Chapter 2
I’m drunker than I planned to be when I leave the Legion just after nine. Especially since I have a double shift ahead of me in the morning, and a resident passing away is unfortunately not a viable excuse to come in hungover.
The street outside is dark and quiet. There are shallow puddles of water pooled in the cracks between the pavement and in spots where the sidewalk gradient is uneven. As I jump a sizable one, I hear a splash behind me, and the hairs on my arms raise with the realization that I am not alone.
I whip around, feet braced in a fight stance, even though I’ve never actually done so much as throw a punch. I watch as an older man steps carefully around a puddle on the sidewalk, the rubber of his galoshes squeaking as he walks.
He is my height. His frame is just as slight. My muscles relax a little with the realization that his apparent age of sixty or so means I could both outrun him or hold my own if it came down to it.
“Julia DeMarco?” He calls out my legal name, and whatever relief I had for that brief moment vanishes.
His double-breasted suit. My full name. The relentless pursuit, despite the late hour. Each gives off a succession of red flags that make me wish he were an attacker after all.
“Not the girl you’re looking for,” I lie.
But the man glances back toward the Legion. “The bartender told me you were her. He seemed quite sure.”
Jesus, Donny.
I know he was trying to help. Donny’s got a golden-retriever, help-thy-neighbor kind of heart, but this is the last thing I need tonight.
I’ve been dodging guys like this on the phone for two years now.
I get a few months of reprieve, during which I think everything is resolved.
Then there’s another voicemail notification from another scripted call center agent informing me that my credit card has been sent to collections and that legal action will be taken if I don’t pay it off immediately.
I don’t know if my mother stared down at my newborn face at the hospital and thought, You will be an untapped source of financial credit for me one day, so along with my emotional baggage, I will give you my name. Either way, it has worked out much better for her than for me.
I have tried threatening to go to the police. But my mother has every excuse in the book.
You need to get in early with these types of business opportunities.
Just give it a few weeks, we’ll be making six figures in no time.
Don’t you want financial freedom?
Her schemes never seem to pan out. It was embarrassing enough growing up with a mother who friended all of my classmates’ mothers only to “hey gurl” them a few days later about an essential oil party or an “opportunity to change their life.” But since her plans started to involve me and my credit score, I’ve begun to reevaluate things.
I haven’t gotten to the point that I’m okay with throwing the single mother who raised me in jail. But a creditor tracking me down on a dark road in the middle of the night might just be my breaking point.
“I’ve been trying to speak with you all day,” the man says. “I’m Kitty St. Clair’s attorney and executor. My name is Niles James.”
He takes a step back as if he’s hoping to put me at ease, and I wonder if he’s suddenly following my train of thought about approaching strange women in the dark.
His identification as Kitty’s lawyer alleviates some worry, but Zoe has always subscribed to the superstition that you should never trust a man with two first names, and for the first time in my life, I wonder if she might have a point.
“What do you want?” It’s a harsher greeting than I’d return in the light of day, but with seeing Reeve and now this, my internal compass is off, spinning in circles.
“I need to speak with you,” he says. “Kitty didn’t provide your phone number, and there are matters pertaining to her will that we need to discuss.”
“Now?” I look around at the dampened street and wobble a little.
It’s clear that Niles notices. “No, not now. This matter is better left till the morning. Can you meet me?” He fishes in his pocket and holds out a white business card. He waits until I make the move to step forward and take it from him.
“I’m staying at the Cranberry Inn in Port Logan. They have a lovely breakfast service. Perhaps we can discuss this over pancakes tomorrow at nine?”
My shift at Sunnyvale starts at nine.
“Can we make it eight and fast?”
“Eight it is,” he says.
I step from the sidewalk onto the street, my heel clipping the edge of a puddle, splashing frigid water up the back of my nylons.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he calls after me. “I imagine the two of you must have been close. She talked about you often.”
This revelation stops me dead in my tracks. Because although I liked Kitty—everyone did—I wouldn’t consider us close.
I leave the conversation unfinished on the sidewalk. But when I get home and slip beneath my covers, Niles James’s words from earlier worm their way through my brain. She talked about you often.
But why? And what did she say?
The answers don’t come as I toss and turn, twisting in my sheets, then stare at the ceiling, willing sleep to take over my body.
When it finally does, it plummets me into a dream.
I’m in a long white hall. I can hear Kitty’s voice calling my name over and over, but every door I open leads to an empty room.
Finally, I find her. She’s sitting in a chair next to the window, watching the waves roll in on the beach, with an unusually wistful look on her wrinkled face.
She stretches out a hand to me—long bony fingers.
“My darling girl. Come. I want to tell you a story.”
I walk toward her. My arm reaches for hers, but just before I reach her, I wake up.