Chapter 35
JULIA AWOKE TO A pounding noise, and she struggled to open her eyes, groping around the night table for her phone to check the time.
Right, she didn’t have her phone.
“Julia, we know you’re in there. Open this fucking door or I’m breaking it down.”
Emily?
Julia blinked and sat up. What was her sister doing here? What time was it? What day was it?
“Julia, come on. I know you’re still mad at me, but you’re really scaring us.”
Nora?
Julia rubbed sleep from her eyes, kicked back the covers, and walked quickly to the door.
She flung it open, and there, standing just outside her room, were both of her sisters, hands on their hips, frowning. “How did you… get here?” Julia asked. She blinked again, genuinely confused, wondering if she was still dreaming.
Emily and Nora exchanged glances. “You didn’t show up in Coronado, so we were super worried,” Nora said.
“We thought something terrible had happened!” Emily snapped at her. “What the actual fuck, Julia?”
“Nate let us borrow his truck,” Nora said.
Nate. Julia wondered how much he’d told them, and she chewed on her bottom lip.
“No one has been able to get in touch with you,” Nora continued in a rush. “You wouldn’t even answer your phone!”
“I lost my phone,” Julia finally said sheepishly. “And anyway, no one needs me right now. I didn’t think it mattered. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you.”
The three of them stared at one another for a moment.
Emily and Nora exhaled with the relief that Julia seemed vaguely all right; Julia suddenly felt smaller, ashamed.
It truly hadn’t occurred to her that so many days had passed, that she could be late to Coronado.
And then her own relief suddenly flooded through her: She’d been all wrong last night.
The only thing certain in her life wasn’t death, it was her sisters.
“So… did you… find her?” Emily finally asked quietly, shifting subjects. Emily’s eyes searched Julia’s face in some unfamiliar way. Usually Emily was all sharp edges, but now she just looked sad, defeated.
Julia nodded. “How did you know?” she asked. “Did Nate tell you?”
Emily shook her head. “No. I saw a letter, in Grandma Vera’s armoire. I thought I was the only one. But then I saw the box of letters at your house during the hurricane… so I figured you probably knew too. But I couldn’t bring myself to talk to you about it.”
The words hit Julia with a jolt. Emily had known, all this time? Had Grandma Vera accidentally on purpose pointed them all to the truth? “Nora?” Julia said. “You too?”
Nora folded her arms across her chest. “No, I never saw anything in Grandma Vera’s armoire, and no one ever tells me anything.” She glared at Emily, who cast her eyes down at her feet. “I literally found out like two hours ago,” Nora said. “I am super pissed, at both of you.”
“Okay,” Julia said softly. She probably deserved every bit of Nora’s wrath even if she had just been trying to protect her all this time.
“So, you know where she is?” Nora said, anger driving her voice to rise.
Julia nodded. “I do.”
“Then I want to see her,” Nora demanded.
Emily drove the three of them to Burbank in Nate’s truck.
Nora had her arms folded angrily across her chest in the back seat and Julia sat up front, staring out the window, the edges of everything still feeling softer from the sleeping pill.
Or maybe she could just breathe a little easier again, now that she was back with her sisters.
In the parking lot, Nora hopped out, but Emily kept the engine running and made no attempt to leave the truck herself.
“Don’t you want to see her too?” Julia asked.
Emily shook her head. She had nothing to say to a woman who’d left her when she was three years old.
Cecile always told her that being Emma, being a mom in general, just meant showing up.
Every time something went wrong between Emily and the boys, which was somewhat often, Emily told Cecile she was missing the crucial component, some secret ingredient other women were just born with that made them natural mothers.
You’re overthinking it, Cecile would say. Just be present! Be there for them!
And for the first time it hit her that maybe Cecile was actually right.
Nora walked inside the assisted-living facility, a very distinct memory replaying in her mind.
That night in the rain, after opening night of Romeo and Juliet, that woman who’d called out to her, who Nora had found looked strangely like Julia.
Had it been her? Had it really been her mother?
Had she tried once? Had she tried, in that one moment, to show up for Nora?
But as soon as she saw her, Nora realized that Meredith May looked nothing like that other woman, nothing at all like Julia. She had Nora’s body shape, Nora’s heart-shaped face. Grandma Vera’s (and Nora’s) button nose. And her hair hit her shoulders in long, gray, springy curls.
