I turn the phone over. We should plan a meeting place for tomorrow.
The lava boils in my belly, and I think of Pompeii. “I forgot I gave it to my sister,” I say, turning the phone back on its face.
“I won’t mind if you answer.”
I shake my head, covering the phone with my palm as if to keep Josie out of my life. She made me wait long enough. “She can wait.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Kit
On the ferry to Half Moon Bay the next morning, I’m as calm as a surgeon. Which, honestly, is another word for bloodless. I’ve known a few who had some juice, but you’ve got to be at least part robot to make that life work. I was a nervous wreck on my surgical rotations. Give me an emergency every time.
Anyway. I’m drinking a cup of coffee in the nearly empty commuter ferry. At least on the way out—the people pouring off when it docked at the CBD didn’t seem as if they’d all fit.
This one is not geared for the tourist trade, so I sit by the window and watch the scenic spread of volcanic islands and think of what it would be like to see one erupt at 100,000 times the force of the Nagasaki bomb. It’s hard to even picture it, given the serene blue water and bluer islands. Javier did not stay over, at my request, and I slept so hard my face had lines all through it.
But I admit I kind of missed his company this morning. He hasn’t texted. I almost did and then thought better of it. He knows that I’m going to meet my sister, because I texted her on the way back to the hotel, and she suggested where we should get together.
Which I am anticipating and dreading in equal measure.
I haven’t talked to my mom yet either, because I hardly know what to say. Yes, she’s alive. Yes, she’s fine. So fine! And you have two grandchildren who are nine and seven who you’ve never had a chance to know.
Maybe say it better than that, as Javier suggested.
So I’m putting it off for a little longer, until after this meeting today.
After a few minutes of the agreeable movements of the ferry, I find the water doing its usual magic. I watch a guy in a kayak avoiding the wake of a motorboat, then swirling through the wake with joy, and it makes me smile. I’m falling in love with this place. It’s so much water, so much sky. I love the village centers that feel a little out of time with their covered walkways and shops of all sorts, and the very real way the landscape dominates everything.
Like the way the ferry carries me into a bay I hadn’t seen before, hidden and surrounded by hills. A marina boasts dozens of sailboats and yachts of various sizes, and the hillside above is a tumble of houses. I disembark, and there is Josie, hair pulled back from her face, sunglasses hiding her eyes. She has a hat in her hand, and she uses it to wave to me.
I lift a hand and both admire and hate myself for my cool. It doesn’t encompass the way I feel, which is nervous and shaky and on the verge of tears, which I would hate more than I can possibly say.
When I get closer, I see that tears are streaming down her face, which infuriates me, and when I’m close enough, she reaches for me. I hold up a hand to stop her, my voice icy cold. “No. It caught me off guard yesterday, but all this time you knew how I’d feel, and you let me suffer, thinking you were dead. How could you do that, Josie?”
“Mari,” she says, and I hear her voice deflating. “My name is Mari now.”
“I don’t—” I want to hit her.
She must see it on my face, because she says, “Look, we can do all of that.” She shifts her glasses to the top of her head, and I see that there are circles under her eyes. “You can yell at me, and I’ll answer any question you ask as honestly as I can. But can we just . . . start . . . in a better place?” Her eyes are as dark as buttons, just like my dad’s. Swimming in their depths, I’m captured.
It softens me. “Okay.” I start. “You look good, Jo—Mari. Really good.”
“Thanks. I’ve been sober fifteen years.”
“Since you died?”
She meets my eyes, her chin up. On this, she is not ashamed. “Yes.”
“Mom too, actually.”
That causes a flicker. “Is that so.”
“Yep.”
She looks at me, really looks at me, my hair and face and body. “You’ve grown into a beauty, Kit.”
“Thanks.”
“I google you all the time. Stalk you on Mom’s Facebook.”
“You do?” It strikes me that she had this freedom, but I did not. While I was grieving her, searching crowds for her face, she was reading about me online. I look away, shaking my head.
She touches my arm, the inner flesh of my left arm, where my tattoo is. Quietly, she says, “You’re a doctor. And you have a cute cat.”
I relent. “His name is Hobo.”
She smiles, and right there, in that easy gesture, I see my lost sister—Josie, who read to me and cooked up schemes with me—and it nearly doubles me over.
“Hey,” she says softly, taking my arm. “Are you okay?”
“Not really. This is hard.”
“I know. It is. It’s hard for me, and I’ve known all along.” She gently turns me toward the parking lot. “I packed snacks. I thought I could take you to a place I like, so we can just talk. It might be awkward in a restaurant or something.”
I think of myself weeping and weeping and weeping on Javier’s shoulder. “That’s a good idea.”
She leads us to her car, a black SUV on the smaller end but luxurious. In the back seat are things that clearly belong to kids. I start to climb in on the right side, and then I see the wheel and round the car to the left. The passenger side.
“Sorry it’s a mess,” she says. “I’m starting a new project and it’s just—I never get everything done.”
“You were never exactly tidy.”
She lets go of a quick, bright burst of laughter. “That’s true. I drove you crazy.”
“You did.”
“Where the hell did that come from? It’s not like Mom was neat.” She starts the engine, and it hums into quiet life. A hybrid, which gives her points in my book. “Our destination is a little bit away but not terrible. Water?”
“Sure.”
She hands me a metal water bottle, very cold. “Sarah outlawed all plastic a while back.” In the words, I hear the hint of a New Zealand accent, the syllables slightly shortened. “Nothing plastic in the house at all.”
I’m quiet as we pull out, my emotions compressed and contained. It’s very hilly. We climb a steep one, go around and down another, up again to a village center that’s just as quaint as the others I’ve seen. “This is Howick,” she says. The streets fall away to the water, houses lined up all the way down.
“Pretty. The whole place is pretty.”
“It is. I love it. I feel like I can breathe here.”
“We can’t sleep unless we can hear the ocean.”
Her breath catches audibly, and she looks at me quickly, then back to the road. “Right.”
I imitate her accent. “‘R-iii-ght,” I sort of drawl. “You don’t sound American anymore.”
“Have I picked up the accent?” she says, exaggerating the pinch of the words.