“Shoes,” Beth calls over her shoulder. “I mean, if you don’t mind,” she adds quickly, turning her head and giving me a quick, toothless smile. It’s funny how people hold their tongues when you go through something awful. I caught my neighbor, who spent years knotting her gray eyebrows together when my garbage cans were still sitting by the curb long after trash day, dragging them up our driveway last night, pulling forcefully as one wheel got stuck in a deep crack that appeared after the last earthquake. And Beth. She’s been on her best behavior since James died—replacing her typical blunt opinions with kind and gentle responses that seem foreign coming from her. What she doesn’t understand is that I wish she would go back to her normal personality, because I need her to be her. I need her unfiltered commentary about my life, her know-it-all attitude, her need to be right.
It’s not just Beth who’s been on first-date behavior. Before James died, my mom, who lives in Solana Beach, a sleepy beach town about an hour south of my neighborhood, would rarely made the trek “all the way up” to Aliso Viejo because northbound traffic is “just the worst on the weekends.” And now she has miraculously gotten over her commuter issues and has been religiously making the “journey” once a week to check on me. She’s never been a big believer in comfortable silences, so as she scrubs my spotless countertops and heats up some casserole we both know I’ll never eat and fluffs pillows and opens windows, she relentlessly throws words my way, telling me stories about her book club or my dad’s refusal to stop eating red meat, tiptoeing around me like I’m a land mine she might trigger.
What my mom doesn’t get is that I don’t need her to come to my house and rearrange my coffee table books. Just because James is gone, she doesn’t need to change; she doesn’t need to prove anything to me. It never bothered me that she didn’t drive up to see us. James and I liked going down to visit her and my dad, the coastal setting making us feel like we were going on a staycation the minute we arrived. But Mom’s unwillingness to come up north to see Beth and me, and our father’s silent alignment with her, drove Beth insane. “Can’t she do it for her three grandchildren? Doesn’t she realize we have soccer and gymnastics and we are bu-sy? I swear it’s Poochie Poo. She can’t leave that dog for five minutes.” I’d tell her that was crazy talk, that of course it wasn’t about the dog, but she’d spit back that I was too agreeable, that I accepted things too easily. And she’s right; I usually do. Part of me wonders if that’s why I’m standing here now, with questions outnumbering answers.
I force my sneakers off without untying them.
Beth hands me a glass of water and sets my shoes neatly by the front door next to three pairs of soccer cleats in varying sizes, waiting for me to tell her why I’m here. She knows better than to ask if I’m okay or how I’m doing or if I slept last night. I’ve banned all questions like that.
I take a long drink and look at her, my eyes watering. “It’s just a lot.”
“Come here.” Beth wraps her arms around me, and I stand there stiffly like a child being cuddled by a great-aunt she barely knows. I’m afraid if I hug her back, I’ll dissolve into tears. That I won’t be able to stop.
I pull out of her embrace. “I had a visitor.”
Beth frowns, waiting for me to continue.
“A man; apparently he’s Dylan’s fiancé. Or was . . .”
“Wait, what?”
I tell her about Nick. How he felt so familiar to me even though I was sure I’d never met him. How he’d held out Dylan’s driver’s license, which the police had mailed back to him, to prove his connection to her. How I found myself staring into James’s mistress’s bright-blue eyes, her white-blonde hair resting on top of her shoulders in a simple blunt cut, her bangs swept to the side.
I had read over her description as Nick watched me: five foot two, 103 pounds, contact lenses, organ donor, lived in Irvine, birthdate July 7, 1992. I felt my stomach twisting into hard knots as my brain computed the differences between us.
Nine years younger.
Twenty-two pounds lighter.
Four inches shorter.
Blonder.
We sit and I explain to Beth what Nick said when he came to see me. That he hadn’t been able to sleep since he found out his fiancée died, because he needed answers. He needed to understand more. About Dylan. About James. About the bond they had formed together, seemingly right under our noses. He wanted to travel to Hawaii to retrace their steps. It might sound crazy, but would I go with him?
“He asked you to do what?” Beth interrupts me.
“To go to Maui with him.”
“A perfect stranger.”
“Yes.” But what I don’t say is that we are connected by this event in a way that no longer makes us people who don’t know each other. “He said I’m the only person who can understand what he’s going through. That the simple police report, deeming the crash an accident, won’t tell him the things he really needs to know: why his fiancée was cheating on him with another man and why she was in Maui with him. He thinks going there could help fill in the blanks.”
“Honey.” Beth puts her hand on my knee. “I don’t mean this to sound harsh, because I love you and I’m so sorry you’re going through this. But what good can come from taking their vacation?”
It’s worth noting once more that preaccident Beth would have never prefaced anything with I don’t mean this to sound harsh. She would have just said it, along with an eye roll and an impatient tone. So I know she’ll bite her tongue rather than chastise me if I confess the rest—that he suggested retracing their exact steps: Had they eaten coconut shrimp? Sipped pi?a coladas as the sun set? Did they kick their shoes off and stroll down the beach? But still. I don’t tell Beth this. Because I know she won’t understand why there’s a part of me that shares Nick’s morbid curiosity. And that I would strongly consider running my hand across the bed they slept in, leaning over the railing of their lanai and taking in the same view, looking in the mirror over their bathroom sink to try to make sense of what he saw in her. Maybe that’s exactly it. Going to Maui could help me understand why he was willing to risk the comfortable life we’d built. Because I can’t ever ask him.
Beth’s concern is obvious, and I get it, because I’m thinking it too—whatever answers I find might make it all worse. “Don’t worry, I kicked him off my front steps,” I say as I watch her face soften. She thinks this means I’m not going. But the problem is, I can’t stop picturing his hunched shoulders as he walked to his bike; how he’d slowly slung his leg over the seat, then pulled his helmet on; how the sound of his motorcycle firing to life had startled me; how I’d watched him until he disappeared down the street.
“But?” Beth asks, sensing my thoughts. Only eleven months apart, we’ve always shared a bond, an intuition as strong as if we’d shared a uterus.
“But . . .” I pause, remembering his eyes filling with tears when I’d told him to go away, not recognizing the sound of my own voice. How do I explain to her that I both want and don’t want to know more? I’m curious about the shrimp and the sunset strolls, but frightened to find out about the real emotions they might have shared. “But . . . what if he’s right? What if going could help? I know it may sound crazy to you, but there’s a part of me that understands exactly why he needs to go to Maui.” I pull my long hair out of its ponytail, the elastic ripping several strands.
“Okay . . .” Beth pauses, and I watch her try to compose herself. She wants to be the old Beth so badly. To tell me what an idiot I’m being. Instead, she clears her throat and says, “So a part of you wonders. But what about the other parts?”
“Do you really think that I should just accept that he was having an affair and leave it at that?”
“You’re not answering my question.”
“And you’re not answering mine.” I fold my arms across my chest.
“Fine,” she says. “Yes, I really think that. I just worry that going will create even more questions. And then you’ll always be wondering what the answers are.”
“I hear you. But Nick did make a good point—he said he didn’t want to be in denial anymore. That he wants to face it—all of it. And the only way to do that is to be in Maui.”
“Wouldn’t that be torture? Why would he do that to himself? To you?”