That woman, that night in New York City, had been an illusion.
A woman she had in her imagination turned into the shape of her mother.
This woman was the one who’d abandoned her from her very first moment of life.
This woman turned her head, looked up at Nora, and then frowned.
Nora felt certain this woman had never come to New York City to watch one of her shows or cared to keep up with her girls in any meaningful way.
If Nora were in a play now, if this were a scene, she would probably have done something incredibly dramatic. Like cry, scream, slap this woman’s cheek. Or maybe they would embrace, and lost time would rush away like a summer rainstorm.
But all Nora did instead was stand there frozen and stare for a few moments at this complete stranger with an odd echo of her face, her body, her self.
“Emily?” Meredith May finally said.
It was a ridiculous guess, considering Nora and Emily looked nothing at all alike. Considering this woman was their mother, who should know her daughters better than anyone.
Nora shook her head. “Nora,” she finally said. “I’m your youngest daughter, Nora.”
Meredith didn’t react. There was no joy or heartbreak or remorse on her face. She simply sighed. “I don’t know why you and Julia came here, after all this time.”
“Well, Julia found you, and I just wanted to see what you were like,” Nora said. “I’ve never met you. I thought you were dead until about three hours ago.”
Meredith nodded. “That’s what I wanted you to think. Bob promised me he would give me that much.”
Bob. Nora thought about her father, in the cold, cold ground in Chicago, complicit in this, whatever this was, and suddenly her heart hurt. “But why? Why make Daddy say you were dead? Why leave us in the first place?” Nora asked.
“I told Julia everything yesterday,” Meredith said, resigned.
Nora stared at her hard, unwilling to let her off the hook. “Then tell me too. Don’t I deserve at least that much?”
Meredith stared at her for another moment before she spoke. “My whole life all I ever wanted was to be an actress. I had to follow my dream, or else, who was I?”
Nora sucked in her breath, remembering how Grandma Vera had told her once that her mother had loved to act.
She’d always thought it was the one thread that had somehow tied them together, but no, she’d been wrong, it was the very thing that had torn them apart.
Is that why her father had always been so against her career?
Had he been trying to protect her from whatever this was all along?
“Shit,” she said softly. “I’m an actress. ”
Meredith’s face turned, and instead of annoyed she looked, for the first time, remotely interested.
“I’m in The Secret Life on Broadway right now.
You’ve heard of it?” Nora suddenly had this strange urge to impress her, like if only she understood that Nora had done something worthy, achieved something in her acting career, then maybe Meredith could finally figure out a way to want her, to love her.
Meredith shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t follow theater much.”
“I’m playing opposite Devlin St. Claire,” Nora continued. “I’m sure you know of him. The Wizards of Central Park.”
Meredith nodded, a flicker of recognition crossing her face. “Wow, good for you.” She paused for a moment, looked up at the ceiling and then back at Nora. “So then you, more than anyone, should know what it takes. You don’t have kids?”
Nora shook her head.
“Married?”
Nora shook her head again.
“Julia was angry with me, but you, Nora, you get it? Perfecting our craft takes everything we have. Everything we are.”
“You think we’re the same?” Nora spat, anger rising up hot inside of her.
She had often thought, over the years, she would’ve done anything to make it as an actress.
But now she understood that wasn’t true.
She never would’ve done something like this.
“You had me think you’d died giving birth to me.
My whole life I believed that. I thought I killed you just by being born.
How fucked-up is that? I chose not to have kids—I didn’t have them and then pretend to die. We are not the same.”
“When you put it like that, you make it sound so… so… Dying was the easiest way,” Meredith said, conviction in her voice. “It was the best way to protect everyone.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Nora said. “Was it worth it? Did you make it big?”
Meredith shook her head. “It wasn’t about making it big. It was about me not wanting to suffocate in that life. Or being so miserable that I damaged all of you.” She paused. “I couldn’t stay, but I never wanted to hurt you girls. I didn’t want to be the villain of your lives.”
Her words felt like ice, like the coldest air Nora had ever felt on that February day in Chicago when they’d buried their father.
“You are the villain, though,” Nora said defiantly.
