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My dad’s lungs inflate in a hiss of air.
My mom grimaces and reaches out to take my hand. “Did she react very poorly?”
My dad—who hadn’t agreed with keeping this secret from the beginning—snorts. “What do you think, Diane?”
She swats at him. “Not now, Pierre,” she says. “Of course she didn’t take it well. Brit has to be hurt and”—she pushes up to her feet—“I should talk to her, help her understand?—”
“She’s not here,” I tell her. “She asked for space, and since I’ve spent the last year doing what I wanted to do”—or what I felt as though I had to do—“I’m giving her what she asked me for.”
My mom nibbles at her bottom lip. “But?—”
“Mom,” I say. “I owe her this much.”
She sucks in a breath. “Yeah, baby,” she says, cupping my jaw lightly in her hand. “I think you do.” A beat before she turns for the door, my dad trailing her. “Get changed and let’s feed the beasts. And we’ll buy some extra pastries for Brit.”
I crawl to my feet, start to follow them.
Which is why I see her mouth quirk up as she glances back over her shoulder.
“Because if there’s anything that gets through to a woman’s heart, it’s pastries.”
Thirty-Eight
Brit
“I knew you’d be here.”
I still, fingers clenching on the concrete wall that overlooks the ocean.
The sun is bright overhead, breaking through San Francisco’s typical shroud of fog and shining off the pools of water that abut the beach not all that far in front of me.
“It’s better at sunset,” I tell Diane as she sits next to me, taking in the splendor of the Sutro Baths, an old ruin of saltwater pools that were never as successful as their owner hoped they would be. Now, all that’s left is the foundation of the old bath house and pools of algae-covered water.
But it makes for a great place to sit and stare out at the ocean—the cluster of jutting rocks in the distance, the waves crashing against the shore.
I’m not alone, but there are so few people here at the moment that I might as well be.
Except, of course, for my mother-in-law, who’s decided to invade my peace.
But even as the resentful words cross my mind, they’re immediately pushed away.
Because I love Diane.
Because she’s been one of my biggest fans, my biggest supporters from the moment she met me.
More of a mom than mine had ever been.
“You knew,” I say, and it’s not a question.
“His health story isn’t mine to share.” She bumps her shoulder against mine. “And I’d tell him the same if the roles were reversed.”
“Right,” I mutter, staring at the waves.
Another nudge of her shoulder against mine, and a….
I frown.
A crinkle.
