Chapter 8
NORA WOKE UP TO the sound of someone knocking on the door, and she was drenched in sweat, disoriented.
It took her a moment to remember where she was. Coronado. Emily had gone next door to look for Nate, and Nora had been so consumed by jet lag, she must’ve sat down on the couch and fallen asleep.
Emily had been right, it was hot in here without the AC working. But maybe that wasn’t why she’d woken up sweating—maybe it was the strange dream she’d been having. Something hazy that mostly escaped her now. Julia yelling at her, telling her she’d ruined everything. How long had she been asleep?
“Julia, open the door!” Mallory’s voice rang through from the porch, and Nora sat up and wiped the sweat off her brow with the back of her hand. Was Julia here?
Nora looked around and didn’t see her suitcase, coat, or any signs that she was. She checked her phone and in the sisters’ chat there was one new text but it was from Emily: Taking a walk. Text when you bitches are ready for dinner.
Nora got up and opened the front door, and was surprised by the woman-child standing before her. In the year between eleven and twelve, Nate’s daughter, Mallory, had somehow blossomed into someone entirely new. She was taller than Nora now and appeared to have boobs too.
She took one look at Nora and made a face. “You’re not Julia.”
“Exactly, I’m your favorite May sister, and you’re in luck. Because I’m the only one here.”
Mallory giggled, and for a second she sounded like a little girl again.
Of course, Julia was her favorite. Julia was everyone’s favorite.
It didn’t mean that Emily and Nora didn’t still try to bribe Mallory by bringing her gifts each May.
This year Emily had brought a stuffed manatee from her museum that Nora had inwardly thought was much too babyish for a twelve-year-old, but of course she hadn’t said that out loud.
That reminded her. “Oh, I have something for you in my bag!” Nora exclaimed.
“And it’s better than what Em brought you. ”
“What did Em bring me?” Mallory’s face lit up.
Nora distinctly remembered Emily leaving for Nate’s with that silly stuffed manatee before she’d fallen asleep. “You didn’t see her earlier?”
Mallory shook her head. “I just got home from my friend’s house and found a note on the door about your air conditioner. I figured it was Julia who’d left it.”
“Julia’s not here yet,” Nora said. “That note was from Emily. I fell asleep.” She cleared her throat. And then she asked the question that had been running through her mind since she’d stepped off the plane. “Where’s your dad?”
“Where’s Julia?” Mallory asked, ignoring Nora’s question. “She’s usually here first.”
Nora chewed on her bottom lip. “I’m guessing her flight got delayed.
” There was no other possible explanation for it, really.
Still, it did bother her that Julia hadn’t texted to communicate that, or anything else, for that matter.
That small trickle of doubt nagged at her.
Something was off. She just wasn’t sure what it was yet.
Mallory frowned, looking worried, and Nora felt the urge to cheer her up. “Wait here a second, Mal. Let me go grab your gift.”
Nora walked into the dining room and picked up her Louis Vuitton carry-on off the chair.
She rifled through it for a moment before pulling out the signed Playbill.
The actor who was playing the lead in her new show was the same actor who had played the beloved Will the Wizard in Mallory’s favorite childhood TV series.
She would not tell Mallory that, in real life, she could barely stand to look at him, and that she’d had to beg one of the swings to get his signature for her.
Mallory’s eyes widened as Nora handed her the signed Playbill now. “Nora! This is really for me? This is so cool.”
Nora smiled and gave Mal a hug, and she almost felt a little bad for Emily’s stuffed manatee. “I’ll get you tickets if your dad will bring you to New York,” Nora said, tucking a few stray wisps back into Mallory’s thick braid.
“You know how Dad feels about the East Coast.” Mallory sighed, and Nora realized that she did not, in fact, know how Nate felt about the East Coast. “Anyway, I’ll ask Dad when he gets home from LA.”
Oh. LA? Nora wondered what he was doing there without Mallory. Was twelve old enough to be left home alone? As a forty-year-old woman with no kids of her own, Nora had no sense of such things.
“Thanks again for this, Nora.” Mallory held up the Playbill and started walking toward the door.
“Wait, do you want to hang out until your dad gets back?” Nora asked.