Meredith paused for a moment before saying, “But as you know, a villain is always a main character. Am I really that important to your story, Nora?”
And then Nora wondered if maybe she was right. Maybe Meredith May was more like an extra whose background presence was barely known, hardly memorable.
In Nate’s truck, Julia and Emily sat in silence for a little while.
Then Emily said quietly, “How come you never told us about the miscarriage?”
“Miscarriages,” Julia corrected softly. “There were three. The last one in 2006, that Nate knows about, was the worst.”
“Jesus,” Emily said. “Three? And you never said anything to me and Nora?”
Julia turned and stared out the window for a moment. “You know, we all agreed when we were kids that we were never going to have babies. It felt too dangerous because of Mom and all that.”
Emily nodded, remembering. First her fear was physical: dying. Then it became emotional: that she couldn’t understand how to stick around because her own mother hadn’t.
“I didn’t want you guys to worry,” Julia said. “There was nothing you could’ve done anyway.”
“So instead you kept it all bottled up until you blew up your life all these years later?” Emily said.
Julia shook her head. “Veronica went away to college. Ted chose to move out. I didn’t blow up anything.
” But for some reason, she thought about what Ted had said as he’d packed his things.
That she had checked out first. And maybe that last miscarriage, her ensuing fixation on what their own mother had done, had broken something in her that she hadn’t truly realized before now.
“And Jul, did you really, honestly think no one needed you?” Emily continued, gentler.
Julia nodded. “My house was so quiet all spring.”
“You should’ve called me or Nora. We would’ve come to visit.”
Julia waved her away with a flick of her wrist. “You’re busy with Cee and the boys. And Nora has a new show. I wasn’t going to bother you two.”
“Bother us?” Emily laughed dryly. “No, Julia, you don’t get it. We need you. Nora is a mess. And so am I. My life is like total shit right now, and I have no idea how to fix it.”
Julia thought about the last time she’d seen her sisters in Coronado, a year earlier, and she hadn’t noticed anything off, but maybe she’d been too focused on Veronica that week.
Julia hadn’t spoken to Nora all year after the incident on Nate’s porch.
And she’d spoken to Emily only a handful of times.
But she knew that Nora was cast in a new show and seemed to be killing it in her career.
(She’d read the glowing review in the Times.) And Emily had seemed good, normal, on their few phone calls.
What did Emily mean about her life being total shit?
She was married to an amazing woman, who Julia was certain would never, ever treat her the way Ted had treated Julia these last few years.
“And I think Nate might need you too,” Emily added.
“Nate?” Julia questioned. The last time she’d seen him, his lips had been locked on Nora’s.
“Something is up with him,” Emily continued. “I thought he was just being evasive because he didn’t want to tell us where you were. But that wasn’t it.”
She and Nate had exchanged only a few brief texts and emails over the last year.
After witnessing the kiss on his porch last May, and overhearing Nora talk about staying in Nate’s house after Mallory was born, she’d wondered all year if he and Nora were a couple.
If they had been together on and off for years and she had been left stupidly in the dark.
But every time she’d had that thought, it had made her stomach hurt until she’d pushed it away.
It’d felt easier to distance herself from both of them than to consider the reality that they’d fallen in love right next to her.
But now? She had no idea what was going on with either of them.
And suddenly that made her feel incredibly sad.
“I’m serious, Julia,” Emily said. “We all need you. What did Grandma Vera used to call you? The glue?”
“Can’t make a s’more without the marshmallows,” Julia said. And in her own voice she heard an echo of who she used to be, as a girl, a teenager, a woman. Of who she still was, maybe, somewhere deep down.
“Or the chocolate,” Emily added.
“Or the graham crackers,” Nora said, suddenly jumping into the back seat, sounding out of breath.
“You’re back already? That was quick,” Emily said.
Nora nodded. She looked less angry, but she didn’t elaborate. Then she said, “Can we go back to Coronado now, please? I am so ready for sisters’ week to start.”
“We can stop at Vons for s’mores ingredients on the way,” Emily said hopefully.
“And wine,” Nora added.
They both looked at Julia. She chewed on the skin around her thumbnail, where her normally perfect manicure was peeling. “I think I need to stop at a Verizon store first,” she said. “It’s time I got a new phone.”