Chapter 24
But two weeks after Dad had called all three May sisters that March, to let them know that the cancer had spread to his brain, Emily had an idea.
“You said you wanted to see the ocean,” Emily reminded him over the phone. “Come to Coronado with us in May. There’s an extra bedroom just for you.”
Robert May had been to his mother-in-law’s house in Coronado only once before.
It was sometime in the early seventies, when Vera and Grey got married in a small ceremony on the beach.
The girls hadn’t been born yet. Meredith had been pregnant with Julia at the time, but it was still early enough that she’d been hiding it, and they hadn’t even told Vera yet.
Then Julia was born, Emily three years later, Nora three years after that, and suddenly Meredith was gone.
He was a single father to three small girls.
And he and Vera seemed to disagree on everything.
Well, except for maybe the girls’ well-being.
Vera, he was certain, understood that he would do anything, anything, to keep them safe.
And Bob was certain that Vera had loved them fiercely, loved them as her own.
Which was why, after she had promised to keep his secret, he had promised her he would send the girls to Coronado every May for one week.
It was a promise he’d kept until she’d died, when she’d taken his secret to the grave.
Though rationally he knew that Vera had been gone almost fifteen years, when he stepped out of the cab and onto the sidewalk in front of her old house, he felt her in the air.
It all looked exactly as he remembered. The staunch white Victorian with the large front porch, nestled on a tree-lined street of similar Victorians.
The great, wide blue Pacific just across from them, roaring in his ears as he walked up the front path.
The ocean seemed to whisper her name: Vera, Vera, Vera.
And before he walked up the steps to the porch, he stopped for a moment and whispered back: I’m sorry.
“Dad!” Julia bounded out the front door. “Let me help you with your bag.”
He waved her away. “I can carry my own bag.” He was dying, he knew that fact somewhere in the rational portion of his mind.
But largely, he still felt good. His body still mostly moved the way he wanted it to, and somewhere in the irrational part of his mind, he couldn’t believe that he was actually dying. Maybe it wasn’t even true.
“I’ll take it,” Julia insisted, pulling the suitcase from his hand. She never did take no for an answer. Not when she was five years old; certainly not now.
“How’s my granddaughter doing?” he asked as he followed her inside. “Did you bring her?”
Julia shook her head. “Veronica’s good, and no, she always goes to the Hamptons with Ted to visit his parents this week. It’s just a sisters’ week, Dad.”
“So then I’m intruding?”
“You are not intruding,” she said. “We all wanted you to come this year. We want to spend some time with you.”
The inside of the house looked very different from how he remembered it, and he supposed his daughters had done a nice job turning it into a rental. Making it into a business and still making it out here every May to spend time together. Sisters’ week.
We did something right, Vera, he thought.
“This is where you can sleep,” Julia said, gesturing around the bedroom. “It’s the biggest one and on the first floor so you don’t have to worry about steps.”
“I can climb steps,” he said. “I’m perfectly fine.” Julia gave him a worried look. “Like I told you on the phone, this is just something I’ll have to manage. Stay on top of.”
That was, in fact, what he had told her, Emily, and Nora on the phone.
It was not, in fact, the truth. His oncologist had offered him two options: more chemo, which would maybe give him another year, two at the most. Or forgo treatment and let nature take its course, which would give him another six months, or maybe even a year.
Possibly two if he was really lucky. To him that sounded the same both ways.
Right now, he felt perfectly fine. No more chemo.
And he would hope for the best. Magical thinking was still, after all, thinking.
“I printed you a copy of our schedule. It’s on the bed,” Julia said.
“A schedule?” He raised his eyebrows.
“I always do a schedule for sisters’ week,” Julia said. Of course, he would expect nothing less from his eldest daughter. “But if you don’t feel up for anything on there, you can always stay here and rest instead.”
“I feel good,” he said. “I’m here to spend time with the three of you. Count your old dad in. For all of it.”
