Chapter 34
I sneak out of the cottage when Beau is still tangled in sheets, his bare chest exposed to the cool air, limbs splayed across the mattress.
We made love twice last night. Once hurried and desperate, falling onto the sheets when we were still damp from the hot tub.
And again, after finishing our road-trip snacks and a bottle of wine.
He let me stay in the moment, but I noticed him watching me with that furrowed brow.
He was playing carefree to appease me. Something is weighing on him, and I can’t discern whether he’s worried about me or what he’ll face when he returns home.
Café Huckleberry opens in twenty minutes.
I could wait until a reasonable hour, when I’m not queasy from lack of sleep as well as nerves and terror.
But if Mary’s the pastry chef, she’s more likely to work the early shift, and I don’t want to risk missing her—after traveling across a constellation of points to end up where we started.
I go alone because I don’t want a witness in case she confirms that she never wanted me anyway. So I leave before Beau wakes.
It’s a sunless morning of taupe clouds too bland to be cheery or ominous. The coastline, which gleaned like a jeweled tiara in the sunset, is indiscernible in the fog.
I head out on foot—walking along the shoulder of the highway until an unpaved trail opens to the beach and dumps me onto packed sand at low tide.
I bury my nose in Beau’s Harvard sweatshirt, ball my fists in the pockets, and brace against the too-cold July air.
And then I see an old red barn with Café Huckleberry written in white script on a wooden placard.
The building is perched along the highway, right across from the beach.
It sits on its haunches, shoulders pressed against other historic buildings that have been transformed into trendy shops and restaurants.
The short strip of shops is more tourist stopover than true attraction, a blip in an article on the West’s hidden gems. They would all fit neatly into one postcard, and the red barn would be the highlight of the shot.
It’s bright, vibrant, and memorable—and not just because it’s where my “dead” mother bakes the best scones found on the California coast.
I kick the sand off my shoes as I walk up the wooden beach-access steps and onto the road. There are several cars parked in the diagonal spaces in front of Café Huckleberry, and another handful at the store next door.
I wait for a vintage green truck to pass before making my way across the road and straight through the open doors of the café.
And then I freeze.
She’s behind the counter, her smile wide as she chats with a customer.
Her laugh echoes in the converted barn and reaches me at some primitive level.
I remember it—the sound, the feel, the vibration of it.
And then I can’t hear anything because the volume of my heartbeat dials up to blaring. My face is on fire, my hands numb.
I have to look away from her to steady my breathing. The café is white and airy, with a window to the orderly pastry kitchen in the back. It smells like salt air, sugar, and every memory I wish we’d made.
A man, her husband with the cartoon name, calls to me.
He’s unloading merchandise onto shelves near the front.
I hadn’t noticed him when I stepped through, but now he’s a few feet away, smiling, welcoming me to Café Huckleberry.
And I have a ridiculous thought that he reminds me of Dad.
He doesn’t look like Henry Dahl. He has dark eyes to Dad’s gray, white hair to Dad’s salt-and-pepper.
Lanky where Dad was wide and imposing. But his smile—it’s disarming like Dad’s, and the way he offered welcome was so genuine.
They both have a knack for making a turn of phrase sound meaningful.
When Dad told me that he loved me, I believed him.
Or maybe I’m projecting. Misremembering. Misinterpreting. Because my dormant emotions have roared to life and gone haywire. Sifting between present and past and contaminated by pain and shock and disbelief.
“Thank you,” I think I say, but I can’t be sure.
I walk to the counter, waiting behind three other customers, listening to my mother’s throaty laugh.
She knows these people. She asks a customer about his mother’s recovery from hip surgery.
She offers a few suggestions to a tourist looking for hiking trails with ocean views.
I saw her beaming photo yesterday and got my proof of life through her vivid website, but seeing her here—smiling, happy, connected—is not a reality I could have prepared for.
Because it proves the lie. It confirms she’s alive and well, and fine without me.
I step forward and she looks at me expectantly. Her gray-blond hair is swept into a makeshift bun, her face tan and creased by laugh and worry lines in equal measure. Her right front tooth crowds the left, overlapping slightly. “Welcome. What can I get you?” she asks.
