by Naomi Niles
“I can’t believe you didn’t consult me about this first,” I said.
“I haven’t given him the money yet,” Haley pointed out. “I told him to come over tomorrow night after the dinner rush. We can discuss it then.”
“I don’t want to give him money,” I said. “I don’t want to give him anything.”
“Would you rather I meet with him alone?”
“No,” I said quickly. “I’m going to be there.”
“It’s my money, too, Kami,” Haley said in a small voice. “Half of it anyway. I get to decide what I want to do with it.”
“You’re going to piss it all away on the man who ruined our lives?” I demanded. “The man who ruined our mother’s life?”
“Mom committed suicide because her depression was crippling.”
“And you don’t think that had anything to do with Ethan?” I asked.
“He was out of our lives at that point.”
“Just barely,” I said. “The damage had already been done.”
“I think we should hear him out,” Haley said stubbornly.
I shook my head. The euphoria and happiness that had engulfed me this morning was just a faint memory now. “You’re going to regret this,” was all I said.
Chapter Fifteen
JJ
I woke up to the silence and freedom of knowing I had the day to myself. I had spread out my days off so that I always had a break mid-week. At the time, I had been thinking about the search for my mother, but now I just saw it as an opportunity to get some time to myself.
I hadn’t gone back to her house since that first day I had seen and recognized her. For some reason, that moment had put a spoke in the wheels of my search and had halted it altogether. I had told myself I would go back, and this time I would actually talk to her. But my resolve was weak and I just kept thinking up excuses why I couldn’t and shouldn’t approach her.
Kami was a good distraction. It was easy to think about her; her face kept jumping into my head every five seconds. I kept thinking back to our night together and those torrid moments on the beach under the stars.
I had never been the kind to veer too far out of the path of convention. Having sex in a public place was certainly far out of my comfort zone. And yet, with Kami, it had felt like the moment natural thing in the world. I had never been so happy to see fine sand littering the floor of my car.
It was that thought that made me decide to get the best use of my day and head over to Venice Beach. I could walk around, grab some breakfast, and just watch the world go buy. I could read my newspaper there. With a plan in place, I washed, dressed, and headed to the beach.
It was nice to be surrounded by the whirl of color and activity that stormed Venice Beach. People were everywhere. There were people walking their dogs, grabbing breakfast by the bayside restaurants, and lying with their backs to the sun on the beach. There were boys whizzing around on their personalized skateboards and girls in tiny skirts twirling by on their roller skates.
Basking in the feel of California, I headed over to a newspaper stand and got the Daily Mail. Then I bought some coffee at a tiny stand on the corner and found a table by the beach where I could enjoy both. In the end, I didn’t even open the newspaper. I found myself staring ahead at the beach and all the different kinds of people lining its surface. The culture was so vastly different from Colorado, and I was beginning to understand the hype about California.
Inspired by the beauty of the scene before me, I grabbed my phone and texted Kami. “Hi, you,” I started. “I’m sitting at a table, facing Venice Beach. This place is amazing.”
A few minutes later, a text came in. I had expected her to reply so soon, so I opened the message eagerly.
“It is amazing,” Kami wrote back. “I haven’t been in a while, though.”
“How come?”
“I get nervous in crowds,” Kami wrote. “That’s why I’ve always preferred my private beach. There’s no chance of running into a crowd there.”
“True,” I replied. “It’s a little crowded here… But there’s so much to see. Maybe I should bring you here next time I come?”
She sent a smiley face in before her message. “I might consider coming then,” she replied. “Possibly.”
“Possibly?”
“If you’ll stay by my side the whole time.”
“I wouldn’t dream of leaving your side,” I wrote back. “I really want to see you again.”
“I want to see you, too,” Kami wrote. “But I have the restaurant and you have your practice.”
“I’ll make time.”
“Then I will, too,” she replied.
“How about we make time this weekend?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” she replied, with a smiley-faced emoji attached to the sentence.
“By the way,” I added. “I had an amazing time on our date. Possibly the best time I’ve ever had on a date.”
“Really?”
“Really,” I wrote firmly.
“I had a great time, too,” she replied. “Hands down, the best time I’ve ever had on a date.”
“Yes!”
She sent back a laughing emoji, obviously amused by my triumph.
“Talk to you later?” I asked.
“Definitely,” Kami wrote back.
I put down my phone with a satisfied smile and sipped at my coffee. My mood had considerably improved, but I still had a little nagging voice in the back of my mind, reminding me that I had come to California for one specific purpose. And, I was allowing everything else – my career and love life included – to distract me from that purpose.
I was staring unseeingly at my newspaper when a gravelly voice from behind, interrupted my thoughts.
“Excuse me?”
I looked up and saw an older gentleman with a walking stick regarding me with smiling blue eyes.
“Yes?” I said, sitting up a little straighter.
“I just got myself a cup of coffee, but there doesn’t seem to be any place for me to sit and drink it…”
I realized that all the tables and benches were occupied. “Feel free to join me,” I said quickly, offering him up the second chair at my table.
