Chapter 5 #2
“Glenda.” Gladys pounded her thermos on the folding table between them like a gavel. “She doesn’t want your dusty grandson. My grandson is a surgeon over in Mission Valley, doing very well for himself. He just bought a five-bedroom house in Del Mar with a pool—”
“Maddy works in Hollywood, Gladys. She surely has her own pool.” Gilda’s hand flicked in Glady’s direction.
Maddy’s eye twitched. The Peepin’ G’s had been here since she was born, and they would be here when the sun burned out, still arguing the relative merits of their grandsons from the same three beach chairs.
“I really need to get going, but it was lovely to see you ladies.” Maddy quickly turned to move around the barricade.
“Oh, wait! Here.” Gladys picked up the tupperware from the table, popped the lid, and held it out. “Prune cookies. Good for regularity.” She winked.
“No thanks.” Maddy forced a tight-lipped smile and kept walking.
“She doesn’t need prunes, Gladys, she’s on Ozempic.” Gilda’s hushed tone carried the full length of the sidewalk.
Maddy entered the store, a cold rush of air hitting her. She took a deep, composing breath and shook it off.
Vons took forty minutes. The store wasn’t there fifteen years ago, and the layout made zero sense, but she made it through.
She exited out the north entrance with a paper bag in each hand and took the long way back to her Range Rover, away from the areas where people congregated, to avoid any more run-ins.
She dropped the load off, then made her final pit stop at Crown Bakery.
She walked out fifteen minutes later with the seven chocolate croissants that Aspen liked, and momentarily considered tossing them in the trash and telling Bunny they were sold out. Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out to see back-to-back texts popping up on her screen.
Bunny: Sweetheart what’s taking so long??
Bunny: Will you be home soon???
Bunny: ETA????
Bunny: Madison Sterling!!!!! Answer me!!!!
Bunny texted the way she lived—urgency disproportionate to the situation. Maddy rolled her eyes and started to compose a reply.
Maddy: I’ll be—
“Maddy?” A familiar voice came from the left.
Her head jerked up. Thumb stalled on her screen.
Jake Howell was standing six feet down the sidewalk with a takeout bag in one hand and car keys in the other.
Her body immediately tensed. “Jake. Hi.” Of all the people Maddy was concerned about running into today, Jake was at the top of the list.
“Heard a rumor you were back.” He closed the distance between them, stopping just in front of her. “Wasn’t sure I believed it.”
Maddy motioned down her body. “Here I am.”
The grin hit his eyes before his mouth caught up. A fraction of the tension loosened in her body. Jake had always had that effect. Not even in any romantic sense, it was just who Jake was. Warm. Compassionate. Made everyone around him feel at ease.
They had been together for all of junior and senior year.
He was kind. Sweet. Worshipped the ground she walked on and never demanded anything back.
Then, she left. Without so much as a phone call or a text.
She had not been fair to Jake, not by any definition of the word, and she knew it.
She owed him an apology. An explanation.
Anything. But standing outside Crown Bakery in plain view, with half of Coronado milling about, hardly seemed like the place to open that particular Pandora’s box.
She took a moment to actually take him in. He looked good. Broader in the shoulders than she remembered. Close-cropped hair, neater now. Sun-lines around the eyes. The same leather cord at his collar he’d worn since tenth grade. He looked exactly like Jake.
“How’s Bunny’s tailbone?” Jake tipped his head. “Aspen told me the whole yoga paddleboard saga at Nicky’s the other night. I’ve been meaning to stop by and check on her.”
Of course he was. The reliably good boy her mother mentioned in every phone call—
Wait, what? She replayed his last words again.
Aspen and Jake. At Nicky’s. Together. Were they friends? Dating? They barely even acknowledged each other’s existence in high school. Then again, fifteen years on the same three-mile island was enough time to build just about anything.
Jake was still smiling. Waiting. What was his question again? Oh yes, Bunny’s tailbone.
Maddy huffed. “You know Bunny. She’s milking it for everything it’s worth.”
Jake laughed. “Sounds about right.”
He could be making this so much worse than he was.
“I heard you’re a teacher now?” Maddy’s phone buzzed in her palm. She ignored it.
Jake nodded. “World history. At the high school. We’re learning about Ancient Egypt right now.” He bounced on the balls of his feet a little. She was glad to see the guy was still a total nerd about history. “I coach the football team, too.”
“Living the dream.” She lifted the corner of her mouth.
“You know me.” Jake’s grin widened.
She did know. At seventeen, the two of them had spent a summer lying on the seawall at Glorietta Bay planning their futures.