But I’m suddenly incapable of speaking, of acknowledging this moment. And if I’m honest, I’m waiting for her to know me. For her to recognize me through the molecular connection of motherhood that every piece of fiction fooled me into trusting.
I want her to remember me like I remember her—as an ache.
But nothing. A generic smile is offered in return. “I made a special batch of custard-filled croissants this morning. The bear claw is a local favorite. And there’s always our specialty—the huckleberry scone.”
I part my lips to speak but choke on every word that bubbles up.
Her worry lines etch deep, and I see my future. The way my forehead will wrinkle. The way my jawline will soften with age. The way I might fail to figure my shit out, screw everything up, and hurt everyone who loved me.
“Yes,” I hear myself say. She grins and tilts her head to study me.
“Which one?”
“One of each, I guess,” I say as her husband steps behind the counter to help the next customer.
“Are you here on vacation?” She turns to pull pastries out of the case with wax paper.
“My mother moved here.” It tumbles out of my mouth—this truth that feels like a lie.
“Oh, how lovely,” she says. “We’ve been here six years now. Never been happier.”
The platitude, the meaningless expression, is a dull blade sawing at my breastbone. “Yeah, I can see that.”
She freezes as she places a pink pastry box on the counter. She tilts her head, assessing me. My tone is strange enough that she looks unsettled. It’s not like she recognizes me. Hell, maybe she’s willed herself to forget I was ever hers.
I was wrong. The time is here, and I still don’t know what I want to say to her. I haven’t even had my coffee yet and I’m trying to find words to ask her why she abandoned me. Or command her to recognize me, fall at my feet, beg me for forgiveness.
I’m looking for closure. But there isn’t any. There’s no closed loop when the story is a sinkhole that’s expanding faster than I can fill it.
“That’ll be $19.43,” she says.
There’s only a ten-dollar bill in my wallet, so I hand her my credit card and she swipes it, still studying me as I grab my order.
“Have a great visit, Ms. ...” Her eyes flash to my card and hang there for one , two , three .
She drops it on the counter, swallows, and stills.
And then she looks at me like she’s calculating whether she can escape.
Her breathing becomes uneven when her gaze snares on my pendant.
I grab it, covering the face with my fingertips—as if I can guard the fairy tale of her from the terrible reality of her.
“Dad is dead,” I say. And she chokes on a breath. “But I was surprised to learn you are not.”
Her eyes widen before she begins blinking rapidly. One hand goes to her stomach and the other to her chest, and she steps back.
“I can’t,” she says. And it’s a whisper, almost soundless. “I can’t do this.”
Jack Huckleberry steps beside her, an arm going to the small of her back. “Mare?” he asks—one syllable soaked with concern and comfort.
Mary stares at me behind her palm with something like fear or denial in her eyes.
“Yeah,” I say, begging my voice not to betray my heartache, “I guess you never could.” I slip outside as my breakdown stalks me like a predator.
I was stupid. I came all the way here, presenting myself to her like an opportunity for her absolution. But you can’t make someone apologize or care about the hurt they’ve caused. You can’t make someone love you who’s made it clear they don’t.
I lose my way as I race back to the cottage, overshooting the trailhead and backtracking a mile. By the time I return, Beau is pacing in the driveway in his running clothes.
He exhales and falls forward with his hands on his knees.
“Jesus, Phe. You’ve been gone hours. You left your cell on the counter and didn’t leave a note.
Are you okay?” He strides over to meet me at the end of the drive, and I hand him the pink box, crushed under my arm.
He reads the logo on the seal and moves to me, dropping the box and cupping my jaw in his palm. “What happened?”
I inhale, but the air is too thick for a full breath.
“She wouldn’t talk to me.” And my knees buckle as I succumb to sobs.
Beau catches me, holding me together with my nose against his chest and his chin tucked into my hair.
His arms are wrapped, strong and sure, around my torso as my shoulders shake.
Beau strokes my back with insistent palms, open and warm, buoying me through my sobs.
“I’m so sorry, Phe,” he whispers, like a confession pressed into my hair, low and hushed, desperate to soothe me, but I am incapable of it. “So sorry.”
My tears drench his shirt with salt, and I grip his waist with my fists and let him wring the grief out of me. Grief for a dad I thought I knew, for a mom I thought I’d already mourned, and for a history—bleak though it could be—that I thought I understood.