Frowning, Julie asked, “But wouldn’t that only have been for a few days a year?”
“If that,” Sam said. “I don’t know if she didn’t like writing anymore, or if she just liked teaching and being a mom better.”
“I can barely remember my mom.” Julie’s voice was wistful as she smoothed her chopstick wrapper, before starting to fold it into pleats.
“What happened?”
“Leukemia. It was very fast. I was five.” She gave an unhappy, cynical smile. “My father was so mad.”
“Mad at who?” asked Sam.
“Oh, her doctors, for not figuring it out fast enough. God. My mother, too. I think he felt like she’d failed him.” Julie shrugged. “He got married again less than a year later, so at least he wasn’t afraid to get back on the horse that threw him.” She smoothed out her wrapper, then started to fold it again. “Then—when Jason left—I remember thinking that I knew I could get through it, because I’d gotten through my mom dying. I remember thinking, Well, at least it won’t be as bad as that was.”
She bent her head, and Sam wanted to touch her, to hold her hand and tell her everything would be all right. He walked around the table, sat down on the booth beside her, and pulled her close, letting her lean against him, thinking that he wanted to keep her safe and make sure that nothing would ever hurt her again.
After a few minutes, Julie lifted her head and managed a tremulous smile. “I’m going to the ladies’ room. And if you want to leave right now—if you want to just walk out the door and get in your car and pretend we never met—I’m not going to judge you. I promise that I won’t.”
Sam stared at her, incredulous. “I’m not going to run out on you,” he said.
Julie sighed. “I might as well give you the whole story,” she’d said, “before you waste any more time on me.”
The waitress set down a platter of sushi. Sam picked up his chopsticks, and listened as Julie told him that her father, Saul Barringer, had once been in-house counsel for one of the biggest film studios （hence, Sam supposed, the mansion in the hills）。 Saul had been married three times, and had outlived all three of his wives, along with a son, Julie’s half-brother, who died of an overdose in 1993, and another daughter, an older half-sister, who drowned in a scuba accident in Belize in 2007. Saul was now, Julie said, in the late stages of kidney disease. “He’s ninety-one, and he’s had a quintuple bypass, plus skin cancer, so he’s not really a candidate for dialysis or a transplant.” Just a week ago, following his last hospitalization, his doctors at Cedars-Sinai had sent him home to die. “I guess that’s why I’ve been losing things,” Julie said sadly, explaining that, in addition to her wallet, she’d managed to lose her car keys, her garage-door opener, and her phone, all in five days’ time. Shaking her head, she said, “At least I haven’t left Connor anywhere.”
Julie had arranged for her father to have round-the-clock nursing care, plus visits from the hospice nurses. Then she’d moved back home to oversee her father’s death. “He didn’t ask, but I wanted to be there for him.” She’d sighed, her face resolving into what Sam would come to recognize as the expression she wore when discussing one of the men who’d let her down. Her eyes were downcast, her lower teeth dug into her upper lip. “I thought maybe he’d have, like, a moment of clarity, and he’d tell me he loved me, or tell Connor that he loved him, but I think all my dad ever really loved was his job. And earning money. And screwing other people out of it.” She’d shaken her head, looking disgusted, either at her father, for being so heartless, or at herself, for speaking that unpleasant truth out loud. “But he’s still my dad, and I don’t want him to be alone.” She’d sniffled, wiped her eyes, and tried to smile, even though Sam could see tears trembling on her eyelashes. “I bet all of this is sounding delightful. Deadbeat ex-husband, dying father, five-year-old every night of the week.” Her voice was shaky. Sam reached for her hands again. He didn’t desire Julie the way he’d once desired Gracie, all those years ago. It wasn’t a return of that desperate passion, but there was something about Julie that called to him, that made him feel capable and strong. Julie and Connor needed him, and that need would give him an identity, a role he could assume without wondering if he’d just glommed on to someone else’s interests or hobbies or way of being in the world （and wouldn’t entail his sister lifting her eyebrow and quietly observing that it was a good thing he’d never dated a woman who’d been in a cult）。