“Okay.” Julia looked at him and smiled a little, like maybe she too had caught his magical thinking, even though that wasn’t at all Julia’s style.
“But can I make one request?” he asked. Julia nodded. “I want to meet your dear friend Nate while I’m here.”
“Nate?” Julia raised her eyebrows.
He nodded. “All these years, I’ve heard so much about him, but I’ve never met this Nate the Great you love so very much.”
“Um… okay,” Julia said. “He’s actually on the schedule already. Taking us out on the boat on Saturday with his daughter, Mallory. So you’ll meet him then.”
“Daughter? Nate’s married?” Bob asked.
“No… he’s a single dad.”
“Oh.” Bob perked up. “Like me. Well, then I want to meet him even more.”
Julia thought for a moment and stared at him without saying anything. “Why don’t you get some rest,” she finally said. “We do s’mores on the back patio at seven thirty. We’ll order pizza around five thirty for dinner, once Nora and Em both get here.” She pointed to the schedule on the bed.
“Sounds great, honey,” he said. “You know I love pizza. And s’mores. What a treat.”
“I’m worried about Dad’s memory,” Julia whispered to her sisters later that night, out on the patio. After s’mores, Dad had gone inside to go to sleep, but all three of them had remained outside.
Emily got up, brought the wine from the fridge and two glasses. Julia walked to the kitchen and came back with a third glass.
“What’s wrong with Dad’s memory?” Nora whispered, as Emily poured the wine into all three glasses and then handed one to everyone.
“He seemed weirdly obsessed with meeting Nate while he’s here,” Julia said. “Called him ‘Nate the Great’ and talked about how much I love him, like he was stuck back twenty years in the past or something.”
Emily laughed and took a big sip of her wine. “I’m sure Dad just fondly remembers your lovesick teenage years the way we all do.”
Julia frowned. “But that was such a long time ago.”
“So let him meet Nate. Who cares,” Nora interrupted. She gulped down her wine. “Nate probably would want to meet Daddy anyway. He always says we’re like his sisters.”
Julia nodded. “I’m just telling you guys, I’m worried. I don’t know if he’s totally with it.”
Emily waved away her concerns. “Dad has been like that since we were little,” she said.
“Saying Dad things. Being nostalgic about us growing up. You know, he was probably just saying he wants to meet your friend, like when we were back in high school, and he was so annoying about wanting to meet every single person we hung out with.”
“Nate is friends with all of us,” Nora said.
“True,” Emily said. “But we all know he and Julia have a special connection.”
Julia felt her cheeks turning red, though she wasn’t sure why. Maybe it wasn’t Dad’s memory that was bothering her, but those old feelings toward Nate he had reminded her of.
And then Julia thought, No, no, no. Whatever she thought she was feeling right now, she was going to have to put it in the vault.
Bob woke up earlier than all three of his daughters the next morning and fumbled around with the coffee maker in the kitchen, which was one of those newfangled single-brew ones he could never quite manage to figure out at the hospital.
Something resembling brown sludge made it into the mug, and he took it out on the front porch.
It was barely dawn; a pink light crept over the horizon; and Bob sat down on a rocking chair, sipped his coffee-like-sludge, and took in the pale gray first-light beauty of the Pacific Ocean just across the street. It rushed in his ears and he heard it again: Vera, Vera, Vera.
Look how great all three girls turned out, he whispered back. Even Nora.
Especially Nora, the Vera-ocean roared.
“Excuse me.” A man’s voice interrupted his conversation with the ocean, and Bob looked up, startled. A tall, young guy with messy hair who looked like he’d just rolled out of bed stood on the porch steps with his arms crossed.
“Who are you?” Bob asked. He didn’t look like an intruder, but he wasn’t exactly sure what an intruder would look like.
“Who are you?” the man asked.
“I’m staying here for the week,” Bob said.
The man frowned and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, double-checked the date. “No, you’re not. You need to leave.”
And then it hit Bob. This disheveled… gentleman was Julia’s… “Nate?” He said it out loud. “My daughters own this house,” Bob continued. “I got invited to sisters’ week this year. I’m Bob May.”
