Bend (47 page)

Realizing my uncle is arching his eyebrows at me, still waiting for a response, I give myself a mental shake. And reluctantly admit, “Possibly.”

“Then you make it work regardless.”

Well, that’s pretty easy for him to say, isn’t it? “I’m not going to ask her to wait for me. That’s not fair, to either of us.”

“Uh-huh,” Uncle Warren fires back in a tone like that was exactly what he expected me to say. “I asked a girl to wait. She said she would. But she didn’t.”

He’s kind of proving my point, isn’t he? I have enough sense not to say that aloud, instead asking, “So if you could do it again, what would you do?”

“I’d marry her and take her with me,” he answers right away, apparently not needing to even think about it.

Take her with me.

Something shifts inside me. It’s as if my perspective does a one-eighty and goes from fuzzy to focused.

Mia could go with me. She’s a nurse. And especially if she got her midwife certification, Relief International would be thrilled to have her. Midwives are always needed in the areas where they operate.

Well, hell.

“Tell you what else I would’ve done differently,” my uncle suddenly adds, watching the path ahead instead of me, “after all that shit went down and especially when you got into all that trouble…I should’ve stayed.”

What? No. I frown at him, stunned and confused by his words. Sure, it would’ve been nice if he’d stayed after he came home to help straighten me out. Actually, it would’ve been great to have him around, especially if he’d convinced my mom to let me live with him, which probably wouldn’t have taken much effort.

But still. He shouldn’t have to feel bad about that.

“I wasn’t your responsibility,” I point out.

“Yeah, you were,” he insists. “Who else was there? Sure as hell not your mom.”

Okay. True. But still…“I think I turned out okay. And I have you to thank for that. You did enough to make a huge difference.”

“Well.” My uncle squints out at the water, which sparkles like diamonds in the sunlight. “I’m just saying. Sucks to live with regret. Don’t be that guy.”

Yeah. Message received.

“Got it,” I grind out, because I do get it. I’m just not sure what to do about it.

Is it too late? Does she want me back?
Am I right for her?

“Beat you to that guard tower up there,” Uncle Warren says, pointing ahead, and then I have to scramble to even keep up as he takes off, pedaling at full speed.

My heart starts hammering, my adrenaline surging, and my legs are pumping so fast that my muscles scream in protest, because there’s just no way I’m losing a bike race to a guy almost twice my age.

Yeah, it definitely would’ve been nice to have him around.

It’s about five thirty when we return the bikes to the rental shop, and my uncle isn’t ready to leave yet, so I follow him as he strolls down to the beach. We take off our shoes and walk barefoot in the warm and grainy sand, walking in silence. I know what time it is, he knows what time it is, and we have nothing to say right now.

We reach an empty turquoise lifeguard tower, and my uncle starts climbing the ladder. He’s definitely not supposed to do that, but so the hell what? Without hesitation, I climb up after him. There’s no one nearby except an older couple out for a stroll down by the water; all the surfers and swimmers still around are a way down the beach, closer to the pier.

We sit down in the opening of the railing that faces the ocean, our feet dangling over the edge. The sun still burns bright in our faces while we sit there watching the vast and beautiful Pacific from behind our sunglasses. And it hits me with a twinge that I’m going to miss this. I’ve lived here all my life, and I doubt any other place will ever feel like home.

I look at my watch. It’s almost six p.m. While I keep my eyes fixed on it, the second hand ticks and ticks, steadily approaching the hour. When it gets there, I hold my breath, expecting…what? I have no idea.

Nothing changes. My uncle and I still sit there in silence, watching the surf as it washes onto the beach in a rush of white foam before retreating again. How many other people would I be comfortable doing that with? Just sitting here like this, saying nothing?

Probably only him.

Maybe Mia.

What is she doing right now? How is she holding up, and does she ever think about me? I want to make sure she’s okay. With sharp, stabbing sensations in my chest, I’m wishing she were here right now.

A hard rock song starts playing, the sound of it muffled, and it takes me a second to figure out that it’s an instrumental version of the chorus from Bon Jovi’s “Bad Medicine” and that it’s coming from my uncle’s cell phone. After digging it out of his pocket, he looks at the screen and lets it ring a few moments before he taps the green button and lifts the phone up to his ear.

He answers with his name, and then he goes quiet, a crease between his eyebrows.

I grip the warm metal railing next to me, grip it hard and keep my eyes averted from my uncle while he listens and sometimes responds to the person on the other end with short affirmatives.
Okay. Yup. Mhmm.

“Sure,” he says eventually. “Hang on a second.”

He presses the Mute button on his phone. Lets out an audible breath. And then he looks me in the eye and says, “It’s done.”

Dumbly, I nod.

“Apparently he mentioned you in his last words, and his lawyer would like to tell you about it himself.” Uncle Warren holds out his phone to me. When I flinch and hesitate, my face prickling with apprehension, he quietly states, “You don’t have to.”

My arm feels disconnected from my body, moving independently of me as I reach out and accept the cell phone from him. It’s heavier than it looks, and I clench my fist around it, my hand trembling.

