Reese grew up on the warm side of California money — the fast kind, made in an industry that sells dreams. It bought a house with too much light in it, a childhood of possibility, and a habit of assuming doors open. To Reese, money has never been a cage. It is a key, and she has always been faintly embarrassed to be holding one.
She is generous in the way people are when they have never had to count, and unflashy in the way people are when they have never had to prove it. The most expensive thing she owns is not the watch or the car. It is a worn denim jacket she has had since long before Berkeley, mended twice, that she would not replace for anything.
She met Sloane Whitlock in their first week of university. Sloane arrived braced for four years of being useful to someone, and Reese was the one person who simply did not want anything from her and stayed anyway. That is the whole origin of the friendship: Reese found someone sharp enough to keep up, and Sloane found someone who was not keeping score.
What makes Reese good — the reaching, the wanting to know, the belief that a strange thing might turn out to be a wonderful thing — is exactly what makes her dangerous to be near. She has no firm waiting for her and no track laid down. She graduated into an open field and called it freedom. So when the road narrows and the fog closes and every sensible instinct says turn the car around, Reese is the one who says: let's just see where it goes.