Chapter 18
THE THING ABOUT THE vault was, Julia’s heart wasn’t actually foolproof.
She supposed she had known this all along. Years passed and memories faded. Grief crested in waves but never truly went away. She was twenty. She was twenty-six. She was thirty-three. She was thirty-six.
All year long, she was a busy wife, a mother, an attorney.
But then every May, for one week, she came to Coronado.
Nate was still next door, and he still knew all her secrets.
They rose up inside of her again, mistakes, or wishes, lost, then found.
She would get out of the taxi on Ocean Boulevard and find herself glancing just across the yard at Nate’s house.
Wondering if he had remembered she was coming.
If he was just beyond the front door, still waiting for her.
This May, though, ten years after Grandma Vera died and they had put their one night in the vault, Nate was sitting on his porch when she arrived.
He sat in a rocking chair reading a book.
Two-year-old Mallory sat in front of him, playing quietly with oversized Legos.
Julia’s heart swelled, and she had to work very hard to breathe as she pulled her suitcase from the trunk of the cab.
“Jules!” he called her name, and she remembered what he had said to her last May when she’d pushed Mallory in the stroller, that he didn’t want this to be weird.
Still, it did feel weird to see him again now for the first time in a year, to have all those old buried feelings suddenly rushing back up to the surface.
No matter how much she wanted it to be, her heart was never truly a vault.
She shut the trunk of the cab and waved back, then walked to his porch, dragging her suitcase behind her. Mallory glanced up from the Legos, but then quickly went back to her tower. Nate grinned widely, looking happier, more relaxed than he had last year.
Julia thought: Fatherhood really agrees with him. But she didn’t say that out loud. She suddenly remembered that she owed her own father a call. He’d left her a voicemail last night when she’d been busy packing. Her own father, who had raised three times the Mallorys, all on his own.
Mallory reached up to hand Nate a block, and he put his book down on the table to build part of her tower.
“What are you reading?” she asked him, glancing past them to take a look.
He fastened his block to the top of Mallory’s tower, Mallory clapped with glee, and then he held his book up. Now she could see it was a textbook. Educational psychology. “Studying,” he said. “I’m going back to school to get my teaching degree.”
She smiled. Nate had been in and out of careers since his mom died. From a failed stint in medical school to pharmaceutical sales to real estate to handyman jobs. But teacher finally felt exactly right. Nate was patient and gentle and clearly good with kids.
“I should go get myself settled,” she heard herself saying, her voice sounding ethereal, far away. “Nora and Em will be here soon. I have to finish making our schedule for the week.”
Nate nodded. “Walk later, to catch up? Put me on the schedule this week, Jules.”
She nodded again and pressed her lips tightly together, suddenly afraid if she spoke any more, the vault would blow wide open.
After dinner and s’mores, when Emily and Nora stayed on the back patio to drink wine, Julia said she was tired and went upstairs to go to bed.
But the truth was, she wasn’t tired at all.
She opened her laptop and caught up on some emails.
Then she finally called Dad back and chatted with him for a little while, telling him about V’s latest third-grade exploits and her participation in the end-of-year school play (which was adorable despite her lacking any requisite rhythm for the singing and dancing portions).
“So she and Nora aren’t actually related then?” Dad said with a chuckle.
“Shh, don’t say that too loud. Nora is just downstairs. And she thinks V is her mini-me.”
“They look alike and yet, they couldn’t be more different.” Dad was still chuckling, overly amused in that nerdy way he always had when it came to anything having to do with his daughters or his granddaughter. “And how are you doing, Julia?” Dad asked gently. “Not working too hard.”
“I’m only working part-time, Dad.”
“Still, you’re in a field with a lot of stress, and raising a kid isn’t easy either.”
“I’m good,” Julia said. “You never have to worry about me.”
“Okay, sweetheart. Give Em and Nora a hug for me. And have a lot of fun together this week.”
“We always do,” Julia told him before she hung up.
Usually, it calmed her to talk to her father, to hear his steady voice that seemed endlessly unchanging, across years and miles. But tonight, even after they talked, she just couldn’t squash the feeling of unease that rose in her chest.
She got into bed, but she tossed and turned for a while, and at ten o’clock, she was still wide awake. It was one a.m. at home—she should be sound asleep. The house was quiet—even Nora and Emily had already gone to bed.
