Bend (38 page)

Her gaze meets mine then, soft and watery. Quietly, she says, “I’m ready to be with him again, Mia.”

Something twists and clenches inside my chest. “Do you really believe that’ll happen?”

“I do,” she replies firmly. Then her chin wobbles. “The only thing I regret is not getting to meet more of my great-grandchildren. Like Paige and Logan’s little boy. And you and Cameron and your cousins will have kids someday, too, I’m sure.”

I swallow hard. Try to imagine all of that happening, life going on, without Grandma. But I can’t do it. The idea that she’ll just be…gone. It’s incomprehensible.

She reaches out to pat my arm. “You have the rest of your family, sweetheart. It’s a pretty great family, isn’t it?”

Yeah. I give a nod, because I suppose it is.

“And you have that handsome young doctor of yours.” A devil sparks in Grandma’s eyes, and she shoots me a smug and almost dreamy smirk.

My heart stumbles and hiccups. How do I respond? How much does she know, and what does she suspect? If she’s having visions of me in a white dress and more adorable and boisterous great-grandchildren, and if that image makes her happy, it’d be pretty selfish of me to dash those hopes.

And really, that’ll happen someday, won’t it? Maybe. Maybe not.

I open my mouth to give her a politely evasive reply, but she holds up her hand and cuts me off. “No, don’t say anything about that. I don’t care what’s going on between you two.”

Well, okay then. I press my lips together.

Sliding closer, she puts her arm across my shoulders. And then she leans in until her forehead touches mine. In low tones, she says, “I just want you to be happy, Mia mine. He seems to make you happy.”

And that I really don’t know how to respond to. Ignoring the tightness in my chest, I decide to change the topic. “I’m coming back next weekend. And the one after that. And every weekend, until—”

I can’t finish that sentence.

My grandmother draws her head back to squint at me. “Won’t that be really expensive?”

I shake my head. “I can afford it. Please, don’t worry.”

“Hmph. Well, I’m selfish, and I want to see you, so I won’t argue.” She pulls me back toward her, and I go willingly, resting my head on her shoulder.

“We get to say good-bye at least,” she murmurs against my hair. “That’s something.”

Yeah. That’s definitely something.

We’ve been on the road for all of twenty minutes when the prospect of taking the 5 back through the monotonous Central Valley grows intolerable, and I suggest we take the Pacific Coast Highway instead. Jay hesitates, pointing out that it’ll add at least two hours to the trip. I tell him I don’t care, and he doesn’t argue, though I can tell he’s not exactly thrilled with the idea.

He’s probably just being nice because of what happened last night, but I’m not above exploiting that. So instead of heading inland toward the 5, I keep driving south, where the freeway curves westward and eventually connects with the PCH, which takes us through Monterey and Carmel.

Saying good-bye to everyone this morning was a somber affair, but somehow I managed to keep my cool. I didn’t even break down when I hugged Grandma and again promised to come back next weekend. Still, not even when I first went to college was it as hard to leave as today.

Somehow Jay and I manage to keep the conversation limited to mundane topics. He hasn’t said a word about my grandmother or about how he held me all night. It’s like he senses that if I want to talk about it, I will. He doesn’t push, but he also doesn’t back away. He’s there if I need him, and the rest of the time, he gives me space. He knows me that well.

When he’s quiet, though, his silence feels heavy and grim, and my vague feeling that something is weighing on his mind grows and nags at me. Not that Jay is usually chatty, but this feels different. He’s in a dark mood, and I don’t know why. I want to ask, but I need to work up the courage first. Just in case it’s something I’m not equipped to handle today, my defenses having taken a serious beating last night.

Once we leave the populated areas behind and have only miles and miles of wilderness ahead, I pull into the first turnout I catch sight of to hit the switch between the visors that opens the convertible top. And then I drive on, breezing down the curvy road with the cool and fresh air blasting our faces, wisps of my hair whipping around my face, and my ponytail dancing behind me. To our right, the ocean stretches out to the horizon, and to the left, nothing but green hills as far as my eyes can see.

I fell in love with the Pacific Coast Highway when I was twelve and my parents took me and my siblings on what they dubbed their “Great California Road Trip Vacation.” The gorgeous coastal highway with its winding road, lush vegetation, and sheer sea cliffs ended up being my favorite part of the trip. I try to drive it whenever I can because it beats the hell out of taking the 5.

“Where are we stopping?” Jay has to raise his voice above the whooshing of the open air.

“There’s this nice beach not that far from here with pretty easy access. I had a picnic lunch there when I took this trip with Ma—” I stop myself. Because it seems somehow inappropriate to finish the sentence, especially since I’m so unsure of where Jay’s mind is at right now.

His sunglasses hide his eyes, but his flattened lips reveal his reaction. “You want to stop and eat in the same place where you had a romantic picnic with your ex-boyfriend?”

“There aren’t that many options out here, Jay.” I’m trying not to sound defensive, because I’m telling the truth. But I’ve started feeling like every time I mention Matt, I’m providing evidence for Jay’s accusation that I’m not over my ex. Which is ridiculous and dumb and—

I mean, I have a lot of memories from the year and a half when Matt was pretty much my entire life. Most of them are good memories. Just because he turned out to be a cheating dipshit doesn’t mean the memories got erased.

And I don’t understand why that means I’m not over him. It doesn’t. Period.

