With my face propped up by my hand and my shoulders slumped, I can’t even bother giving Candace a look.
The phone beeps.
“Nope, not at all,” I say, grabbing the phone like it’s precious and I’m Gollum.
A response from Lachlan: All right.
The fuck? Just all right?
I quickly text back: Okay, great, thank you. When would you like to meet? Where?
I press send and pray it doesn’t take another six hours for him to respond.
It doesn’t. You know the city better than I do. I’m free anytime.
Okay, so we’re making progress here.
Do I feel giddy? I feel giddy.
My office is near the ferry building, so I ask him to meet me at Blue Bottle Coffee at noon. It won’t give us all the time in the world, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. A good thing because I’ll probably get right down to business and not do the things that Bram thinks I’ll do (aka ruin everything). A bad thing because it means I only get an hour to stare at him.
I’ll take what I can get.
CHAPTER THREE
Kayla
After work I swing by my mother’s house. She lives across the bay on Alameda Island, just outside of Oakland, in the same house where I grew up. It’s a gorgeous narrow Victorian with gables and iron details. Out front there is a rose garden bordering the small yard that looks out onto the road where people and tourists bicycle past on warm days. It smells like childhood and sunshine and peace. The garden was always my mother’s pride and joy, but these days the roses are overgrown and pretty much fending for themselves.
A lot of the house is slowly succumbing to decay. My mom isn’t young and isn’t in the best of health. She turned seventy-one this year, something I hate to think about. My parents were much older when I was born. In fact, my oldest brother Brian is fifteen years older than me. My youngest brother, Toshio, is six years older. I wasn’t even supposed to have been born at all—my mother would describe me as a miracle surprise. The girl she had always wanted.
And I’m glad I was that miracle. My parents gave me so much love growing up to the point where I was spoiled, while my brothers acted overprotective, babying me to a fault. But shit, if it’s not hard having an aging parent, especially when you’ve just turned thirty and still feel like a kid—like you still need them.
My father died from prostate cancer when I was just twenty-three years old. It’s something that haunts me every day. He was sick for a long time and in a lot of pain, so when it happened we were glad he was no longer suffering, but even so…nothing can replace that loss. My father, for all his faults, was someone I loved without question, someone I idolized for as long as I could remember. I didn’t think I could ever get over his death, but little by little, year after year, I tried to move on. I had to.
My mother never had such luck. Her health has been testing her ever since. It was like she lost a part of herself when he died, and she hasn’t been the same. I worry about her all the time now and try and stop by the house as much as I can, which is way more than my brothers do. They only come by when I force them to, either to say hello and check in, to give her money, or to do repair jobs on the house. I know what they want for her—to move into a small apartment, or maybe even assisted living. But my mom hangs on to the house for dear life. She’ll never ever leave.
And I know the minute she goes into a home, that’s the moment we’ll lose her forever. The house is all she has left.
So even though it’s out of the way, I head on over there. She’s lonely and alone, and it’s something I understand a little too well.
It’s the start of August and even though summer is fickle in the city, on Alameda it’s warmer. I water her roses, run out to get groceries from the closest store, tidy up, and then settle down on her couch with her white fluffball of a cat, Mew Mew, to tell her the somewhat good news.
“So guess what?” I say.
She looks up from her knitting and gazes at me with so much…devotion…that I suddenly feel, I don’t know, unworthy of it. Funny how your mom can do that to you.
“What is it, sweetheart?” she asks in her gentle, lilting accent.
“Well, I’m branching out at work. I’m writing an article, and it looks like if all goes well, they’ll print it.”
She smiles broadly and I’m struck by how flawless her skin still looks for her age. Despite everything, she looks like she’s decades younger. I hope those Japanese genes have been passed down to me.
“That is wonderful. Oh Kayla, that makes me so happy for you.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yes. Look at you. You’re practically glowing. I was wondering if you would find that passion again.”
I purse my lips. I’ve always thought of myself as a very lively, passionate person. Had I really been lacking it that much?
“Well,” I say, trying to downplay it, “I mean it all depends on how well I write it. They don’t usually run articles by people who aren’t staff writers…or writers. You know, in general.”
“Yes, but when you were younger, I remember the stories you would write for the school paper.”
“Yeah, but those stories were, like, movie reviews and what band was in town that weekend.”
She shakes her head, still smiling elegantly, and goes back to her knitting. “It does not matter, sweetheart. I read every article, and I knew you had a talent. I knew you would go back to it.”