Chapter 31
SITTING AT NATE’S KITCHEN table, a year after her drunken escapade, it suddenly occurred to Nora that maybe whatever was going on with Julia wasn’t actually her fault.
Was it possible Julia’s absence now had nothing to do with her?
She was momentarily flooded with relief before it hit her: Something much more serious than a stupid drunken kiss and giving Veronica her license might be going on.
“Why would Julia be in Santa Monica? What the hell is in Santa Monica?” Nora asked.
“Not what,” Emily said under her breath. “Who.”
“I don’t understand,” Nora said. “Who is in Santa Monica?”
Emily and Nate exchanged a look. Nate opened his mouth but then Emily cut him off. “I think it might be Mom,” Emily finally said.
“What?” Nora said. “But Julia said her ashes were scattered in Lake Michigan. Is she actually buried in Santa Monica?” Emily’s eyes and Nate’s locked on each other in a way that made Nora want to slap them both. “Oh my God!” Nora was practically yelling. “What are you two keeping from me?”
“Nora,” Emily said softly. “I didn’t want you to ever find out. This has seriously been fucking with my head for twenty-five years.”
“Find out what?” Nora exclaimed, exasperated.
Because she was still confused about what was going on.
Even if Mom was buried in Santa Monica, why was Julia there now?
And why had it been a secret? “Emily May-Daniels!” She shouted her sister’s full legal married name the way Dad used to yell Nora’s full name when she was in trouble as a kid.
“Tell me what the hell is going on! Right now!”
“I don’t think Mom is actually dead,” Emily said quietly. “I think… she’s living in Santa Monica. Or at least she was… twenty years ago.”
When Nora got extremely stressed, she sometimes felt like she’d left her body and imagined her life as a scene. It was how she had conquered stage fright, or that moment in her new show when, night after night, she had to kiss the one man she shouldn’t ever be kissing again.
But now the set was Nate’s kitchen table.
The characters were two sisters who probably loved each other deep down, but who on the surface drove each other crazy.
There was a man, a friend (family?) who somehow knew the greatest secret about their lives.
A secret that even the youngest sister never knew. How was this possible?
Nora momentarily hovered up above, like she was watching it unfold. And she wished she had a script, that someone would feed her the next line because she had no idea what to say next, how she was supposed to feel. What she was even supposed to think.
Mom was alive, at least as of twenty years ago? Living in Santa Monica?
But Nora was forty. And her whole life she’d been told their mom had died giving birth to her. Why had they all lied? And forty years later, how did they all know this except for her? Emily? Julia? Even Nate?
Finally, she turned and glared at Emily. She couldn’t find words. Her feelings about her sister’s betrayal were too complicated to process in the moment—she would deal with her later.
So instead she turned to Nate: “Tell me everything you know,” she demanded. “Right now. Leave nothing out.”