Chapter 51
Aya
Aya swam a lot when she was staying with Emi and Charles.
Emi was like a sister to Aya, but Charles was virtually a stranger.
The weather in Santa Cruz was so mild that it shocked her.
Emi’s street of suburban mansions was the very definition of quiet.
At first, it was as if Aya had been transported to an alien landscape, as if Love Hollow had never existed.
When Aya was swimming, she didn’t have to think about how she had abandoned her beloved museum.
Mrs. Irving, who was uncharacteristically sympathetic, had insisted she would work everything out.
Aya didn’t have faith that things would go well, but when forced to choose between the museum and her PhD, she had firmly checked “none of the above.” The option she had chosen was to cry in a darkened room, hand over the Pilgrimage responsibilities to her mother and sister, and think about how her flirtation with Noah had cost her the best job of her life.
Eventually, Emi carted Aya off to California.
It was better, Emi explained, to have a change of scene.
And indeed, Aya stopped crying once she was in California.
She ate and swam and slept. It was as if she had paused her life and crawled into an uncommonly pretty screensaver. Pool. Lounge chairs. Sunshine.
The only way she knew that time was passing was the size and shape of Emi’s belly.
By early August, it looked notably puffy, though Emi still insisted that it would look normal under a loose white coat.
She needed to feel that it would, anyway, because her job was starting in September and she didn’t want to tell anyone there just yet.
Emi might be working at a nonprofit clinic, but the general societal attitudes about pregnant women would still be in play.
“What did you really think back in high school?” Aya asked one night. They were drinking coconut water and relaxing on pool noodles, and the beauty of the sunset made Aya feel drunk. Which made a change—for weeks, she had hardly felt anything.
“Seriously?” asked Emi. “You’re sure you want to know?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you and Noah would be together forever,” Emi said thoughtfully. “Grandkids, shared room in the nursing home. All of it.”
Aya pushed her noodle down and tried to stand on it. The awkwardness of her efforts to balance meant she didn’t have to look at Emi. “You never said that, though.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that Emi was giving her a wry smile.
“Well, I was going to wait until you started officially dating. Then when that didn’t happen, I kept quiet.”
Aya gave a sad smile. “I didn’t want to risk all that, you know? At least, not until prom night. But really, not even then.”
“With what happened in your parents’ marriage, I don’t blame you.”
Aya pushed the noodles aside. “I don’t think anyone has a perfect marriage. But Mom and Daddy?”
“No,” said Emi. “That’s not what I’m saying. Your lives were ripped apart when he died. I can imagine how hard it would be to…”
Aya frowned. “What? To have a good life?”
Emi took a sip of her coconut water. “That’s not what I said.”
Several more moments went by. Anger bubbled up within Aya then fizzled out almost as quickly.
It was something Emi had told her about—noticing emotions, naming them, then letting them go.
Apparently, according to Emi, there were randomized controlled trials.
Doctors dispensed advice like that to their patients, though fortunately, Aya had never been forced to endure a lecture on mindfulness by some guru in a white coat.
Throughout her life, Aya had been suspicious of the American advice to express emotions.
In her household, she had her mother and her younger sisters around.
If she didn’t hold it together, who knew what would happen to them.
But she had started to practice, very occasionally, at Emi’s urging. After all, she had to do something in exchange for the fancy guest room, the pool, and the excellent food that she picked at.
“So you think I didn’t want to fall in love because I was scared that Noah would leave me? Because I felt like, by dying, my dad had abandoned us?” Aya’s throat closed as she said it. “That sounds like some crazy psychobabble to me,” she managed.
“Look,” said Emi. “I don’t want to blame you. Or Noah. But if you’re already mad at me, I did have one question.”
Aya looked her in the eye. “What’s that?”
“What are you going to do with the rest of your life?”