Her mother shrugged as she dipped a fry into tartar sauce. “It’s been a few months. He doesn’t know who I am, so it’s useless to visit him.” She discarded the fry and sipped from her tea. “We were never close. He was absent from my childhood for the most part, leaving his own aging parents to look after me.”
“I remember Grandmother Josephine used to say he was away on business,” said Peggy.
“Right. The whole ‘away on business’ excuse,” Mother said. “I heard it a thousand times. It was more like gambling, boozing, and womanizing business.”
Liz crossed her legs under the table, hooking her left ankle around her right. Should she leave town for a few weeks? Would a trip away derail any hope of reconciliation with Grant? Regardless, it was too soon to imagine a future with him. He was newly divorced and vulnerable. Perhaps he hadn’t meant any of the things he’d said to her. She needed to take care of her own health and be there for her sister. If Grant had moved on when she returned, it was just proof that he was not the man he claimed to be.
Had she opened the sequel to Pandora’s box?
A question from Peggy pulled her from her spiraling thoughts. “Liz, is Stefan and Gennie’s house done yet?”
“I think so,” Liz said. “It was supposed to be done by the summer. I haven’t talked to Gennie in the past few weeks. She and Stefan are overseas filming a movie.”
“Wouldn’t it be great to be able to live there?” asked Peggy.
“I don’t know,” Liz said. “Maybe we’d miss the city.”
“Maybe.” Peggy glanced around the busy restaurant with a dreamy expression. “But I don’t think so. I would love the quiet. No crowds. No traffic.”
“Gennie claims the place is magical,” Liz said.
“Can you really take the time off to go?” Peggy asked. “Please don’t get me excited if you can’t.”
A sudden memory of a four-year-old Peggy with golden hair in pigtails and freckles on her chubby cheeks invaded Liz’s thoughts. Peggy held her stuffed bear by its arm. Why can’t you stay for breakfast, Daddy? We made pancakes.
I got a call from the hospital, sweetie. A man needs my help. You don’t want him to die just because I wanted pancakes, do you?
Wide eyed, Peggy bowed her head. I don’t want anyone to die.
That’s my good girl.
Peggy watched from the window as he pulled out of their circular driveway. Liz stood beside her and tugged on one of Peggy’s pigtails. You can have all my whipped cream. We can play house after breakfast.
Peggy slipped her hand into Liz’s. Can I be the mom again?
Yes. I’ll be the aunt.
Had Liz become just like her father? Disappointing those she loved most because of work. Don’t disappoint her.
Liz nodded. “Yes, we’re going. Nothing will get in the way of this trip.” Nothing and no one. Not even Grant Perry.
“Don’t set your expectations too high,” her mother said. “Things from your childhood are never how you remember them.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Grant
GRANT HAD JUST walked in the front door from his golf game when his phone buzzed with a call from Hadley. “Hey, sis.”
“I have some bad news. Dad died. He had a heart attack.”
The news pierced his chest like a tranquilizer dart into a large game animal. He felt a shot of pain, followed by numbness through his limbs. Grant leaned against the wall in his foyer. The air conditioning coming out of the vent rustled the hair on his legs. His golf shirt clung to his sweaty back. “When?”
“The coroner thinks yesterday sometime. A heart attack. I found him on the floor when I went to check on him this morning. I called 911 and the paramedics came, but it was too late. There was nothing to be done.”
His father was dead.
“He looked peaceful. It was weird.”
Peaceful? That would be weird.
“What’re you going to do?” asked Grant. “I mean, a funeral or what?”
“He wanted to be cremated.”
“Not buried next to Mom?”
“No. Not next to Mom. He was quite specific. What did you expect?”
“Yeah, right.” Their father’s anger had no expiration date. He could not forgive his wife for what she’d done. Not even in death.
“Kristen’s coming down from Seattle,” Hadley said.
The unspoken question floated between them. Would he join his sisters? Would he say one final good-bye? Pay his respects?
“Do you need me?” he asked.
“I don’t want you to do what you don’t want to do,” she said. “I know you feel like you’re our parent figure, but we can take care of ourselves.”
He was only five and nine years older than Hadley and Kristen, respectively. It wasn’t enough years between them that he should feel responsible for them, but he did. His mother’s death had ensured that. He was the one who had paid their college tuitions and gave them loans to buy places of their own. He was the one who had told them over and over that they were beautiful and smart. It was his pleasure to do so, but also his duty. His mother had left them with a man incapable of love. Grant had to fill in the blanks. “If I come up, it’s for you, not him.”
“I understand. Before you decide, there’s something else. He left Kristen and me the house.”
The last, final hit. He left Grant out of the will. Fuck you, Dad. “Good. That’s good. You can sell it. Make a little nest egg for yourselves.”
“It’s deteriorated. He let everything go after Mom died. We probably need to hire someone to fix it up before we sell it. The sooner the better. We both want to be done with it. Kristen says she never wants to set foot in that house again. She says the ghosts of the past come out to haunt her the minute she walks into the place.”
“Can’t blame her,” Grant said. Kristen had found their mother. In the bathroom, Grant. She was in the bathroom, and I found her there.
