The Watcher Girl(23)

Long-standing disappointment aside, there’s comfort in knowing my trust issues don’t make me a special snowflake.

The patio door slides open and closed behind me.

“Grace? What are you doing sitting out here in the dark?” Bliss weaves through lounge chairs to get to me, her vibrant sarong glowing under the stars. Sleepwear aside, I’ve yet to see her in anything other than a sari, sarong, or caftan, always accessorized with a faux tan and a bold lip. She is radiant, always. Maybe it’s all that inner peace. They say yoga and meditation are good for that, but I wouldn’t know. I’ve tried to shut my mind off, but it doesn’t work that way. Only when I’m running. And I can’t run forever. “Could I interest you in a glass of pinot?”

A cut-crystal chalice with some ornamental design along the rim rests in her hand, filled to the brim with dark wine.

“You can have mine,” she says. “I haven’t touched it.”

Before I have a chance to decline, Bliss hands me the glass and dashes inside. A moment later, she returns with another and settles into the lounger beside me.

“It’s so peaceful out here in the evenings,” she says in one long exhalation. Draping her sarong over her legs, she takes a sip. “Suburban paradise.”

I never thought of it that way before.

“I hope you don’t mind me joining you,” she adds, though it’d be too late if I did.

“Not at all,” I lie. Sort of. I don’t dislike Bliss. Not yet. The worst thing about her, so far, is that she’s dating my father, which means she’s naive as hell. But her yoga-meditation-Mother-Earth-Gaia-herbal-tea-optimism doesn’t bother me. People like her outnumber the palm trees on the West Coast, and they’re not so bad. They could be doing a lot worse things than smoking a joint on their apartment balconies in West Hollywood while strumming their ukuleles and planning their next South American ayahuasca retreat.

“Do you smoke, Bliss?” I ask.

“Cigarettes?”

“No.”

“Oh. Then yes. Sometimes . . .” Her gaze glints in the dark. “Haven’t in a while . . . why?”

I reach into my bag beside me and retrieve a joint and a lighter. I press it between my lips while I light up, and then I take an exaggerated drag before handing it over.

Bliss pinches it carefully in her fingers, holding it over the empty space that separates our chairs so as not to spill any ash on herself. A moment later, she slowly brings it to her lips, inhales, closes her eyes, and hands it back.

I don’t smoke often, but after my weird exchange with Campbell at the coffee shop earlier and after leaving yet another message for yet another Sarah Thomas a few minutes ago, I need this escape. Plus, it’s too late for a jog. I don’t like to run after the sun’s gone down, not even in the safest of neighborhoods. People get killed and kidnapped that way. Cars. Serial killers. Freak heart attacks. Human traffickers. I’d be remiss to believe the dark underbelly of humanity doesn’t lurk in a pretty little city like this.

“Does my father know you do this?” I ask out of pure curiosity. He’s always been conservative—socially and otherwise.

Except that time he dated a girl almost half his age who had a secret drug problem . . .

If there’s anything I’ve learned in the past thirty years, it’s that Graham McMullen is full of all kinds of surprises. And in the end, none of it surprises me.

Bliss nods, reaching for my joint and then taking another drag, the red tip glowing in the dark.

“You have no idea how happy your dad is now that you’re home,” she says after an exhalation. Fanning the smoke from her watering eyes, she adds, “I hope you’ll be staying awhile. At least for his sake. He’s missed you. Talks about you all the time. Worries about you.”

She chokes back a cough, fanning the skunky smoke away from her airspace.

I take the joint back, letting it burn short between my fingers.

In all my years away, not once did the idea of my father worrying about me ever cross my mind. I figured he was too busy chasing skirts and polishing golf clubs and bragging about Rose and Sebastian to fret about little old me.

“Why’d you stop talking to him? If you don’t mind my asking?” The whites of Bliss’s eyes glimmer in the dark, and the weight of her stare presses into me. “I don’t mean to pry. It’s just, I know what it’s like to cut your parents out of your life. I also know what it’s like to bury them six feet in the ground without ever having forgiven them. You’re young. You’ve got too much life ahead of you to live with that kind of anger.”

“What makes you think I’m angry?”

“A person doesn’t disappear and cut off all communication with the ones who love them unless they’re upset about something. At least in my experience. I used to be a therapist back in the day.”

She says “back in the day” as if the fifteen-or-so years that separate us are some kind of generational divide. It’s not like she’s my grandmother. She’s barely old enough to be my mother.

“Why’d you stop?”

Her mouth inches up at one corner. “Nice deflection. Why don’t you answer my question first, and then I’ll answer yours?”

I take a hit of the joint, stare at the moonlit pool, and exhale. “Because I’m tired.”