Mallory shook her head. “It’s hot in here. But come get me when Julia gets here?”
Nora nodded, trying not to feel hurt that Mallory didn’t want to stick around to hang out with her.
Emily walked slowly down Ocean Boulevard, clutching the stuffed manatee in her hands, thinking the breeze off the Pacific would cool her down.
Calm her down. But the truth was, her favorite walk, even her favorite ocean breeze, wasn’t going to be enough to do it today.
The heat was coming from somewhere inside of her—resentment that had built up over time, that wasn’t going to be able to subside here, thousands of miles away from her wife.
Emily never should’ve left Florida the way she did. Their fight rattled through her brain now, repeating itself on a loop. The way Cee’s face had crumbled when she had said the word betrayal. Then, the defensive fuck you Emily had sounded off in response.
Nearly twenty years of sisters’ week be damned—Emily definitely should not have left for the airport this morning without making things right with Cee.
But Emily wasn’t exactly sure how to make things right.
They came to Coronado every May, no matter what.
She had to come, despite how mad Cee was about what she’d done last year. Cee knew that!
Emily stopped walking and glanced at her phone.
It was already past dinnertime in Florida, and she knew Cee would be overseeing homework with the boys at the dining room table.
She wouldn’t be able to talk now, even if she had cooled off.
You know the routine, Cee would say, right before hanging up on her.
She did know the routine, and maybe that was part of the fucking problem.
Emily considered texting her instead, but the right words escaped her. No, she would call later. After the boys were asleep. She didn’t have it in her to talk to them tonight, to pretend like everything was okay.
She looked up and the sun was an orange ball at the end of the horizon. It would be dark soon, time for dinner and then s’mores. She glanced at her phone again, but neither Nora nor Julia had responded to her in their sisters’ chat. Was her stupid phone not working? Julia had to be here by now.
When Emily got back to the house, she found Nora sitting out on the patio by the firepit drinking rosé from a Solo cup. “You want some? Help yourself.” Nora pointed to the bottle of wine and stack of red cups on the table next to her.
Emily had quit drinking six months ago (after Cee had learned what she’d done while very drunk last May), promising Cee it was for good this time. But Emily really needed a glass of wine right now, and Cee would never know. Emily took a red cup and poured herself a little. “Julia’s still not here?”
Nora shook her head. It was dark now, and Nora’s pretty face was lit up by the twinkle lights Nate had strung for them a few summers before.
In the nearly twenty years of coming here, Julia had never arrived later than midafternoon.
The first sunset meant it was time for s’mores, the official kickoff to their week.
“Should we… do our s’mores?” Emily asked, sounding uncertain as she sat down on a lounge chair.
Nora shook her head. “We can’t without the marshmallows.” Besides, she was starting to get worried. “She should be here by now,” Nora said.
Emily agreed. “Was there bad weather in DC or something?” she asked.
“I don’t think so.” Nora had taken off from Newark into a cloudless sky. “Maybe we should call Ted? Something doesn’t feel right.”
Emily sighed. She’d rather chew glass than talk to her brother-in-law.
But she also agreed with Nora that something wasn’t right.
It was weird that Julia wasn’t here, and that she hadn’t communicated with them.
It was not at all like her. “I went over to Nate’s, so now it’s your turn. You call Ted,” Emily said.
“But Nate wasn’t even there,” Nora protested. “You didn’t actually do anything.”
“I left a note. He’ll come over when he gets home. I did do something. You call.”
Nora sighed heavily, put down her rosé, and picked up her phone. She was tired and didn’t have it in her to argue with Emily. Where was Julia and her damn schedule anyway? There was no time to argue when they were busy, busy, busy.
She scrolled through her contacts until she found Ted’s number. It rang a few times and she exhaled a little, thinking he was not going to pick up. But then suddenly his deep voice: “This is Ted.”
Did he not even have her number saved?
“Ted…” She floundered momentarily. “It’s… Nora. Julia’s sister.”
“Oh, hi, Nora,” Ted said. “How are you?”
“Good, I’m good. How are you?”
Emily raised her eyebrows and motioned for Nora to get to the point.
“Oh, you know.” Ted laughed. “Busy with work. What else is new?”
