Chapter Seventeen #2
I covered my eyes with a hand. “Yes, they’re my nieces.”
“Right. I caught them with their friend in a hot tub on one of the yachts down here. They say you work on the boat.”
Three girls could only mean one thing: Greyson was there too. Had Alex already gotten this call? “Yes, I’m a stewardess on the Serendipity.”
“That’d be the boat, then. Listen, they seem harmless enough, so as long as you can come get them, I think a warning will do.”
“Yes, of course, thank you.” I hung up and swung my legs from the bed, still only half-awake.
I slid on my shoes, pausing on my way out the door to look at the empty sofa bed, anger flaring within me at the sight.
Once in my car, I crossed the parking lot and stopped in front of Alex’s unit.
But before I could call him, he stepped outside, van keys in hand and looking as tired and confused as I was.
“I’m guessing you got the same call I did,” Alex said when I waved him over.
“Yup.” I patted the passenger seat. “Get in.”
“This isn’t what I thought we’d be doing together in the middle of the night,” he said once he’d closed the car door after him. I raised my eyebrows at him, and he rapped against the window with his knuckles. “Distance. Right. Just trying to lighten the mood.”
I shook my head, flexing my fingers around the steering wheel as I drove. “Sneaking onto the boat to use the hot tub? What were they thinking?”
“They weren’t thinking.”
“I don’t understand.” I kept my eyes on the empty road ahead, taking the same route Alex and I had on all those morning commutes. “They were acting perfectly normal all night. They were half-asleep when I went to bed.” Had they been planning this even then? How could they be so deceitful?
Alex stared out the window when the ocean came into view. “Sounds better than my night. Greyson went straight to her room. She hasn’t spoken a word to me.”
“You okay?”
Alex shook his head. “I’m doing what I think is best for her, but we’re both miserable.”
Then stay, I wanted to tell him. But that would be selfish, so I let us fall into silence.
My thoughts turned to Mia and Kitty, my anger growing with every mile.
That phone call had scared me out of my mind.
Anything could have happened to them. Didn’t they know better by now?
Hadn’t losing Samson taught them anything?
By the time we arrived at the marina, I was shaking again. Alex didn’t look any better off, fuming beside me as we walked to the security office. The girls sat against the wall outside, staring at their knees. Beside them was a big guy in a security guard uniform. Officer Thomas, presumably.
“I believe these three belong to you,” he said when Alex and I stopped in front of him.
“Yes. I’m so sorry.” I shot Mia and Kitty a glare, but they avoided my gaze.
After a few minutes of polite conversation and a warning to the girls, Officer Thomas disappeared inside, leaving Alex and me alone with our delinquents.
“Car,” Alex said to Greyson. I pointed the girls in the same direction, too angry to speak.
The girls slid silently into the back seat, and I was glad to be driving.
It gave me something to do. The atmosphere was tense as I pulled out of the marina, and I glanced in the rearview mirror.
Kitty looked down at her feet, Greyson had her face to the window, and Mia stared straight ahead, tugging on the strings of her tie-dyed hoodie, face expressionless.
After a few minutes of silence, Alex turned in his seat to look at Greyson. “Why were you there?”
Greyson didn’t respond.
“Greyson, answer me,” Alex said.
Through the rearview mirror I could see Kitty looking between Mia and Greyson, her lip trembling. “We only wanted to cheer her up,” she said. “Like you and Aunt Jo did after that charter with the dog people.”
“Thank you, Kitty,” Alex said before turning to Greyson again. “The silent treatment ends now, Grey. I’d like you to tell me why you were there.”
Greyson turned to him, talking so fast and so loud, it made me flinch. “Because I’m tired of listening to you! Why should I when you don’t even care what I think? You’re always giving up things I never asked you to give up! I don’t want to go to L.A.—”
“I don’t see what this has to do with you sneaking onto the—”
“Ugh!” Greyson groaned, knocking the back of my seat with her knees. “You always decide what’s best for us without even asking me. You don’t want to leave, either, so I don’t understand why we’re going when neither of us wants to go.”
“Because your mom—”
“I don’t have a mom! She didn’t want me, and now she does? Why? What changed? She came to see me twice and now we’re supposed to just pack up our life and fit into hers?”
“It’s more complicated than—”
“We literally just moved here, which you didn’t ask my opinion about either. Or when you quit the restaurant and we left New York. How about Maggie fits into our life if she wants to be in it so bad?”
“It’s not that simple, Greyson.” Alex’s eyes flitted over to me, but I stared straight ahead. “Your mom, she—”
“I told you. I don’t have a mom. Maggie can pretend she’s my mom all she likes, but she isn’t, and she never will be, and I don’t even need a mom, because I have you.
” Her voice broke, strangled as she forced the words from her mouth.
“I know you think you have to give up everything for me, or fix things, or whatever. But there’s nothing to fix.
