She found him waiting on the doorstep, watching the mountains cling to the edges of the sun’s gown. She walked with deliberate steps and joined him, putting her pack to the side. She followed his gaze and saw folds of the mountains become smooth.

“So,” he said after a time. “You’ve been busy.”

She cupped her chin in her hands and sighed. “Yeah.”

“And once again, I wasn’t around.”

Twilight pressed on her heart. “I don’t know how you would have reacted.”

He picked a rock off the porch, fragile as a dove, felt it with his eyes. It was slightly porous and the color of soft charcoal. It held rain.

“I think I…Last night I discerned my vocation. It was after church, and I was talking with Natalie online. She asked me how mass was, so I told her I was feeling unsatisfied and frustrated with the fluff of the priest’s sermon. It wasn’t just that it wasn’t anything new, but it only touched the surface of the issue. And I had read about the topic a few nights ago, and was surprised that the priest decided not to elaborate or even mention some of the lesser known stuff about the subject, because the community would have benefited so much. It would make them look at the second commandment and their relationship with God in a new light. So I was going off on all this theology and was amused by my zeal, and a joke about myself popped into my head, and I was going to type it to Natalie. And suddenly, things paused. It was a weird feeling, like it was a choice. I could say it, or I could not say it. But it had a weight to it. And I typed it.”

She swallowed. “I think I sealed my fate. I’m going to become a nun.”

He looked at her while she spoke—his eyes distant—and everything was strangely clear. The creases in her shirt. The attempted order of her hair. The dewdrop glisten on her puffing eyes. The heart that was big, but not enough to hold all her love.

“I’m going to wait until I’ve gone completely through college, of course—I have a feeling I’m going to need my education. But after that I’m going to start the training. And we’ll see what comes of it.”

Her throat stopped. She pinpointed a star and blinked back the sacrificial beauty of the future. It took some time to contain herself. When she finally looked, he had resumed his stare at the mountains. They were blurred, but not by the night.

Swollen and tender as the silence between them, she turned and let her heart rest on his self. Iceland spar. “What are you thinking?”

“I was thinking about stuff. Oh, the stuff. It was enough to get lost in. But after I recovered from the wave, I perceived three main thoughts. ‘You’re going away.’ ‘I’m really proud of you.’ ‘Now I’m really going to have to bury it.’” He said this to the sky. He could not bear to look.

She sat on the doorstep, arms wrapped around her knees, and held him in the silence. It was so heavy it began to rain.