Tapping to unmute it, I lift the small device up to my ear and say, “Hello?”

“Hi, Jay, this is John Beatty, your father’s attorney,” comes the deep voice on the other end. He talks fast and with a hint of a Texas drawl.

“Okay,” is all I can think to reply.

“He asked me to tell you something. These were literally his last words; he didn’t say anything else after this. I wrote it down, so here it is verbatim.” The lawyer pauses for a second, and I hold my breath. “He said, ‘Tell my son, Jay, that I love him, that I’m proud of him, and that he was the best thing I ever did. I wish I could’ve caught more foul balls for him.’”

It’s like someone hit me in the chest with a sledgehammer. My vision goes blurry. Even though my tongue feels thick and stuck to the roof of my mouth, I’m somehow able to mumble out a hasty “Thank you” before thrusting the phone back at my uncle. I hear him saying something else into the phone, but it sounds like he’s far away and almost out of earshot.

The knot in my throat and burning pressure behind my eyes are suddenly just there—rushing over me and knocking me down, and then my shoulders are shaking as I stop breathing, silent shudders ripping through me.

Doubling over, I feel like I step outside my body, relinquishing control. It’s like I’m being shredded at the cellular level, my body fragmenting into tiny pieces. Each wave of agony starts deep in my core before shooting up my spine, and I can’t stop it, can barely even hang on to the railing to keep myself from tumbling off the guard tower into the sand below.

My uncle grabs the back of my neck and squeezes. He keeps his hand there, and I can hear him sniffling, know he’s hurting, too, probably more than I am. He’s mourning the little brother he grew up with. To me, Darrell Miller was a father who was hardly ever around. I worshipped him. But I didn’t really know him.

Eventually, the tears dry. I straighten my back again, and for a while I sit there, only breathing. My head feels empty, drained, and numb.

“There’s just something about the sunsets here,” Uncle Warren says, his voice hoarse and moist. His hand shifts away from my neck to rest on my shoulder.

Through swollen and throbbing eyes, I squint out at sea, where the sun is hanging low in the sky, casting a pink-and-orange light around the smatterings of clouds, making them look like an oil painting. Pretty soon the sun will sink all the way down and then behind the horizon, and it’ll be a fiery and beautiful spectacle.

“You crashing on my couch tonight?” I ask, clearing my throat.

“I don’t know,” he says, pushing off the edge so that he lands softly on the sand a short way below. “Let’s go get drunk and see where the evening takes us, huh? Maybe we’ll get lucky. I could really go for some California pussy right now. It’s been way too long.”

Oh, Jesus. For a moment, I’m just blinking at him. Then I let out an exasperated breath with a hint of laughter. “Stay classy, old man.”

“Always, buddy,” he fires back, grinning at me. “Always.”

Three weeks later

S
ubdued, peaceful organ music fills the church as I enter through the double doors at the end of the nave. With more than half an hour left until Lily Waters’ funeral service is supposed to begin, the oblong room with its vaulted, wood-beamed ceiling is mostly empty still, only a handful of people sitting in the pews and some hovering near the entrance.

I catch sight of Frank and Gwen first. Dark-clad and somber-faced, they’re shaking hands and talking with an elderly couple. I slow my steps as I approach them, prepared to wait my turn to offer my condolences.

It takes me a moment to realize that the woman standing just behind Frank is Paige, that I just haven’t seen her without makeup before. She’s wearing a plain black dress that fits tightly enough to reveal the growing bump at her midriff, and her blonde hair is twisted up in a simple updo.

As she looks past her father and meets my eye, I give her a nod, and she immediately makes her way over to me. Drawing close, she reaches out her arms, and I hesitate only for a split second before I do the same.

“Thank you for coming, Jay,” she says while giving me an embrace that I return with a gentle squeeze.

“Thanks for calling me and letting me know,” I reply as we let go, and she gives a nod, her face grim and downturned.

I glance around the room, and my attention zeroes in on a couple standing in the nave farther inside the church, just in front of the last pew. My surroundings fade away. I see them as if through a telescope, and it’s like someone hits the mute button inside my head, because I can suddenly hear no sounds.

It’s Mia—and a man in a charcoal suit with his back turned to me. A sick feeling settles in my stomach at her rapt expression and their subdued and seemingly intimate conversation.

He’s also holding her hand within both of his. My pulse starts racing. There’s a guy touching Mia, and she seems perfectly okay with that.

Her gaze slides away from him, her slender neck bending as she scans the sunlight-flooded room. She’s tamed and pinned up her mass of chocolate-brown hair, and her short-sleeve, dark-purple dress with a high waist and scooped neckline has a brooch in the shape of a green lily attached to it, near her heart. I know that piece of jewelry; it belonged to her grandmother.

She looks pale and tired but still stunning, still my beautiful and sexy Mia. I’m drinking in the sight of her after not having seen her for three long months, the longest we’ve been apart since we became friends. I feel like I’m finally seeing the sun again after being trapped in a windowless room for far too long.