Nate put his phone back in his pocket, straightened out his sweatshirt, smoothed out his hair.
Then he stepped forward and put his hand out for Bob to shake.
Bob took it and liked the way Nate’s grip was firm, his movements intentioned.
This was a man who knew what he wanted and wasn’t afraid to get it.
Much like Julia. “Hey, Mr. May, sorry about that. Julia hadn’t mentioned you were coming.
I know it’s their week, so I was a little alarmed to see a man sitting out here on the porch. Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too,” Bob said. He gestured to the other rocker on the porch. “Have a seat. I’d offer you a cup of coffee, but this one turned out terrible. You wouldn’t want it.”
Nate laughed and sat down. “Nora ordered that fancy machine for the house a few months ago. None of the renters can figure it out either.”
That seemed about right. His baby. His impractical dreamer.
Of course she would purchase an impossible coffee machine she likely couldn’t afford.
She kept saying her show was going to transfer to Broadway soon, that it was going to change her life.
But it hadn’t quite happened yet. He hoped he would live long enough to see it.
“What brings you out here?” Nate asked. “It’s your first time to Coronado, right?”
Bob nodded. “Well, first in about forty years. Before your time.”
“Close,” Nate said. “I’m forty-one. And I’ve lived in that house next door pretty much my whole life.”
Bob wondered if his parents had been at Vera and Grey’s beach wedding, a baby Nate in tow, but that was all a blur.
“So what brings you back after all this time?” Nate asked.
“Emily invited me to join them this week. And I rarely get to see all my girls in one place, for a whole entire week. How could I turn that down? Especially now…”
Nate nodded and rocked slowly in the chair. “Julia told me, about the cancer,” Nate said gently. “I’m really sorry. Cancer sucks.”
Bob nodded, remembering that Nate’s mom died of cancer, and the way Julia had sat at the dining room table and sobbed when they got the news.
“Nate,” Bob said now. “I want you to do something for me.”
Nate turned and shot him a quizzical look. Maybe it was a big ask, considering they had never met before now. But then Nate said, “Sure. Whatever I can do to help, I’m happy to.”
“I want you to take care of Julia,” Bob said.
Nate shook his head. “With all due respect, sir, Julia takes care of herself. She wouldn’t want me or anyone else to take care of her.”
“Sure,” Bob said, and he felt warmed by the way Nate seemed to understand Julia.
“But I don’t mean now,” he clarified. “I mean, later on. If things ever get bad.” He paused.
“Julia doesn’t know how to ask for help when she needs it.
She never did. She pretends everything is fine, until she breaks.
And that’s when she’ll need you. That’s when I’m asking you to help her. ”
Nate nodded with recognition, like this made perfect sense. And Bob wondered exactly when Nate had seen Julia break in the past, or how many times it might have happened.
“So you’ll do that for me, son?” Bob said.
“I always have,” Nate said. “Always will.”
At the end of the week, as Emily boarded the plane to fly home, she got a text from Cecile. Just about to sign my divorce papers!
Let’s celebrate soon, Emily typed out in response. Then she agonized over whether celebrate was truly the right word, deleted the text, and wrote instead: Let me know if you need anything.
Aren’t you in California?
Just boarded my flight home. I’ll be home later tonight.
Okay, then call me later, Cecile wrote. Then added: Have a safe flight xx
Emily felt the strangest sensation as she switched her phone to airplane mode, years of feelings she’d been suppressing, that she hadn’t truly been allowing herself to feel, suddenly flooded to the surface. What-ifs and never-gonna-happens.
When she’d land in Tampa in a few hours, Cecile would be single for the first time since Emily had met her.
And then she had the strangest thought that she wished she could get off the plane, go back to Coronado, and tell Dad how happy she was that Cecile was about to be single.
That he would understand exactly how she was feeling in this moment, that he would look at her, smile, give her a hug, and simply say: Honey, I know.