Jake’s had been: become a teacher at Coronado High, coach football, live in my dad’s guest cottage until I can buy my own place, marry the woman of my dreams, start a family.
Maddy had thought he lacked imagination.
But he did exactly what he’d said he’d do and seemed genuinely happy with it.
Maddy clocked his left ring finger. Empty. Maybe not everything he said he’d do.
Maddy’s phone buzzed in her hand three more times. She glanced at the screen. Bunny had escalated to sending purely exclamation points.
“Sorry,” Maddy flashed her phone. “I’ve gotta get going before Bunny sends out a missing person alert.”
“No worries. Hey. Would you want to grab dinner sometime? I’d love to have a proper catch-up.”
“Yeah, that would be nice.” It came out before she’d fully thought it through. But Jake was Jake and didn’t seem to be holding a grudge. It would probably be fine. Nice even, like she said.
Maddy held out her hand for his phone. “Let me give you my number.”
He pulled his phone out of his back pocket and dropped it into her open palm.
She typed her number in and handed the phone back. “Text me.” She gave him a full smile this time.
“I will.” He tucked the phone into his pocket with a smile. “Welcome home, Mads.”
Mads. She hadn’t heard that nickname in a decade and a half. Maddy waved and turned, walking towards her Range Rover.
Well, that wasn’t so bad.
* * *
Maddy let herself in through the front door carrying as much of the haul as she could in one trip.
She heard Bunny’s rising theatrical cadence unspooling some monologue from the kitchen. The smell of browning butter hit her nostrils, and her stomach reminded her she hadn’t eaten since breakfast.
She walked towards the kitchen with the bakery bag and grocery bag hanging from her wrists, Bunny’s white pharmacy prescription bag balanced under her chin, and the wine bottles clinking against the paper sack she was hugging.
She stopped at the threshold.
Olly St. Claire was at the stove, wearing a dark navy apron, one hand bracing a small saucepan against the burner, the other slowly whisking whatever was inside.
Why was there always a St. Claire in her mother’s kitchen? And why did they always have to be making something that smelled fucking delicious? The damn French and their superior cooking.
Bunny was perched on her donut on the stool beside the island, wearing a floral-printed kimono jacket, worn open over a fitted dress, with a glass of wine in one hand and the other hand waving for emphasis at something about the traffic in LA.
CoCo and Chanel were at Olly’s feet, waiting for scraps of food, each with a bow in their fur that matched the exact floral print of Bunny’s kimono.
Olly turned to reach for his wine and clocked her standing near the entryway. A smile took over his face as he opened his arms wide. “Madison.” His faint French accent softening on the d.
She forced a smile and crossed to the counter, setting the bags down.
Bunny had not paused her sentence and instead factored Maddy’s entrance into the performance and kept going.
“...Isn’t that right, sweetheart? It is simply not how a human being is meant to live, spending two to three hours a day stuck in your car.
And don’t get me started on the people. Everyone is doing a cleanse, everyone is forty-five trying to look twenty-five, and I said to her last month, do you remember, honey?
I said darling, don’t you dare mess up that perfect face with those injections and fillers, Sterling women age exceptionally well au natural. ”
Olly came around the island with the whisk still in his hand. “They do indeed. Look at you. All grown up.” He gave her the standard French greeting with a light kiss on each cheek and then squeezed her shoulder. “Good to have you home, kid.”
There’s that damn word again. Home.
“Good to see you, Olly.” Unlike with the Peepin’ G’s, this time she actually meant it. She had always liked Olly. If there was going to be a St. Claire in this house, she was glad it was Olly and not…the other one.
“Took your sweet time, didn’t you?” He drew back, giving her a pointed look.
Maddy averted her eyes. What was she supposed to say?
He reached past her for the grocery bag. “I’ve been whisking this butter for thirty minutes. Did you get the lemon?”
Maddy exhaled. Oh, he was talking about the groceries. “Bottom left.”
“Good girl.” He pulled the lemon out and turned back toward the stove.
Olly slid a knife from the block and halved the lemon on a cutting board, then squeezed the juice into the saucepan. “Your mother tells me you’re staying for the Cup this year.”
“Looks that way.” Maddy started unpacking. She slid the pharmacy bag down the counter toward Bunny without a word. Lined the four bottles of wine—five with what they were already drinking—up against the backsplash. Put the feta in the fridge. Slid the salmon towards Olly.
Olly glanced at his watch. “Oh! Better fire up the broiler. We’re cutting it close.”
Maddy stopped. “Cutting what close?”