Chapter 7 #2
“My grandma grew up there too,” Emily said, as if she were the expert, though she had only been there once as a kid, and it was before Nora was born so she’d been too young to truly remember it. And these days, she only sometimes, briefly, thought about Santa Monica and the return address.
“That’s actually where I’m headed now.” She sighed. “My mom is in the hospital.”
“I’m so sorry,” Emily said.
Cara shook her head. “She’ll be fine, I think. All three of my sisters live in California. But I still felt I had to go there and see her with my own eyes, you know?”
Emily nodded, like she did know. But when you don’t grow up with a mother, you actually don’t know stuff like that. She resisted telling Cara all of that, though weirdly it felt like maybe she would understand.
Cara glanced up at the flight screen. Then gulped down the rest of her wine. “Shoot, my flight was canceled. I should go figure out how to rebook.” She stood and grabbed her bag.
“Actually, wait,” Emily called after her.
“Can I get your number? I’ll call you when I’m back.
We can get a real drink.” She paused for a moment.
“You can let me know your mom is okay. And I can let you know why I work at a bank.” She would need the week to come up with something entirely interesting to say.
Cara hesitated for a moment, then pulled a pen from her black leather purse, grabbed Emily’s hand, and quickly scribbled her number across Emily’s palm.
“Make sure you write it down before you wash your hands!” she called behind her as she ran down the terminal.
On Tuesday morning, Julia had her eyes closed while nursing Veronica on the white leather couch.
The TV was on mute in the background, The Price Is Right.
Though it was almost ten, and the schedule she’d made had included a morning walk at nine, Nora and Emily were still upstairs, likely asleep.
Truth be told, the schedule of activities she had meticulously planned for them was already, two days into the week, too hard to keep with a baby in tow.
Nora and Emily hadn’t complained that she’d brought Veronica, but neither sister had seemed thrilled when the baby had woken them all up crying in the middle of the night.
Still, her sisters had been kind enough not to say anything about it, but there was a tacit understanding that no one was expected to follow Julia’s schedule.
And Julia had not had it in her to explain to her sisters the circumstances that had led to her bringing the baby in the first place: firing the nanny on Friday and the huge fight that ensued with Ted the next day.
All the milk she’d been pumping and freezing for a month be damned.
(All Ted’s talk of being an equal co-parent when she first found out she was pregnant also be damned.)
Julia had told them only the briefest of truths: “I’m nursing… it’s just easier.”
And though it didn’t quite tell the whole story, it wasn’t a lie.
Being with the baby the entire day felt infinitely easier than pumping at her desk.
Her mind felt clearer. Her chest felt lighter (literally and metaphorically).
But it irked her that if all this was true, then maybe Ted had been right when he’d told her she should quit her job and be a stay-at-home mom after she fired Janet.
No one will ever do things as perfectly as you want them, Ted had said—not meanly, but matter-of-factly.
I know you, Julia. We’ll never have a nanny who lasts longer than six months.
Why even hire a new one? Why don’t you just quit your job and do it yourself?
At that point, Julia had stomped out of the kitchen and then slept on the daybed in Veronica’s room, before heading off to the airport the next morning with Veronica in tow.
Not that she’d had much of a choice—Ted had already left for work by the time she’d woken up, so she either had to take Veronica or not go to Coronado at all.
But now, a few days later, her anger with him had dissipated.
Maybe Ted had been right, and instead of still being mad at him, she felt more irritated with herself.
A knocking on the front door suddenly startled her, and she opened her eyes, sat up. Veronica protested and fussed as Julia unlatched her from her breast. The knocking came again and now Nora was running down the steps in an oversized Brooklyn T-shirt, her long curls matted and messy.
“Julia, Nora, Emily!” Nate’s voice came through the door now.
Julia had somehow managed to avoid him the first two days she was here. In fact, every time she’d glanced at his house it had been dark, quiet. She’d wondered if he was away somewhere.
He knocked again on the door. And finally, Julia stood. But by the time she had Veronica settled against her hip, Nora had gotten there already, opened the door.
Nate walked inside the living room, still in his wet suit, his hair damp, his usually messy curls slicked back.
His eyes moved past Nora, straight to Julia, and then settled right on Veronica.
