Chapter 5 Pauline
Pauline
My grandmother was awake when I arrived, propped against pillows—smaller than I remembered, but with eyes that could still cut through steel.
The hospital room smelled like antiseptic and sadness. Machines beeped in steady rhythm, tracking heartbeats and oxygen levels and all the things that reminded me how fragile she’d become.
The stroke had taken so much from her—the full use of her left hand, some of the sharpness in her speech, the ability to walk without assistance.
But Margaret Wells refused to be diminished.
She had demanded extra blankets because the ones they provided were, in her words, thin as politicians’ promises.
She had complained about the Jell-O, calling it a crime against dessert and an insult to gelatin everywhere.
She’d charmed three separate nurses into bringing her contraband crossword puzzles, which were now scattered across her bed like evidence of rebellion.
“Baby girl.” Her face lit up when she saw me, and for a moment she looked like herself again.
Like the woman who had raised me, who had braided my hair and packed my lunches and taught me that loving my curls was an act of war against a world that wanted me to be something else. “Come here. Let me look at you.”
I crossed the room and bent to kiss her cheek.
Her skin was papery thin, warm beneath my lips.
I pulled a chair close to her bed and sat down, taking her hand in mine—her right hand, the strong one, the one that still gripped back.
Her fingers felt more fragile than they used to, but they were steady. Still sure.
“You look tired,” she said. The words came out slightly slower than they used to but her eyes were as sharp as ever. They scanned my face thoroughly. “And angry. What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Pauline Marie Wells.” She said my full name like a warning shot. “I know what your nothing face looks like, and that’s not it. Try again.”
I should have known better than to lie to her. I had never successfully lied to her in my entire life. She had a sixth sense for nonsense, honed through decades of dealing with difficult patients and difficult doctors and one very difficult granddaughter.
“I got into a car accident,” I said.
Her good hand tightened on mine. “Are you hurt?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. I just backed into someone in a parking lot. Barely a scratch. But the car I hit was…” I trailed off, searching for words that wouldn’t make me sound insane. “Expensive. The repair bill is stressing me out.”
“How expensive?”
I told her the number.
Her eyebrows rose toward her hairline. “For a scratch? Lord have mercy.” She shook her head slowly. “What kind of fool drives a car like that?”
I didn’t answer. That was my first mistake.
My grandmother watched my face for a long moment, and I saw the exact second understanding dawned.
“This is the boy from college,” she said. Not a question.
“It’s not—he’s not—this has nothing to do with that.”
“Mmhmm.” The sound was deeply skeptical.
“It doesn’t.”
“You’ve been back in California for one month.” She held up a single finger. “One month. And somehow you’ve already crashed into his car specifically. Out of all the cars in this city. All the parking lots. All the people you could have reversed into.”
I wanted to say something about cosmic jokes and terrible timing, but she was absolutely right. Why did it have to be Jack Specter?
“Oh, dear.” She laughed at my expression, a real laugh that warmed something cold inside me. Then the laugh turned into a cough, dry and rattling, and my heart seized with terror.
I reached for the water cup on her bedside table, but she waved me off with her good hand.
“I’m fine. Stop looking at me like that.” She caught her breath, pressed her palm to her chest, and fixed me with a stare I knew too well, “When are you going to stop running from that boy and find a way past what happened between you?”
“I’m not running.”
“Baby girl.”
“I’ve moved on… I’m already past it. We mean nothing to each other.”
Jack was just the man who had made me feel seen and then proved I was invisible.
The coward who couldn’t claim me in front of his friends? “He’s just someone I used to know.”
My grandmother’s eyes said she wasn’t fooled for a second.
She reached for my hand again, “You know what I’ve learned in seventy-eight years of living?”
“What?”
“Grudges are heavy. And I’m too old and too tired to watch you carry one that’s breaking your back.
” She squeezed my fingers. “Whatever happened, it’s still eating at you.
I can see it. I’ve seen it for years, every time his name comes up, you change the subject.
You can keep running, or you can turn around and face it. But you can’t do both forever.”
I said nothing, and she let me. Soon we deflected to other topics about the latest reality TV show she was watching on the hospital television channel. Nothing heavy.
