I look up, alarmed.
Rory shakes her head at me, fiercely. “I don’t know, baby.”
Nathan drains his glass. “Man, that was an elaborate scheme to get kids to like a particular vegetable.”
“Yes,” I say, but I’m reeling with the recognition that Rory hasn’t told the girls that Augustus is dead. I give her a wide-eyed look, and she shakes her head back at me, like back off.
Nathan, oblivious, rests his fingers on the ring of the glass. “You guys had a weirdly happy childhood, you know that?”
“Some parts, for sure,” Rory says.
“For sure,” I say in agreement, but I hardly know how to sit there with such a yawning thing sitting between us. I look at my nieces, oblivious to their great loss, and it makes me want to howl. I stand. “I guess I’d better get back.”
“So soon?”
“Yeah, I just . . .” I can’t think of an excuse. “Mom,” I say, waving my hands.
“Okay,” Rory says.
“Walk me to the street?” I ask.
She gives Nathan a look, then stands and follows me out. In the yard, I turn and face her. “Why aren’t you telling them?”
“I will,” she says, and dashes tears off her face. “I just . . . I don’t know. I just can’t tell them yet.”
“You’re lying to them!”
“For God’s sake, Maya, what difference does it make? He’s gone either way.”
I see the misery in her eyes, the way her lower lip trembles, but all I feel is the lie. “I have to go.”
“Maya!” she protests as I start to walk away. “Don’t be such a dick. We all grieve different ways, or maybe you’re not going to grieve at all, huh?”
I turn. “Maybe not.” But I don’t really want to leave on such a mean note. I pause, shake my head. “I’m just freaked that they don’t know.” I kiss her cheek. “I really do have to get back to Meadow.”
“Fine,” she says, and wipes away a tear. “It’s not just you that everything has happened to, you know. It’s happened to all of us.”
“Has it?” I ask, and walk away before I say something even meaner.
Chapter Thirteen
Maya
The first thing I do every morning is walk. Before coffee, before anything. I swing my legs out of bed, shed my pajamas, and don leggings, a long T-shirt, and a hoodie. My shoes are by the back door, so I sit on the bench there and tie them on, then head out. Meadow must be awake, but she’s nowhere in sight. The puppy is nowhere in sight. He must have slept with her. I find I’m disappointed.
Mornings are often gloomy this time of year. Farther south, the summers are bright and sunny, but in the Santa Barbara area, a marine layer often hangs low over the ocean until much later in the day. I grew up with it, and love it, love the softness it lends the air.
I bypass the swimming pool, finished in colorful tiles from the twenties, and unlock the cedar gate that opens at the top of a long, steep set of stairs that wind through succulent plants to arrive at the beach. Sixty-seven steps, exactly the age my father was when he dropped dead.
The beach is nearly empty so early, and the house is far enough from the towns to the north and south to escape tourist curiosity. A big swath of the mountainsides burned a couple of years ago, erasing hiking trails that used to lead here. Lucky for me, I guess.
Walk. One foot and then the next. Air moves over my face, my neck. I breathe it in a few times, filling my lungs to remember that being alive is not to be underrated, and then . . . I just walk. I don’t bring podcasts or music with me. I want to hear whatever the earth has to tell me.
It started in rehab. A lot of people do hard exercise to sweat out their demons, but I wasn’t exactly in the peak of health, and I’d broken a rib somehow when I chopped open the casks. Walking was all I could manage. I walked the grounds and garden—let it be noted that for all his flaws, my dad ponied up big-time for the best rehab around—and while it was not a lot of area, you can do a lot with loops.
Walking was possible. I could do it when it didn’t feel like I could do anything else. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t have functioned at all in the outside world. I can’t sit still all the time. I can’t always focus enough to read. Even when I’m walking, things pop up, memories and regrets and shame and guilt, but they don’t stick around and needle me the same way.
At the foot of the stairs, I take off my shoes and socks and leave them, and make my way to the hard-pressed sand on the edge of the water, walking close enough that waves ruffle over my toes and ankles now and again. The water is very cold, but I never mind that. A wind is blowing from the north, cleansing my face and neck. Seagulls and little plovers poke through the leavings of the tide, and a pair of brown pelicans soar overhead, peering at the surface of the waves for breakfast. A dog and a person walk in the distance, but I’m otherwise alone. It’s the great thing about this location. It’s lonely, but it’s also never crowded.