Jay has no response, and we drive in silence until I recognize the turnout I’m looking for. After parking and turning off the engine, I grab the lunch bags from the backseat, lock the car, and we start strolling down toward the beach. Farther south, fine sheets of fog drape the bluffs jutting out to sea, and as we tread carefully on the dirt path that winds down the steep slope, I can smell it as the salty air begins to blend with the earthy and fragrant shrubs that line the trail.

Once we reach the beach, where the sand is rough and pebbly, we find a large rock that we can sit on. My mom pulled me aside as we were leaving this morning to hand me a pair of brown paper bags, saying she’d packed us lunch so we wouldn’t stop and eat fast food. Which was such a Mom Thing to do, and I’m pretty sure with her empty nest, she misses doing Mom Things, so I thanked her and hugged her and told her I’d see her next weekend.

The meal she prepared is sandwiches with a side of apples and bottles of juice that’s organic and non-GMO, has no added sugar and no high-fructose corn syrup, is ethically sourced…and is probably also the nectar that gives unicorns their magical powers.

We don’t talk while we eat, the only sound that of the waves rolling and crashing on the beach. The sun glints on the water, and a flock of seagulls is soaring and flapping their wings above the surf.

“Did you already work the shifts you switched with Yamada or are you doing that when we get back?” I ask when I can stand the quiet no longer.

“When I get back.” Jay has finished eating and is tossing his trash and scraps back into his brown bag, scrunching the crinkly paper as he closes it back up. “I’m working the next five days.”

His glum tone gets under my skin, and I want to make it go away. “So you’ve got a five-day workweek like a normal person then?” I say lightly, teasing.

He scoffs, and I’m sure that if his sunglasses didn’t obscure his eyes, I’d see him rolling them. “Uh-huh.”

A sigh rises in my chest, heaviness settling on my shoulders. Enough. The thought of sitting next to a grumpy Jay for the too-many hours of driving we have left is too depressing, and I need to try and fix it before we get back on the road.

Still, I’m dreading the unknown cause for his bad mood enough that I can’t just jump right in. So I take the last bite of my apple, chewing the tart and juicy fruit while I’m girding myself. Whatever’s got him down can’t be bad enough to warrant this level of apprehension on my part…right?

After swallowing the last bit of food, I drop the apple core into my lunch bag. “Okay,” I say briskly. “You’ve been in a shitty mood all morning. What’s wrong?”

For a few seconds, his face stays turned toward me, and then he looks away. His jaw flexes, and his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows.

What he doesn’t do is say I’m mistaken, that there’s nothing amiss. And that is enough to set off alarm bells in my head.

“Jay?” I prod, my heart in my throat.

With pursed lips, he blows out a loud and long breath. Then he says, “There’s some stuff I haven’t told you.”

Oh-kay. My pulse kicks up a notch. “Bad stuff?”

“Yeah, but not in the way you think, probably.” Avoiding my gaze, he bends down and picks up a small rock and tosses it toward the water. He throws it far, like he put all his strength into it, and it seems aggressive, almost angry.

With foreboding rushing in my veins, I wait for him to continue.

“You’ve probably noticed I never really talk about my family or my childhood,” he says at last.

A huff of disbelief escapes me. Because that’s definitely an understatement.

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I never told you that when I was eighteen, I changed my last name to Bradshaw. From Miller. That was my name as a kid. Jay Miller.”

“What? Why?” I frown at him. What the hell is he talking about?

A few seconds of tight-lipped silence pass before he replies, “Mostly because of my dad. I didn’t want to share that fucker’s name anymore.”

Wow. Okay, so yeah, of course there’s a reason he’s never shared anything about his family, and I knew it couldn’t be pretty. But his vehemence is still a bit of a shock. “And why is that?”

So then he draws a deep breath, and while we’re sitting there on the quiet and empty beach with the sun beating down on us from high in the sky, he tells me. He tells me about growing up with his neglectful mom and his drug-addicted and rarely present dad.

And as I’m listening to this, my spine stiffens and my stomach starts burning with fury. He’s describing two people who should’ve never had a child and who apparently, for the most part, carried on with their lives as if they hadn’t. As if their little boy was an afterthought, a nuisance, instead of someone they should’ve put all their energy into caring for, raising, and loving.

It’s not that hard to just love your kid and do what’s right for him. What kind of fucked-up people can’t even manage that much? A lump swells in my throat, and I’m wishing I could go back in time, find him, give him a hug, and take him away from that life.

“When I was thirteen,” Jay says, his tone flat, “my dad was working construction near Dallas, and he made friends with another guy on the crew, Arturo Mendes. The cops claimed the two of them had broken into at least three other houses over the course of a couple of months, stealing stuff for drug money. Then they screwed up, broke into a house by mistake where the family was home.”

My heart starts hammering in my chest. I know I don’t want to hear what’s coming next.

Jay’s lips curl. “Shit hit the fan. My dad and Mendes both had guns, and they ended up killing the mom and the two kids. Shot them all in the head. The dad, too, but he survived.”

“Oh, my God.” I clap my hand over my mouth, a hand that’s trembling while I’m heaving for breath. Jay’s dad is a murderer?

“He was convicted of three counts of murder,” Jay goes on in a voice that’s still eerily emotionless. “Along with some other, more minor charges.”

“Shit,” I whisper through the fingers pressed against my lips. This is insane. Jay’s dad is a
murderer.

I’m sitting there, my breathing rapid and loud in my own ears. He’s leaving out a lot of details, I can tell, and I appreciate that, because the last thing I want is to picture the scene he’s just described. But that doesn’t stop my imagination from playing a gruesome mental slideshow. A wave of nausea rolls over me.