I stayed until visiting hours ended, and a nurse came in to check her vitals. Giving me that gentle but firm look that meant ‘time’s up’. I kissed my grandmother’s forehead, promised to come back tomorrow, and walked out of the hospital with the weight of her words pressing against my chest.
The next morning I went for a run.
Not because I wanted to—I’d never been one of those people who craved exercise, who felt incomplete without their daily endorphin fix—but because I needed to think, and my apartment walls were starting to feel like they were closing in.
I needed air. Movement. Somewhere that wasn’t filled with memories of repair bills and blue eyes and the smell of hospital antiseptic.
California in the early morning was something else entirely.
I ran through streets that were just waking up, past coffee shops with their doors propped open and the smell of fresh espresso drifting out onto the sidewalk.
Past dog walkers and joggers and a man doing tai chi in the park with such serene concentration that I felt calmer just looking at him.
The sun was gentle at this hour—golden and forgiving, and the palm trees cast long shadows across the pavement.
I had forgotten how beautiful this city could be when you weren’t bracing yourself against it.
My route took me along the waterfront, where the ocean stretched out flat and silver under the morning light.
Seagulls wheeled overhead, crying their harsh, lonely cries.
A group of surfers bobbed in the water, waiting for waves that hadn’t arrived yet, patient and unhurried.
I slowed to a walk, breathing hard, and let myself just… look.
This was why people loved California. This right here. The way the light hit the water. The smell of salt and possibility. The sense that you could be anyone here, do anything, start over as many times as you needed.
I had run from this place after graduation, convinced it held nothing but pain.
Maybe I had been wrong about that.
I walked the rest of the way home, letting California work its magic on my battered heart.
Back at my building, I was fishing my keys out of my pocket when I heard it.
The jingle of a collar. The click of nails on concrete.
I looked up.
Meatball was standing on Candy’s porch, tail wagging with enthusiasm, enormous gray body quivering with barely contained excitement. He looked at me like I was the highlight of his entire day. As if we were old friends reuniting after years apart.
Hell no.
“Hey, buddy,” I said, keeping my voice even and my body very, very still. “You stay right there, okay? Right there on the porch. Good boy. Good… giant, terrifying boy.”
Meatball’s tail wagged harder. He took a step toward the porch stairs.
My heart rate, which had just started to calm down from my run, shot right back up.
Over the past few weeks, Candy had figured out my situation. I hadn’t told her everything—hadn’t explained about Mrs. Ford’s German Shepherd or the cracked tooth —but she had noticed the way I tensed up whenever Meatball appeared, the way I kept my distance.
She never made me feel weird about it. Never pushed or teased or told me I was being ridiculous.
Instead, she had started texting me.
Heads up, taking Meatball out in five!
We’re on the stairs, coast will be clear in two minutes.
Meatball’s on leash, you’re safe to exit.
Small kindnesses. The kind that cost nothing but meant everything.
But right now, Candy was nowhere in sight, and Meatball was looking at me with those big, soulful eyes, and his tail was wagging so hard his entire back end was wiggling, and he was starting down the porch steps—
I moved fast. Faster than I’d moved during my entire run. I got my key in the lock, shoved the door open, and slipped inside, pulling it shut behind me with a click.
Safe.
Through the door, I heard Meatball let out a howl—long and mournful and desperately sad, like I’d personally broken his heart by refusing to be his friend.
I leaned my forehead against the door and closed my eyes.
The thing was, I didn’t want to be afraid of dogs. I didn’t want to flinch every time I heard a bark or cross the street to avoid a golden retriever.
I knew Meatball wasn’t going to hurt me. He was probably exactly what Candy said he was—a giant softie with resting murder face and a heart of gold.
But fear didn’t care about logic. It lived in my body, in the memory of teeth and the crack of my face against pavement.
It lived in the scar tissue, invisible but permanent.
Maybe someday I would get there. I would be the kind of person who could scratch Meatball behind his ears and let him lick my face and not feel like I was going to die.
But not yet. Not today.
I pushed off from the door and headed for the shower, leaving Meatball’s sad howls behind me.
Warm from the shower, I sat on my couch and pulled up my banking app.
The repair amount stared back at me. Obscene. Impossible.