But Julia felt deeply unsettled. I’m good. You never have to worry about me, she had told Dad. Yet, now that felt like a lie. She didn’t feel good at all.
Perhaps it was simply because of the illusion of Nate. Her forever what-if. Just next door. Her vault filled up with things she should forget, feelings that never should’ve happened in the first place. But Nate was both a hologram and a time warp.
Across the country, there was her real life. Her husband and her daughter. And that’s what was keeping her awake now. The truth was, what was really bothering her were five simple words from an unknown number flashing across Ted’s BlackBerry screen earlier this morning: Can’t wait to see you.
They’d both had their BlackBerries charging in the kitchen, and just before she’d left for the airport, she had accidentally grabbed Ted’s by mistake.
As soon as she realized, she’d put it back on the counter, but not before she saw that message flash up.
Can’t wait to see you. Was it something innocent?
His mother texting from the Hamptons on someone else’s phone?
Or something else? Something she shouldn’t have seen.
She got out of bed now and walked to the window, opening it to let in the cool sea air. Nate’s childhood bedroom just across the side yard was dark, the window closed. Of course. Nate didn’t sleep there anymore, and anyway, he was likely sound asleep by ten.
But out of habit, or out of nostalgia, she ripped a piece of paper off the yellow legal pad in her bag, folded it carefully into a paper airplane. On one of the wings, she wrote in her trademark neat cursive: What if we opened the vault?
But of course, the window was closed. There was nowhere for her to throw it now anyway, even if she’d wanted to.
“How was Grammy and Pop-Pop’s?” Julia asked Veronica a week later, as she was driving her to summer camp drop-off before work. “Did you and Daddy have fun without me?”
Julia glanced in the rearview mirror for a reaction, and Veronica shrugged in the back seat.
Julia had pleated her curls into neat braids, one on each side of her head, and she looked different, older, without their wildness.
“Daddy didn’t stay the whole week, and then Pop-Pop was golfing and Grammy and I made tiny sandwiches for afternoon tea.
But they had cucumbers.” Veronica made a face.
“Ah yes, the dreaded cucumbers. How did you survive it?” Julia deadpanned.
“I spit them in my napkin when Grammy wasn’t looking, and then I threw them in the trash.”
Julia chuckled, remembering Nora doing the same thing as a kid any time Dad would make lamb chops, which to this day Nora insisted were the most vile thing she’d ever tasted.
Julia was going to have to tell her this story the next time they talked.
“So where did Daddy go?” Julia asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
Ted hadn’t mentioned anything about leaving Veronica in the Hamptons alone.
Julia glanced in the rearview mirror again and Veronica shrugged again.
“He had work?” Julia spoon-fed Veronica an answer that she hoped was true.
“He always has work.” Veronica sighed. “And so do you.”
“I only work part-time,” Julia reminded her as she pulled up at the curb for camp drop-off and stopped the car. “I’ll be back to pick you up from camp at three, V.”
But Veronica didn’t immediately unlatch her seat belt. “I hate camp,” she said instead.
“You love camp,” Julia reminded her. “Last summer all you could talk about was how much you love camp! Remember all the art projects? You had so much fun!”
Veronica made a face and sighed dramatically. “That was last summer.”
“You’re just nervous because it’s the first day,” Julia said. “That’s normal. Go on ahead and you’ll see your friends and you’ll remember how much you love it again.”
“Do I have to?” Veronica asked.
“Yes,” Julia said.
Veronica sighed again, and then opened the car door.
“Have fun, sweetie. I love you,” Julia called out.
But Veronica shut the car door without saying anything else.
Julia popped in her headset and called Ted on the drive to work.
“V says she hates camp now,” Julia said as soon as Ted picked up.
Ted snort-laughed. “It’s just another phase,” he said. “I forgot to tell you, last week she also decided she hates tennis. Mom tried to get her to play. Remember last summer that was her favorite camp week?”
Julia nodded, remembering, also, the expensive lessons they’d paid for all last fall. “Well, what if it’s not a phase. Maybe we should listen to her. Could there be a reason why she suddenly hates things she used to love?”
“So, what then… she doesn’t go to camp? And does what all summer?”
It was a good question, and one Julia was not immediately prepared to answer. “I guess we could hire a college kid to hang out with her?”
“She’ll be happier at camp,” Ted said, and Julia knew he was right. Even though Veronica’s sudden swing still nagged at her.