He sat down gratefully and gave me a bright smile. “Thanks, son,” he said, with paternal kindness. “I appreciate that. My name’s Marty.”
“I’m John,” I introduced, extending my hand out to him. “Nice to meet you, Marty.”
“I love coming here a few days a week,” Marty said. “But it’s always so crowded.”
“It’s popular,” I nodded. “This is the first time I’ve been, actually.”
“You’re a tourist?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “Just a temporary resident. I live back in Colorado.”
“Ah, and what brings you here?”
“It’s a long story,” I said, unwilling to go into the details of my mother. “The shot version is that I was offered a job here by my old college mentor. So I’m trying out his clinic here for a few months before I head back home.”
“I see,” Marty nodded. He had on a gray sweater vest over a short-sleeved white shirt. He kept his cane between his legs as he sipped his coffee. “You work in a clinic?”
“I do.”
“Does that mean you’re a doctor?”
“A plastic surgeon, to be more specific,” I nodded.
“Impressive,” Marty nodded. “My wife was a doctor, too. She was in pediatrics.”
“Oh?”
“She was a wonderful doctor,” he said. His eyes softened the moment he started talking about his wife. It reminded me of the way Dad used to look when he spoke about Mom. “And she loved kids. She was so always so gentle and kind with them.”
“What was her name?” I asked.
“Elise,” Marty replied. “Elise Caroline Warner. She used to work long hours. Half the time, she would come home after I did. I always made sure there was a home-cooked meal waiting for her, though. It was the least
I could do.”
I smiled. “Sounds like you two were made for each other.”
Marty’s eyes were filled with memories. I realized that this was a man who had loved his wife dearly and didn’t want to forget any part of that relationship. He wanted to talk about his past and his wife. It wasn’t enough to just remember her. He wanted to talk about her, too, even if it was to a stranger.
“Oh, we were,” Marty nodded. “But I was the real winner. She could have done better.”
I smiled. “How did you meet her?”
“It was an unlikely love story,” he started, eagerly launching into his story. “She was a college-educated doctor from a rich family, and I was a college drop-out from the projects. I was a rebellious young man and got in trouble with the law a lot.
“When I was twenty-four, I was forced to do court-ordered community service. That’s where I met Elise. She was volunteering, of course, and for some reason, she took a liking to me.
“We started talking, and slowly, we became friends. Within that first week, I was in love with her. We continued our unlikely friendship for the full length of my six-month community service sentence. That was how long it took me to ask her out.”
I smiled, enjoying Marty’s story. “And, she said yes.”
“To my eternal amazement,” he nodded. “Her family was not happy. But she stuck with me, and I tried to turn my life around so that I could say I deserved her.”
“Did her family finally come around?”
“They realized how much I loved her,” he nodded. “They saw how much I supported her through her medical career, so they decided to tolerate me. I don’t think I ever earned their total approval, but it didn’t matter. I had Elise’s approval.”
Marty fell into a moment of silence. “She died seven years ago,” he said, after a small pause. His tone was a little softer than before. “Lung cancer.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said fervently.
“We detected it late,” he went on. “At least she only suffered a short time before she finally passed on.”
“That must have been terrible for you to have to go through.”
“I think the hardest part of it was what it did to me and my son.”
“You have a son?”
Marty didn’t say anything for a long time. When he spoke, it was like he hadn’t heard my previous question. “Gregory… He’d be around your age. He and I… We never had the smoothest relationship. Elise always said it was because we were so alike. She was always the buffer between us hard nuts. When she died, it created a divide. And, we just couldn’t seem to find a way around it.
“We tried for awhile, but we just kept fighting. I don’t even remember what the fights were about now. But I think because of how hard it was for us to get along, we just stopped making the effort to stay in touch over the years. I call him twice or thrice a year, he does the same. That’s the extent of our contact.”
“That’s sad,” I said honestly.
Marty nodded as he looked out towards the beach. “Then I got a call a few months ago. It was from Gregory’s girlfriend. She told me there had been an accident, Gregory was in the hospital.”
“No,” I said instinctively.
“He died a few days later,” he sighed, his voice suddenly weighted down with emotion.
“No,” I repeated.
“He was thirty-one.”
“Oh God, I—”
“Family is a funny thing,” he said, cutting me off. “You don’t exactly choose them. Sometimes you don’t get along with them. Sometimes you may even hate them. But at the end of the day, when you lose them, it leaves a hole in your life. And, it leaves you with a lifetime of regret.”
I just stared at Martin, at the loss and the sadness etched across his aged face. I pondered at the immensity of his regret that was so large it had driven him to pour his heart out to a stranger. I wished there was something I could have done for him, but deep down, I knew that there was nothing anyone could do.
Marty would carry his losses with him the rest of his life. It was part of him, like the color of his eyes and the lines on his face.
“Thank you for sharing your story with me,” I said, saying the only thing that I could say at that moment.
