Chapter 29 #2
Mallory had gotten her hair cut, a severe bob that framed her chin in a triangle, like someone had just lopped her long pigtails off with a pair of kitchen scissors at an odd angle.
Nora wondered if Nate had actually done this, and she rifled in her purse for the sparkly Kate Spade barrettes she’d brought for Mallory as a gift.
Last year, she’d brought cookies from Junior’s, but Mallory hadn’t been able to stop talking about some ridiculous whale pins Emily had gotten for free at a conference.
You want accessories, Nora had thought, I can bring you accessories.
It was a shame Nate had done something terrible to her hair in the meantime, but Nora wasn’t quite drunk enough to blurt this out, thankfully.
“Nora!” Mallory exclaimed as Nora wobbled her way up the walkway. “You’ll never believe what happened! It rained last week and now we can go see the treasure ship!”
They all knew about the sunken ship that had been discovered just off the shore, down the beach, on the other side of the Del in front of the condos.
But it was rarely visible, except in the aftermath of a few storms and strange ensuing tides.
They’d never seen it in all the years they’d been coming here.
“I added it to the schedule for before dinner tonight,” Julia said. “So Nora, go put your things inside and hurry up so we can walk down there.”
Nora wanted to tell them that she had a headache, that she didn’t really care about the treasure ship, and that instead she wanted to go inside and take a nap so she could stop thinking about Dev and Jade’s stupid perfect house.
“We’ve been waiting for you!” Mallory exclaimed excitedly. “Emily and Julia said we could probably go without you, but I said no way, Nora will be super excited to see this.”
Nora couldn’t help but smile. Forget about Dev.
She was here for her family, her sisters, Nate, and Mallory, and she wasn’t going to let Dev ruin another Coronado week for her.
She closed her eyes for a moment, steadied herself, then pulled the barrettes out of her purse and handed them to Mallory.
“Okay, but put these in your hair first so you’re extra sparkly for the walk down there. ”
Mallory giggled, and Nora loved the sound of her little-girl laugh. It suddenly sounded like home.
It was the most beautiful of all May days, the sky a stunning blue, the sun a bright yellow ball hurtling across the water toward dusk.
They decided to walk down the beach to reach the ship, close to the water’s edge.
Mallory skipped ahead, dragging Nora and Emily along with her, stopping here and there to pick up and examine interesting-looking shells.
Julia and Nate walked slower, lagging behind, talking.
After a year apart, Julia always expected a moment where it would feel strange to suddenly be in each other’s company again. But oddly, that moment rarely came. Every first conversation with Nate felt familiar. Again and again and again. May after May after May.
“You know, this is Mal’s favorite week of the year,” Nate said. “She talks about it constantly for the entire month of May. I mean, mine too, but that goes without saying.”
Julia laughed. “Mallory is so great. And not even remotely a teenager yet.”
Nate shook his head. “Yeah, I’m not prepared for those years at all.”
“You most definitely are not,” Julia confirmed with a sigh.
Though, she wondered if Mal would be a gentle teen the way she had been a gentle two-year-old.
She was easygoing, easy to please, happy-go-lucky.
Veronica had always been highly emotional, dramatic like Nora, and a surge of hormones had only seemed to heighten that these last few years.
“You’re good though, right, Jules?” Nate stopped walking, looked at her, searched her face with his acorn eyes. It was the question he asked her almost every year. Round and round and round they went. While keeping a safe distance. Never daring to open the vault.
“I’m good.” She forced a smile. “Really busy with work. Veronica is driving. Ted is…” Suddenly she couldn’t stop thinking about the words he’d said to her, hall pass. “Ted is the same as always,” she finished. Which was not a lie. “What about you?”
Nate nodded. “I have the perfect girl in my life so what else could I possibly need?”
Perfect girl? Was Nate dating someone? The thought struck her with an irritated jolt.
Then it quickly occurred to her he must be referring to Mallory, and she smiled.
“You know, it’s weird,” she said. “This time next year, Veronica will have graduated high school. She’ll be getting ready to move out and go to college.
And then I think, who will I even be if I’m not her mom anymore? ”
“You’ll always be her mom,” Nate said.
But she and Ted would get divorced, and then it seemed inevitable Veronica would take Ted’s side.
