And then in the distance, his mom calls out to him, leaning from the boatyard office doorway. “Lucky! Get inside. Let them be.”
A car behind us beeps their horn and swerves around us.
“We need to go,” Mom says.
“Hey,” I tell him quickly, covering his fingers with mine. “Look at me. We don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’re not leaving town tonight. You have to trust me. Please, Lucky. Trust me.”
He stares at me intently, face lined with worry and dark shadows.
Then he sticks his head through the window and kisses me. Firmly. In front of both my mom and his … our relationship now boldly out in the open. He kisses me like it might be the last time. Like he wants to trust me, but he’s filled with doubt, because how do you do that when you’ve got scars and a history of being left behind?
And the worst thing is, I’m not sure I blame him for worrying.
MARBLECLIFF RESORT: Snootiest and oldest resort in Beauty. Rude people at desk. Walls paper-thin. Best breakfast in town, though, I’ll give them that. (Personal photo/Josephine Saint-Martin)
Chapter 22
I didn’t think I’d sleep that night. Not with the gilded antique furniture, mounted butterfly collection, a nineteenth century portrait with eyes that seemed to watch me in the darkness, and a fireplace big enough to burn all four of us at once.
But just add that to the ever-growing list of Josie Was Wrong about These Things.
Take, for instance, time bombs. I was so certain of an explosion when Grandma Diedre entered town, but I was wrong. Granted, something crouches in the back of my head, still waiting for my grandmother’s presence to blow my life to smithereens; maybe she’s one of those buried bombs from WWII that you suddenly walk across in a field and it detonates after years of being lost. Or your ship runs into one at sea, and kablam! The worst of the bombs.
Or maybe the ticking time bomb of Grandma doesn’t matter anymore because the real bombs were the other things I was wrong about all along. Like my mom. And my father … Because I’m still struggling to reconcile the image I have of him from all the interviews I’ve read online—from the few times I’ve met him. Our scattered phone conversations. His cool life. His perfect family. His house in Malibu.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
God, that stupid magazine internship that I fretted over—that got me so angry at Levi Summers for rejecting me … All of it goes back to wanting my father’s approval.
And it was all for nothing.
It’s hard to accept something’s wrong when you once felt deep in your soul it was right.
I once felt deep in my soul that Los Angeles was my way forward.
That my father was my ticket out.
That my grandmother was going to tear my family apart.
That my mother didn’t want me.
But I was so wrong about all of it.
What else am I wrong about?
What else … ?
But I try not to think of it now, here in our suite at the Marblecliff, where not only did I sleep like the dead last night, I did it with Mom curled up next to me in the same bed, because there was only the one room with two queens available when we arrived, bedraggled, at midnight. Evie and Franny took one bed, Mom and I took the other.
One fractured and very strange family.
And I don’t know. Maybe Marblecliff’s mattresses are stuffed with drugs as well as feathers, or maybe it was the sound of the harbor waves crashing against the rocky cliffs below that lulled us to sleep. Or maybe it was that my entire life was turned upside down in one day, and my body just said, Forget it, I’ve had enough. Regardless, after we deplete all the hot water and luxury hair products in the newly remodeled bathroom, we gather in the suite’s cozy sitting area in front of the enormous fireplace, lounging in crested bathrobes.
“I feel like I’ve just returned from a really bad weekend in Las Vegas,” Mom says, looking out over a stunning view of the blue harbor, where the mid-morning sun is glinting across boats dotting the Beauty Yacht Club’s waters.
Franny laughs darkly, looking very jet-lagged. “Try living in the worst pollution you can imagine with no toilets, electricity, or showers. The people were wonderful, and once you got out of the smog of the city, it was beautiful. But I was