured out what I want to do,” August says.
“To celebrate your graduation?” Jane asks. “Or, like, with your life?”
She’s been agonizing over both a lot lately. It’s a fair question.
“Both, kind of.” August hops up to sit on the counter. “So, remember when I had my huge meltdown over trying to figure out my purpose in life, and you told me to trust myself?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about that. What I trust about myself, what I’m good at. What I like to do whether or not it’s marketable or whatever. And I’ve been fighting it for a long time, but the truth is: solving things, finding people. That’s my thing.”
Jane raises an eyebrow. She’s lovely underneath the kitchen lighting, handsome and morning-rumpled. August doesn’t think she’ll ever stop feeling lucky to see it.
“Finding people?”
“I found you,” August says, brushing her fingertips under Jane’s chin. “I helped find Augie.”
“So, you want to be… a private investigator?”
“Kind of,” August says. She hops down and starts pacing the kitchen, talking fast. “It’s like… like when you see a viral tweet where one person is like, ‘Here’s a picture of this girl I was best friends with for three days on a Carnival cruise, I only remember her first name, Twitter, do your thing,’ and three days later it has, like, a hundred thousand retweets and someone manages to find this random person based off almost no information and help two people reunite. People could hire me to do that.”
After a long beat, Jane says, “I understood almost nothing you just said.”
Right. These days, August occasionally forgets Jane grew up on eight-tracks and landlines.
“Basically,” August says, “if someone has a long-lost relative they want to know more about, or a half sibling they never knew existed until their dad got drunk and told them at Thanksgiving, or they want to find that friend from second grade who they only halfway remember… I could do that. I’m great at that. It doesn’t have to be my whole job—I still have Billy’s. But I could do this too. And I think, maybe, it can be a good thing. I could make a lot of people happy. Or… at least give them some closure.”
Jane sets her mug down in the sink and nudges between August’s legs to kiss her on the cheek.
“That’s an incredible idea, baby,” she says, drawing back. She points to the file on the counter. “So, what’s this?”
“Okay, so. That. Is kind of… my first attempt at this finding people thing. And I want to say, before you open it, there’s absolutely no pressure. I don’t want you to feel like you have to do anything, especially not before you’re ready.” Jane picks up the folder and flips it open. “But…”
August watches her face shift as she leafs through the pages. She slides a photo out from its paper clip to examine it more closely.
“Is this—?”
“That’s your sister,” August says, voice only a little shaky. “Betty. She still lives in the Bay area. She has three kids—two boys, one girl. That’s her at her oldest son’s wedding. And that’s… that’s her son’s husband.”
“Oh my God.” She paces over to one of the Eames chairs, sitting gingerly on the edge. “August.”
“I found your other sister too,” August says, hopping down to follow her. She kneels between Jane’s bare feet. “And your parents… your parents are alive.”
