We Are Okay(36)

“Marin,” he said. “Right?”

“Yes.”

I squinted up at him, wondered if my hair reminded him of hers. I thought he might tell me about something intangible. An aura I gave off or a gesture I made.

“What are you waiting around for?”

“Nothing,” I said.

But it wasn’t true. I was waiting for a faraway nostalgia to take him over, the way it always did with all the others. I almost held out my hand, sure he’d drop shells in. Maybe the feeling of them in my palm would do it.

“I heard you looked a lot like your mom, but this is ridiculous.”

He didn’t sound dreamy at all, but I smiled anyway and said thanks.

“I’ve got a van in the lot and some time to spare,” he said.

My body tensed. In spite of the lead in my stomach, in spite of the way I was sinking into the sand, darkness rushing in, I made my voice stronger. “Who are you even?” I asked.

“I’m Fred,” he said.

“Never even heard of you.”

I turned to the ocean and watched the waves crash. The more focused I was on them, the louder they were, the closer they became. When a wave reached the toe of my shoe, I stood up.

I was alone, just like I’d hoped, but it felt terrible.

I needed something.

Ana, I thought, but that was stupid. Ana was not mine.

I needed a warm place, music, sweet-smelling rooms.

Traffic parted for me; the darkening sky held its light until I unlocked my door and rushed upstairs.

“Gramps,” I called. “Emergency! I need cake!”

He wasn’t in the living room or the dining room. The kitchen was empty, nothing on the stove or in the oven.

“Gramps?”

I stood still and listened. Quiet. He must have been out, I thought, but I found myself at the door of his study. I saw him. Couldn’t believe it but there he was at his desk. Cigarette smoldering in the crystal ashtray, pen in hand, staring blankly off.

“Gramps?”

“Not a good time.”

His voice wasn’t even his voice.

“Sorry,” I said, backing away.

I found my way to the love seat. I wanted a lecture about anything. The correct name for a coffee establishment. The duplicity of nuns. The difference between carnal desire and the love for someone’s soul.

I wanted to touch knees under the table.

I wanted him to tell me about my mother.

Night fell and he didn’t come out. He didn’t make dinner. I sat on the love seat, perfectly still, until my back got sore and my feet fell asleep and I had to stand to get the blood rushing again. I got ready for bed and then I went to my room in the front of the house, where nobody ever went but me.





chapter eighteen



“MARIN,” she says. “Please talk to me.”

I guess I’ve gone silent. I didn’t even realize it.

“I miss him,” I whisper. It isn’t what I expected to say; it just comes out. I don’t even know if it’s true. I do miss him, but then I don’t.

She scoots closer.

“I know,” she says. “I know. But you’re trying to tell me something. I want to hear it.”

Her knee is so close to mine. She isn’t afraid to touch me now that we’ve held each other all night. I love her, but there is no going back. No bonfires on the beach. No mouths pressed together. No hungry fumblings. No fingers through her hair. But maybe I can go further back, to a less complicated time when cute was an accurate description of my grandfather and Mabel was simply my best friend.

I want to tell her, but I can’t do it yet. The words are stuck.

“Tell me something,” I say.

“What?”

“Anything.”

Tell me about heat.

Tell me about the beach.

Tell me about a girl who lives in a house with her grandfather, about a house that’s full of easy love, about a house that isn’t haunted. Hands covered in cake flour and air that smells sweet. Tell me about the way the girl and her grandfather did each other’s laundry and left it folded in the living room, not because there were secrets, but because that’s just the way they were: simple and easy and true.

But before she can say anything, the words come.

“None of it was real,” I tell her.

She scoots closer, our thighs touch. She takes my hands in hers like we used to do on the beach, like I’m freezing and she can warm me.

“None of what was real?”

“Him,” I whisper.

“I don’t understand,” she says.

“He had a walk-in closet behind his room. It’s where he really lived. It was filled with all this stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Letters, to start. They were all written by him. He signed her name, but he wrote all of them.”

“Marin, I don’t . . .”





chapter nineteen


AUGUST




GRAMPS’S LEAVING WOKE ME UP. The door shutting, footsteps down the stairs. I peered out to the street and saw him turn the corner in the direction of the store, or Bo’s house, or any number of the places he disappeared to during his walks through the neighborhood.