She left, and you didn’t, and I don’t want anyone else, even though you make me so mad sometimes! ”
Alex looked at her for a long moment, and I wished I could know what he was thinking. “We’ll talk about this at home,” he said, then turned back around in his seat and stared out the window.
Quiet overtook the car again. I’d intended to keep silent until we were back at the condo, but then I caught Mia making a face at Kitty when I glanced in the rearview mirror, and couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“Wipe that look off your face, Mia,” I snapped. “I can’t believe you would do this. Do you know how sick I was with worry? To get a phone call in the middle of the night? How did you get there? And don’t tell me you walked.”
“Nothing happened,” Mia said, and I remembered her comment on the day they’d arrived about minors with fake IDs being able to use Uber.
“Let me guess, you called an Uber, right? And you’re lucky nothing happened.
Two thirteen-year-olds and a sixteen-year-old getting in a stranger’s car in the middle of the night?
It would’ve been better if you’d stolen my car!
Do you have any idea what could’ve happened?
You could’ve been kidnapped! Or fallen overboard or gotten hurt.
The boat isn’t a toy. And don’t even get me started on the trespassing.
Alex and I will be lucky if the owners don’t find out about this, because if they do, Captain will have our heads. We could lose our jobs for this.”
“It’s not a big deal,” Mia said. “You got this job by trespassing.”
I gripped the steering wheel tighter. “It is a big deal, Mia. And that was different. I was an adult, and yeah, looking back on it, it was a terrible idea. Your mother entrusted me with the two of you for the summer, and if something happened to you—” I shook my head. “I have to keep you safe.”
“But you can’t keep us safe!” she said. “Haven’t you figured that out yet? No one can keep anyone safe! It’s all random. People die and there’s nothing anyone can do about it, so why try?”
I forced myself to keep my eyes on the road ahead, too angry to look at her. “You’re right, Mia. I can’t guarantee your safety, but that doesn’t mean you should go out of your way to be reckless.”
The car went silent again, and no one spoke the rest of the way home.
All I could think about was what Mia had said.
Safe. I turned the word over in my mind like a stone.
It was as if Mia were looking for trouble, like she was daring it to follow her.
If anything happened to her or Kitty . .
. I couldn’t even think about it. What would it do to me? To Beth?
“Thanks, Jo,” Alex said when I stopped in front of his unit. I gave him a sympathetic smile, our eyes meeting before he shut the door. I watched him disappear inside his condo, our kisses in the karaoke restaurant’s parking lot feeling as if they had happened forever ago.
The girls didn’t move or speak when I parked the car, and their silence only made me angrier. I clicked out of my seat belt and turned to face them. Didn’t they have anything to say for themselves?
“Do you have any idea what I gave up this summer to be with you? I had a whole trip planned. I was going to go to Europe, actually finish my list, but instead I’m getting calls in the middle of the night because my nieces thought it would be fun to take an Uber to party on the yacht!”
Mia remained still, but tears shone in Kitty’s eyes.
“After everything we’ve gone through, you should know better than to put yourselves in danger like that.
Don’t you think your mother’s been through enough?
Haven’t you seen what losing your brother has done to her?
If you don’t care about yourselves, at least think about her. ”
Mia glanced up at me with that guilty look I’d seen pass over her face from time to time, the one I’d tried to make sense of but hadn’t figured out.
She shook her head, tears running down her cheeks as she stared at me.
“I ruin everything,” she said, her voice breaking.
She undid her seat belt and swung open the car door, slamming it behind her before running inside.
Kitty, still in the back seat, looked at me with wide eyes, and I turned away.
Moments later, she got out of the car, and I saw her run into the condo after her sister.
My first instinct was to chase after them and explain that nothing was ruined, but I couldn’t move.
I sat in my car, thinking again of how, in a few weeks, I would walk into that condo and be alone.
How I would look across the street, and there’d be no Greyson or Alex passing by in their running clothes.
I told myself I should go inside and make up with the girls.
I should enjoy the time I had left with them.
But I didn’t want them to see me falling apart like I was now, angry and crying in my car.
I was supposed to be the one keeping things together.
I stared out the windshield, watching the glow of the TV from my condo until my breathing was even again.
When I finally slipped into the living room, both girls were asleep on the sofa bed, Kitty with her arm thrown around Mia.
I watched their sleeping faces, filled with regret for what I’d said.
I’d been too harsh. They were just kids.
They’d lost their brother, and nothing made sense anymore.
Of course they were acting out. Of course they were seeking out good memories.
Hadn’t I been doing the same thing? I wanted to wake them and apologize.
But it was almost four in the morning, and I’d need to leave for work in a few hours. Sleep. That was what all of us needed.
Mia’s eyelashes fluttered. For a moment, I thought she might wake up and we could step outside and talk.
But she turned away from me, facing her sister in her sleep.
I kissed them each on the top of the head before I left for my room, feeling a rush of tenderness toward them.
Things would be better tomorrow. Everything looked so different in the light of day.