She shook her head. Neither of those could be right. They locked their bedroom doors at night, and it was Viola, her nanny, who took care of her, right up until she was in the sixth grade. That was the year Victoria announced that Emma had outgrown the need for a babysitter. Emma had been glad to see Viola leave, because at the end of every day, the woman tattled to Victoria if Emma did one thing or ate anything that would upset her mother.

She finally slung back the sheet, turned on the bedside lamp, and got out of bed. She hadn’t finished the apple dumpling that Sophie had brought her for supper, so she started to the kitchen for a midnight snack and noticed the framed piece on the wall again. She stopped and read the whole thing: Love will put you face-to-face with endless obstacles. It will ask you to reveal the parts of yourself you tirelessly work at hiding. It will ask you to find compassion for yourself and receive what it is you are convinced you are not worthy of. Love will always demand more. Surrender to being seen and being loved. Surrender to the beauty of revealing yourself to yourself, and to the ones who saw you before you saw you.

It was signed Vienna Pharaon. Emma made a mental note to look that person up on the internet. She either had gone through something traumatic herself or else she had an amazing understanding of folks like Emma.

Compassion. Worthy. Revealing. Those words kept going through Emma’s mind as she got the rest of the dumpling out of the refrigerator and carried it out to the porch. The few times she’d tried to go outside by herself in the dark after she had come home from college, she had had a panic attack. That night she eased down into her chair, but her chest didn’t tighten up and she had no trouble breathing. Out in the distance, a coyote howled, and another one farther out answered him. The mountain, more than a mile out there, was a black blob with a half-moon hanging above it. A single star left a million others behind, trailed by a long tail as it streaked across the sky.

Sophie had told her when they were children that you got a wish when you saw a star falling out of the sky. The only other time that Emma had seen one before that night was the evening before she went off to college. That night she wished for the hundredth time that she would someday be a famous artist.

She watched until the shooting star was completely gone and then shut her eyes and wished that she could remember those repressed memories. Not knowing was harder than facing the fears—or was it? She frowned at the thought. Maybe she wasn’t as strong as Sophie thought she was, or even as that quote on her wall talked about—could she reveal parts of herself that she worked so hard at hiding? Would knowing what they were destroy her altogether?

“You couldn’t sleep, either?” Josh’s voice coming out of the dark startled her so badly that she almost jumped up and ran into the trailer.

He was standing at the end of the porch steps, and Coco chose that moment to jump up into her lap. She remembered what she had wished for and wondered if fate had sent Josh to help her.

“Yes. I mean, no. What I mean is that I couldn’t sleep.” She hoped that she didn’t sound like a total idiot. “So, you have trouble sleeping, too?”

“Yep,” he answered. “Sometimes a walk helps me calm down. I have trouble settling down at night. No, that’s not right. I have the same trouble in the daytime, but my artwork helps me with that.”

“ADHD?” she asked.

“They tested me for that and thought I might be in the higher-functioning range of the autism spectrum, but the tests were all in the normal range.” He sat down on the bottom step. “My mother tried to diagnose me with her own psych tests and finally decided I’m socially challenged. Daddy said I was just lazy. Mother said I could overcome it with lots of therapy.”

“Mother has always said that I’m antisocial and basically that I can’t take care of myself,” Emma blurted out and wished she could take the words back. She didn’t talk to very many people, most especially to a man she didn’t even know, and she surely didn’t tell anyone personal things like that, but there was something about Josh that she kind of trusted.

Josh chuckled. “Well, I’m that, too. Probably the reason I’m uptight tonight is that Arty and I are going to the store tomorrow. I hate to leave the trailer park, but Arty is right. I need to face my fears at least once a week.”

“I’m afraid of men.” Emma’s voice seemed to have a mind of its own.

“I’m uncomfortable around men and women,” Josh admitted.

“Why?” Emma asked. This wasn’t a contest between them.

“I’m afraid they’ll make fun of me, like the kids did when I went to public school. My folks finally hired a tutor and I finished my schooling at home.” He didn’t look at her but at the porch floor.

“I had the exact same life, but Sophie is helping me to be strong. We probably both should tell folks to go to hell if they don’t like us.” A surge of protectiveness shot through her. She had always wished she had the courage to say those words to the kids who bullied her because she was so shy, or better yet, to her mother.

“Aw.” Josh grinned. “I can’t do that. It just ain’t in me. Accepting who I am has been one of the good things about living out here in the boonies.”

“I hope that I can do the same thing someday.” Emma’s tone sounded wistful even to her own ears. “I sure like it here. There’s something eerily peaceful about this place, even at night.”

“Does the dark bother you?” Josh asked.

“Maybe,” she answered. “How about you?”

“I love the night. When I was a little boy, I used to crawl out on the porch roof and pretend that I was the only one in the whole world. Just me and the moon and the stars,” Josh answered. “No one was ever mean to me in the night.”

Emma couldn’t agree with him there. Whatever had terrified her had happened at night. Even though Victoria scolded her for being a big baby, she still had to have a night-light or she couldn’t sleep at all.

“I should be going. Nice visitin’ with you.” Josh stood up and waved over his shoulder as he disappeared into the darkness.

Whatever I don’t want to remember happened at night, and it had to do with a man and satin sheets. She rubbed Coco’s fur from her head to the end of her long, fluffy tail. I know that much, but the rest is a mystery. Josh is a nice person. I’m not afraid of him, but maybe my fear of men has been because I was assaulted.

The cat purred loudly, then jumped down off her lap and ran in the same direction that Josh had gone. Emma stood up, went back inside, put on her jeans with the borrowed nightshirt she was wearing for the second night, and shoved her feet down into the cowboy boots beside her bed. Courage. That’s what the quote on the wall said. If she couldn’t sleep, she’d see if Josh’s remedy to take a walk in the night would help. She made it to the bottom step before she lost her courage and turned around to go back to her chair.

Then Josh appeared out of the darkness again. “I didn’t go far, but I’m not ready to turn in just yet. Want to stretch your legs a little bit?”

“Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know. Probably not.”

“How about just once around the trailer park? That might help and you won’t be more than a stone’s throw from your own place,” he suggested. “I’ll be glad to go with you.”