“Right. So… um… Em and I are at the Ocean Boulevard house for sisters’ week and Julia’s not here yet. It’s probably just a flight delay, but do you have her flight number?” The other end of the line went so silent for a full minute that Nora thought the call dropped. “Ted, are you still there?”
“I’m here,” he said softly. Then he added, “Julia didn’t tell you?”
“We haven’t talked in a while,” Nora said. She had not, in fact, spoken to Julia since this time last year. Emily had, though. At least Nora assumed she must’ve.
“I’m sorry,” Ted said. “This is really awkward.”
“Ted, you’re scaring me,” Nora said, and suddenly her heart was pounding too hard against the walls of her chest. Five minutes ago, it had seemed almost ridiculous to call Ted, and now it felt like she should’ve called him weeks ago.
Emily’s eyes widened and she moved in close enough to Nora that she could hear Ted’s voice coming through the phone too.
“Julia and I are getting a divorce,” Ted finally said. “I moved out a few months ago.” He paused for a moment and then he added: “We haven’t talked since then. I wanted a cooling-off period before we hashed it all out legally. I’m sorry, Nora. I don’t have her travel information.”
“Oh, I see,” Nora said, but she felt the rosé roiling in her stomach, and she was worried it was about to come back up.
Emily grabbed Nora’s phone. “What the fuck, Ted? Julia is a fucking goddess. And you’re trash.”
“Emily, hi, you don’t know the whole—”
She angrily poked the red button to end the call and then handed Nora’s phone back to her. Nora stared at Emily with her mouth slightly open. “What?” Emily said. “Ted is a piece of shit.”
A giggle burst out of Nora. She covered her mouth with her hand, but then she couldn’t stop it from pouring out of her as an all-out body-shaking laugh as she imagined what Ted’s face must look like right now. She agreed with Emily: Ted was a piece of shit. But he was Julia’s piece of shit.
“Are they really getting divorced?” Nora said after her laughter subsided. Then a heaviness sunk in her chest: disbelief, worry. “Did you know?”
Emily shook her head. “Julia never mentioned it to me.”
Nora felt guilt wash over her. She had been so stupid last May. And she had let a whole year go by without trying to fix things with Julia. But Emily and Julia weren’t mad at each other, and she hadn’t told Emily about the divorce either. Did Veronica know?
“Maybe we should call Ronnie,” Nora said.
Emily shook her head. “No. We shouldn’t worry her. Not unless something is really wrong. And it’s probably not, right?”
“Probably not,” Nora said, but now she really wasn’t so sure.
It felt almost preposterous to think that Julia, planner, organizer, the glue, had something, a marriage, she wasn’t able to hold together.
Nora was certain her sisters wouldn’t be shocked if they knew the mess she’d made of her own love life.
Julia, though, was different. And the fact that she hadn’t told either of them?
None of this was sitting right with Nora.
“But it’s weird she’s not here and we haven’t heard from her,” she said.
“And she’s getting a divorce and didn’t even tell us? ”
Emily nodded to agree, then picked up the bottle of wine and poured more into her Solo cup. She drank it down before saying anything else. “Okay, this is what we’re gonna do.”
Nora leaned in closer, wanting someone, anyone but her, to make a plan.
“We’ll drink the rest of this shitty wine, order some dinner, go to bed, and Julia will almost certainly be here by the time we wake up in the morning.”
“And if she’s not?” Nora said softly.
“If she’s not… then we call Ronnie,” Emily said.
“And her office,” Nora added.
“But when we wake up and she’s here all chipper with her goddamn schedule, then we kill her for making us worry like this,” Emily added.
“Don’t even joke about that,” Nora said solemnly, feeling the wine coming back up in her chest now. “It’s not funny.”
“I mean, it’s a little funny,” Emily said.
But the truth was, Emily was putting on a front, the way Cee complained she always did. It was what Emily did best. And worst. How can I ever see the real you if you refuse to show me?
Deep down, Emily had a sinking feeling. As she sipped her rosé, she couldn’t stop thinking about another thing she had pushed beneath the surface of her carefully constructed facade.
Pushed it down so deep and let it fester there, until sometimes it felt like it was burning up her very soul, as if that alone were responsible for every single bad decision she’d made.