He didn’t have to be in the house to feel haunted by the past. Ghosts huddled in doorways and closets. At night, they clanked along the hallway with their chains and shackles.
“I can help with money.” Grant spoke over the sudden ache that carried the memory of every rejection, every cruelty. His body shook like he had a fever. He moved away from the air vent. It doesn’t matter what he thinks of me. He can’t hurt me any longer. I’m strong and successful, despite him. “Whatever you need.”
“I should’ve checked on him more than once a week,” Hadley said. “It’s just that he was so mean. I always left there feeling like shit about myself.”
“You did enough.” Hadley had carried the burden of their father. Kristen had escaped to Seattle the minute she’d graduated from high school. That had left Saint Hadley to look after him. Managing everyone’s pain but her own.
“I’ll come,” he said. “Tomorrow. First flight out.”
Hadley was crying. He could tell by the abrupt silence on the other end of the phone. She had her hand over the microphone.
“It’s going to be all right,” he said. “You’re free now.”
“We’re never going to be completely free,” she said. “The sins of the father and all that.”
“It’s going to be fine.” He repeated the same sentiment because he couldn’t think of what to say. She was right. They would never be free. The wounds of their childhood walked alongside them like imaginary friends. No one could see them, but they were there just the same.
After they’d disconnected, he dropped his phone as he sank to the floor and wrapped his arms around his knees. The old man was dead. Dead. No more. Gone forever. The knowledge seeped into him, pore by pore. Should he feel sad or angry or remorseful? There would be no reconciliation or forgiveness. That should move him, shouldn’t it? Budge him from his contempt? But he felt no love, no remorse, only a searing hatred.
The scar on his shoulder throbbed. It was phantom pain. He knew this. The wound had long since healed. But sometimes it felt as if it had a pulse. Sweat rolled do
wn the middle of his back. For fuck’s sake, this house is hot. Was the air conditioning working? He pulled his damp shirt over his head and hurled it across the foyer. It smacked into the wall, leaving a sweaty mark the shape of a thumb. His fingertips found the scar on his shoulder. Braille for hatred, for rage.
My God, Darren, what have you done? He’s only a kid, Mama had screamed when the hot poker seared his flesh. Not Grant. He had been silent. He obscured the pain with his active hatred. I hate you. I hate you. I wish you were dead.
Now, his cheeks were wet. Was he crying? He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Don’t cry. His mantra when he was a little boy. Whatever happens, don’t let him see you cry.
And this was it. The crux. His thoughts were not of his father, but of his mother. I don’t cry for you. I cry for her. His Mama—shy and sweet and sad. They hadn’t known how sad. But they’d loved her, tried to protect her from the cruel silence that filled the house.
Why, why, why? How could you leave us alone with him?
Images of the day they buried their mother flashed through his mind like photographs no one would ever take.
Kristen’s mismatched shoes. Only fourteen, she wouldn’t let go of Grant’s hand for the entire graveside service. At some point, he glanced down and noticed her shoes. They were similar but not a pair. One blue, one black.
Hadley arranging the dozen casseroles in alphabetical order on the dining room table. With frantic intensity, she put them in rows, murmuring as she went. “Enchiladas, macaroni and cheese, potato salad.”
Steam rising from the hot dishes in the cold dining room. A stack of empty plates. A box of white wine and his mother’s tea cups with the pink roses painted on the sides.
His mother’s friends huddled in corners of the dingy house. They wore black and drank wine from tea cups. In the stuffy room, their perfumes mingled with the sharp smell of cheap Chablis.
Oh, Mama, don’t you see how loved you were. Why? Why?
His dad, dressed in his only suit, sat in his lounge chair and stared at the ceiling. He was a small, wiry man, made of barbed wire and sea air and cheap booze. Grant could see every moment of his hard life in the lines on his weathered face and scars on his rough hands.
Hadley presented him with a plate of food, but he pushed it away with his hand. I told you I wanted a drink, not food. He shoved her arm. The plate crashed to the floor. Enchilada casserole like cat vomit on the floors his mother had made shiny just two days before.
Her eyes transformed into glossy marbles as her lips froze into a half-smile. Two blotches of pink glazed her cheeks.
His mother’s friend, Doris, rushed to her side and knelt to clean up the mess.
Grant turned his gaze to Kristen. Did she see what had happened? He made Hadley into a plastic doll. But Grant couldn’t speak. Kristen had stopped crying. She and her best friend Robin were snuggled close together in the window seat looking at a photo album. This is a photo from when she was our age. Wasn’t she pretty?
It was at that moment his father’s dock buddies burst through the front door, bringing the scent of cigarettes and booze. Hadley, with her new doll-face, marched up to Merle, his father’s best friend. “Please, don’t get him drunk. We don’t want a scene.”
“We’ll keep that in mind.” Merle was as wide as he was tall, with a ruddy face and wiry orange hair that sat on top of his head like a clump of moss on a rock. Grant could never decide if it was the combination of complexion and hair or life on the docks that made him tougher than beef jerky.
Merle and the other men took Dad out to the backyard. Grant watched from the kitchen window as they passed the bourbon bottle around the circle like teenage boys before a high school dance. Several lit cigarettes. No conversation, just the passing of the bottle. The one thing everyone had in common. No one knew what to say to Lily’s family.