He nodded with a small smile. “Maybe it will keep you from making my mistakes.”
I returned his smile and nodded. I didn’t say anything, but I was thinking of my mother and the missed opportunity from a few days ago. In the face of Marty’s story, I found my resolve hardening, spurring me forward, into action.
Chapter Sixteen
Kami
I popped my head into Haley’s room. I felt a sense of déjà vu, as I entered her room and pulled back the covers she was hidden under. She stirred slightly and rolled over. I saw that her eyes were open and she was staring at me blankly.
“Haley?” I said, the concern growing.
“Hi,” she said, blinking and looking away. “I was just about to get up.”
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Why do you keep asking me that?” I detected a note of annoyance in her tone.
“Because something’s obviously bothering you,” I said. “You’re not yourself.”
She seemed to shake off her mood almost instantly. She sat up and gave me a smile. “It’s nothing, okay?” she said. “I’m just tired… It’s been a long week.”
“And, this has nothing to do with Ethan being back in town?”
“Of course not,” she insisted, as she got out of bed and walked into her bathroom. “It’s just work… It gets to you sometimes. The last couple of days have been really busy.”
“I’m aware,” I nodded. “Okay, I’ll meet you outside then after you get ready?”
“Sure thing,” she nodded before disappearing into her bathroom.
I felt a glimmer of unease, but I pushed it aside. Whatever Haley said, I was confident that tonight’s meeting with our sorry excuse for a father was what was weighing her mood down. I could tell she was nervous about me and how I would react to him. When she appeared from her room, she seemed to be a little more like herself, but I wasn’t sure if it was just an act for my benefit.
We got to the restaurant and got down to work immediately. I had little time to pay attention to Haley or her moods. The lunch rush was chaotic, and afterwards, she seemed to be keen on avoiding me. When I was cleaning up in the kitchen, she seemed to be working in the dining area. When I was in the dining area, she seemed to find something to do in the kitchen.
I decided not to worry too much and chalked it up to nerves. She was obviously preoccupied given that we would be seeing our father for the first time in over a year. I felt my blood boil when I thought about him and the way he had treated Mom all those years. She had been miserable through her entire married life, and that misery had fixed itself in an eternal depression that had refused to clear.
Haley saw things differently. She was more forgiving towards Ethan, perhaps because for some reason, she craved his approval in a way I would never be able to understand.
I sometimes wondered if the constant parade of men that passed through our home was a symptom of the pent up issues she had with him. I had brought up the topic once with her, and she had gotten so defensive that I’d been forced to shut it down. But perhaps that very reaction was the only confirmation necessary.
Soon the dinner rush started and I had no time to think. I lost myself in the catharsis of cooking, and by the time I looked at the time, it was nearing midnight. The moment the last customers were ushered out the door by Haley’s ready smile, I breathed a sigh of relief.
Usually I loved being that busy, but my mind wanted the freedom to roam today. I would have loved a few minutes to myself before the dreaded meeting with Ethan.
I was in the kitchen washing up when Haley came through the door. Her cheeks were a little flushed, and she looked extremely nervous.
“He’s here,” she said. “Please, Kami, just be…civil
.”
I was annoyed that she even said that to me, but I gritted my teeth and nodded for her sake. I put my apron away and smoothed down my blouse just to find an extra second to stall. Then I took a deep breath and walked outside. He was standing there, with a massive smile.
“Kami!” he said, the moment he saw me. He came forward and hugged me, and I almost tripped over my own legs. My hands stayed firmly at my sides, however.
He broke apart and looked at me with something resembling fondness, but I knew better than to trust him. He was just a snake who saw an opportunity. He wasn’t interested in me or Haley or how we were doing. He smelled money, and he was here to collect.
“How are you?” he asked when he got no response from me. “You look great.”
“Haley said you wanted to discuss something with us,” I said, cutting right to the chase. I sat down at a clean table, and Haley and Ethan sat down, too.
He was smiling widely and it was starting to grate on my nerves. “We don’t have to talk about that right away,” he said. “I want to know about you two.”
“Why?” I demanded. “You’ve never really shown any interest before now.”
I felt Haley tense instantly, but it needed to be said and I didn’t regret it for a moment. Ethan’s smile faltered slightly, but he managed to hold it in place.
“Come now, Kami,” he said, trying to placate me. “I know we’ve had our differences—”
“Differences?” I repeated incredulously. “Are you serious?”
“Kami,” Haley said quickly. “Let’s just calm down, okay? There was a lot of awful shit that went down, but there’s nothing we can do now to change it. Fighting won’t help.”
Ethan gave Haley a wide smile. “Exactly,” he nodded. “Haley is exactly right. I’ve told her, and I’m telling you now, I am sorry for everything, Kami. I’m sorry I couldn’t be a better father and husband. I should have done better by you kids.”
I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. They were just words I knew Ethan was repeating from a script he had concocted. It had obviously worked on Haley because she was looking at Ethan as though she actually felt sorry for him.