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Rina returned home to find Steve in the backyard, watering her flowers with a long green hose. He looked so casual back there, as though he’d always lived in that house with her, as though his toes were accustomed to walking across that lush grass. She waved from the kitchen window and drank an entire glass of water as her heart pounded in her ears. Again, she wondered if her father had hurt her mother? What would she do? And again, she figured she would cross that bridge when she came to it.
Steve dressed in the outfit Rina had purchased for him on the way back from the hospital: a white button-down and a pair of slacks. He showed it off, twisting his hips like a model as he strutted. “My father would be ashamed,” he joked. “I’ve gone full Californian.”
“You’re playing a part tonight,” Rina explained. “You have to look like the kind of man my father could see me with. And my father is pure Californian, going back generations. This is all he understands.”
“Should I speak differently?” Steve asked. “All you Californians say ‘dude’ a lot, right?”
Rina rolled her eyes and laughed. “Don’t lean too far into the stereotypes. You don’t want to offend him. He’s a Stanford graduate, remember.”
“And I’m just a car mechanic from out East,” Steve said. “But I reckon he can’t fix his own Porsche.”
“Lamborghini,” Rina corrected. “And no. He can’t.”
Steve drove his rental car to the fish restaurant on the outskirts of Santa Monica, where the land pulled away from the Eastern Coast to present a gorgeous view of the Ferris wheel and the boardwalk beyond. It was seven thirty, and the sky was a blistering shade of pink and orange.
“It’s like a dream,” Steve said as they headed up the walkway to the beachside restaurant.
“Or a nightmare,” Rina said.
Wally was already at the restaurant, standing near their table and chatting up the server as though they’d known one another for years. When he spotted Steve, his eyes lit up, and he beelined for him with his hand extended. Rina knew what her father was thinking. Steve was handsome and looked accomplished. He could brag about him to his friends later. He fit the part.
Rina ordered a bottle of rosé and sparkling water for the table. She sat next to Steve on one side, across from her father, who donned his sunglasses and gazed, captivated, at the sunset.
“You have sunsets like this out East, Steve?” Wally asked.
“We’re more in the sunrise business,” Steve said.
Wally cackled and clapped the table with his palm. Rina gave Steve a small smile. He was buttering him up. The rosé would help, too. And just as Rina had suspected, Wally seemed less interested in learning about Steve than blabbering about his own life. Rina had recently read the definition of “narcissist” and seen both her mother's and father’s faces floating in her mind’s eye.
Over rosé, Wally talked about anything and everything that came to mind. He spoke about his business, which he’d recently sold in a healthy, multimillion-dollar sale. He mentioned Ellen frequently, as though she was just in the bathroom and poised to return to the table any moment. And he spoke of Rina here and there, too, knowing that he had to in order to relate to Steve. That was why they were both here, after all. Rina had brought them together.
They ordered fish for dinner—lobster, clams with spaghetti, and salmon plus noodle dishes, fresh bread, and salads. They shared everything as though they were a part of a different type of family. As though they were like the Montgomerys, who so often dined that way, passing plates around the table, cracking jokes, picking up where they’d left off the last time they’d had dinner.
Rina could see it in Steve’s eye that he didn’t trust her father. He’d already picked up on the difference between Wally and Trevor. But Steve had a way with people, probably from his years in the auto industry, talking to every type of person under the sun.
After they cleaned their plates, Rina elbowed Steve gently. It was time.
“Well, I’m sorry Ellen couldn’t join us tonight,” Steve said, smiling. “But Rina says she’s healing up pretty well?”
Wally’s expression deflated. “The doctors say she’ll be there a bit longer. I’m hoping we can get her home by the end of February. But who knows? She took a bad tumble.”
Already, this verbiage felt different to what Wally had said at the hospital.
“That sounds terrifying,” Steve said, furrowing his brow, showing empathy. “I watched my mother go down a few years ago, and the memory of it kept me awake at night.”
Wally’s eyes glinted. He returned his gaze to the horizon, where the sun had completely disappeared. Night drenched everything, casting ghoulish shadows along the beach. “You can’t imagine what it was like. I watched the love of my life fall away from me. And there was nothing I could do.”
It was as though Wally had forgotten Rina was there at all. His eyes remained focused on Steve.
Under his breath, he rasped, “I can’t help but blame myself. Even though she hit me first. She lost her balance a split-second later, and I couldn’t grab her in time.” Wally imitated it, throwing his hand forward and then falling back against the chair. “You should have seen the way she fell down those stairs. She looked like a rag doll. I ran after her and tried to carry her back to the car. My darling bride. My love.”
Rina’s heart pounded. She could imagine it even though it hurt. Her frail mother teetering back like that.
“Why did she hit you?” Steve whispered.
Wally spread his fingers out on the tablecloth and stared down at them as though he wasn’t sure they were his. “I told her something. Something that really upset her.”
This was it, Rina thought. Maybe her father had cheated on her mother. Maybe he’d revealed a second family, another life, the ultimate betrayal of many decades of lies. As a private investigator, she’d seen it all. She couldn’t be surprised anymore.