He knew about the baby, of course. Julia had sent him a birth announcement, and they periodically spoke on the phone about the business of the rental, and Nate was always polite enough to ask how Veronica was doing.
But still, his face registered a look of surprise seeing her now, like he could not believe this tiny, flailing creature had somehow come out of Julia.
And Julia suddenly, in that very moment, realized only half her shirt was buttoned.
Her cheeks flamed as she fumbled one-handed with the buttons, but Nate’s eyes stayed squarely fixed on Veronica.
“I didn’t know you were bringing the baby,” he finally said.
“Neither did we,” Nora said.
“It was kind of a last-minute… I just… I couldn’t leave her.” The words rang in Julia’s ears for a moment, and she swallowed back the weight of them.
Nate nodded. “Well… I didn’t mean to interrupt, but… Mike let me borrow the sailboat and I wanted to see if you all wanted to go out for a little bit this morning. But I guess with the baby…” His voice trailed off.
“Julia gets seasick anyway,” Nora said cheerfully. “And Em is still asleep. But I’ll go. Just let me get dressed.”
Nate nodded but his eyes went back to Julia’s face. It was only a little over two years ago that she had come to clean out Grandma Vera’s house and had spent more time with him alone than she had since they were teenagers. And yet, that felt like a lifetime ago.
She was married now. A mother.
But somehow, Nate was standing here before her, still very much… Nate.
Nora climbed up onto the sailboat, and then Nate pushed it into the water and hopped on himself. She’d been smarter this year and had thrown a sweatshirt and sweatpants on over her bathing suit, but still the morning was gray and chilly, and she felt herself shiver.
Nate turned and offered her his gorgeous lopsided half-smile, then threw her a flannel blanket. “So here I got the Trouble Trio down to one.”
Nora smiled. “I was always the only one getting in trouble, you know. Even that summer when you started calling us that, I stepped on the stingray first, I was the one who cried and had to go to the ER because my foot swelled so much.”
“I remember that.” Nate laughed.
“I was always trouble. Still am.” Nora sighed dramatically.
“Oh, come on,” Nate said. “You’re living your dream in New York City. That’s not trouble. That’s brave.”
“I feel like I’m actually kind of blowing the dream and failing big-time.” She finally said it for the first time out loud. Failing. That’s what she was really doing in New York City.
“Is there something I can do to help?” he asked, his voice thick with concern. “Do you need money?”
His worry for her hit solidly in the center of her chest, and it warmed her from the inside out.
She shook her head. Between her waitress job and the money from the rental, she had enough to get by and pay her rent.
“Not that. It’s just… what am I even doing in New York if the best I can do is sing at a diner?
A diner in Queens for heaven’s sake.” Dad had implored her over voicemail to talk to Julia about going back to college, but Julia had been consumed with the baby, and here she was, pouring her heart out to Nate instead.
He nodded and didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he said, “Anything worth having takes hard work. You can’t give up.”
“But you did,” she said. “You left medical school and came back here. Do you regret it?”
He shook his head. “I quit because I didn’t really want to be a doctor.
It was some stupid thing I thought up when my mom was sick, and my head was a mess.
The truth was, everything about medicine made me miserable.
” He paused for a second and put his hand gently on her shoulder.
“But this, this is different. This is your dream, Nora.”
“Maybe it’s a stupid dream,” she said softly. “A million other people have the same dream as me and most of them don’t make it very far.”
Nate chuckled a little. “I still remember when you were maybe ten years old, the first time I heard you singing with Vera.”
“Eight,” she corrected him. “I was eight years old.” That was the year Grandma Vera taught her how to harmonize. Taught her that perfect pitch ran in their family. She still knew all the lines of Funny Girl by heart. “I don’t remember you being there,” she said.
“I was right next door.” He smiled. “And you and Vera were never quiet.”
She blushed, about fourteen years too late, thinking about Nate listening to her and Grandma Vera belt out “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” Then she laughed and buried her face in her hands. “Oh God, you heard us?”
“You’re not trouble, Nora. You’re a star,” Nate said. “You were always going to be a star.”
Nora smiled, trying to soak in what was probably the nicest compliment anyone had ever given her, unsure what to say.