The two of them were always thick as thieves.
Julia felt like she was trying so hard to cling to everything she loved, and yet, no matter what she did, how hard she had worked, it was all on the brink of slipping away.
“But it won’t be the same,” she finally said.
“Nothing ever is,” Nate said.
She nodded and they walked a little bit farther in silence.
“You know that time when you took me to Santa Monica?” Julia said quietly after a few moments, remembering the way Nate had alluded to it last May, when they were at Belmont Park.
Julia often thought about the way she had felt so exhilarated riding the roller coaster (just before she’d felt so nauseous), the way Nate had taken care of her that evening when she’d fallen apart.
The way she’d left him in the hotel in the middle of the night and had taken a cab to LAX, suddenly so desperate to get home, back to Veronica.
Nate nodded. “What about it?”
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.”
“That seems like a bad idea,” Nate said.
“You’re right,” she said. “But my brain and my heart don’t work together super well these days.”
Nate chuckled, stopped walking, and turned to look at her again.
Julia suddenly noticed the lines that had cropped up around his eyes, the corners of his smile.
The grays that were peppering his messy brown curls on the sides of his head.
Like they told a perfect story of everything Nate had become and everything Nate had once been.
“Jules,” he said. Then he touched her shoulder gently. “Sometimes I forget my heart even exists. Then you come back here each May, and it starts beating again.”
Hall pass, she thought. What if she told Nate right now what Ted had said?
Would he laugh, say how ridiculous the whole thing was?
Or would he shoot her a sexy half-smile, offer to sneak her in later tonight after Mal fell asleep?
And which response would make her happy—joking with him, her oldest and dearest friend, about the complete disaster area of her marriage, or suddenly unlocking twenty years of desire between them from that goddamn vault?
The words sat there on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t bring herself to say them.
Her own heart was thumping so wildly in her chest, she could barely hear herself think.
“Dad!” Mallory suddenly cried out. “There it is! Come on!”
Nate dropped his hand quickly, as if Julia’s shoulder had turned to flames. He shot her an apologetic smile and then jogged up the beach to see the wreckage Mallory was excited about.
Four months after they left Coronado, when the fall weather had already swept into Maryland and the leaves had just begun to turn, Emily called Julia in the middle of a workday, sounding panicked. “Have you been watching the weather?” Emily asked.
“What weather?” Julia had been buried in a contentious custody case and had barely come up for air, much less turned on the TV. But there had been one terrible hurricane after another all fall, including Maria, which had devastated Puerto Rico a few weeks earlier.
“You are not going to fucking believe this,” Emily said. “But now there’s a Hurricane Vera that formed in the gulf and is forecast to hit Tampa this weekend.”
Julia felt a slight tingling in her head.
It was one thing when they half joked about all the Vera birds, watching them, following them, helping them, giving them signs.
She didn’t really believe in the afterlife.
But then again, maybe she kind of did? Now here was a literal hurricane named Vera heading straight toward Emily?
“Would it be okay if we drove up and stayed at your house for a few days?” Emily asked.
Emily hadn’t been to her house since before Dad died; she hadn’t seen Veronica since then either.
Was this somehow Grandma Vera’s doing? Was she telling them it had been too long?
Julia knew that was ridiculous. But the tingling didn’t quite subside.
“Of course,” Julia said. “You’re welcome anytime, Em. ”
“You sure?” Emily asked. “It was Cee’s idea, and I don’t want to bother you, but honestly I couldn’t think of anywhere else we could all go so last-minute like this.”
“Yes, absolutely,” Julia said quickly, suddenly remembering her house was in complete disarray.
The roof had leaked after a vicious August thunderstorm and now, as the repairs were being made, the contents of her closet filled up the guest bathroom, while she and Ted had relocated to the guest bedroom.
She wasn’t exactly sure where they were all going to sleep, but she didn’t tell Emily that.
She would just… figure something out. “It’ll be great to see you,” she said instead.
“And V will be happy to see her cousins again.”
When Emily thought about it later, she was able to pinpoint the exact moment her marriage with Cecile started to fracture. They were on I-95, somewhere in North Carolina, as they drove toward Julia’s house, escaping Hurricane Vera.