Later, after the last of the mourners traipsed into the damp afternoon, Grant joined Hadley and Kristen in the kitchen to help clean up the dishes. Their dad stood in the doorway with a beer in his hand. Grant finished drying a cup and picked up a saucer.
“She didn’t leave a note.” His dad tipped the beer bottle into his mouth and took a long drink. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I tore the house apart last night. Nothing,” his dad said.
Kristen buried her face in the damp dish towel and moved closer to the back door.
“She seemed better when I was home for Christmas,” Hadley said. “I thought the meds were helping.”
His father finished his beer and went to the refrigerator for another. “She stopped taking them.”
“What? Why?” Hadley turned to face him. “Why would she stop taking them?”
“I have no idea. The woman never did one thing that made any sense to me.” He yanked a chair out from the kitchen table as if he were going to sit, but didn’t.
Grant took his hands out of the soapy water and turned to look at him. “Is that true?” Did he not understand her at all? How could they have been married for almost twenty-five years and that be the case? I know everything about Lizzie. If I don’t understand something, I ask her.
“Why would I say it if it wasn’t true, you little idiot?” His dad stared at him, pupils dilated. He’s blind drunk.
“I don’t know. You’ve never done one thing that makes any sense to me.” Grant turned back to the sink.
Seconds later, his father was beside him. He shoved his free hand into Grant’s chest and shouted into his face. “What the hell does that mean?” His breath reeked of booze.
“You don’t want to do that.” Grant rammed his wet hands into his father’s shoulders. The old man stumbled and dropped his beer, but remained upright.
The old man swung at him. Grant caught his hand and shoved him into the wall. “Don’t ever touch me again.”
“Get out of my house. Get out and don’t come back.”
Grant had done exactly that. He’d left and never looked back. When he returned to Legley Bay to visit his sisters and his mother’s grave, he stayed in a hotel. The old man was dead to him.
Now he was dead to everyone.
Grant got up from the floor and picked up his damp shirt. Outside, he stripped down to his boxer shorts and dove into the pool head first. The water instantly cooled his skin. He swam hard for fifteen minutes. When he was tired, he plopped his wet body on the warm cement and looked up at the sky. Could he really go home tomorrow? After all this time?
Just this once. He would help his sisters and then come back to the life he’d worked hard to build. He wouldn’t look back. He wouldn’t mourn. It was nothing to him.
He lay there until the water dried from his skin. When he was dry and warm, he went inside and called Lizzie.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Liz
LIZ’S PHONE BUZZED. Grant.
“Hi, Lizzie.”
His voice sounded pinched and dry instead of the deep, resonating tone that often spellbound a jury. Something was wrong. “What’s happened?”
“Hadley called. My dad died.”
“Oh, no. What happened?”
“Heart attack. I’m flying to Oregon in the morning. I can’t let my sisters handle everything without me.”
“Sure. What can I do to help?”
“I’d like to see you before I go. You want to come over? We could talk. Maybe take a swim. Order takeout.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. More than sure.”
**
She arrived at Grant’s home in the Hollywood Hills about an hour later. The design of the house was modern and angular, rather like a gray cube. A garage was on the ground level with living quarters up above. A stone staircase wound up the side of the house to the front door. Grant sat at the bottom of the steps, barefooted and wearing shorts and a t-shirt. When the Uber driver stopped in front of the garage, Grant rose to his feet and moved toward her. Even from a distance, he looked pale under his tan.
“You didn’t have to wait out here. It’s hot.”
“I wanted to make sure you got the right house.” With his hand resting lightly in the middle of her back, they climbed the stairs.
As he held the door open for her and she passed through, he said, “Don’t judge me—the house isn’t exactly decorated.”
Not an exaggeration. The front room was empty, other than art work hanging on the walls. The hard wood floors were lighter where rugs had previously been placed. “Where’s your furniture?”
“When Mandy moved in, she hired a decorator who got rid of all my stuff and replaced it with all new stuff. When she left, she took it all with her. Along with the decorator.”
She followed him into the modern, airy kitchen that opened to a glittering blue pool, and the surrounding cement patio made it hard to discern where the house ended and the outside began. A house for entertaining and pool parties. Where people felt relaxed and comfortable. Unstuffy. Like Grant. “It’s lovely, Grant. Everything.”
“I had the kitchen and backyard remodeled when I bought the house six years ago. I had grand ideas of cooking for friends and family, but so far it’s gone mostly unused.”
A phone buzzed. “That’s me,” he said, taking it from his pocket. “It’s my sister.”
“Yeah, go ahead,” she said. “I’ll wait.”
“Hey, Kristen. Yeah, the flight comes in at three. I’ll have to get it for you.” He held the phone against his chest and spoke to Liz. “I have to run upstairs to get my flight number. Feel free to look around.”
While he was away, she wandered into the dining room, located just off the kitchen. The floors were a dark walnut with wide planks. No rugs or furniture. His office seemed to have been left alone, as it hosted a black desk and chair with a messy shelving unit crammed with books.
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