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“Um. Why?”
Rina’s throat was tight. “I’d like to ask you a few questions. Your name is Nathan Rodgers, correct?”
There was frantic muttering on the other side of the door. Rina couldn’t make out anything that was said. Next came the creak of the bed and several small footfalls.
“What if I tell you to go away?” the man called back angrily. “What if I tell you I won’t answer?”
Rina blinked back tears. “I don’t want to get you in any trouble, Nathan. I just want to find Gail.”
There was silence on the other side of the door. It was deafening. Rina’s knees wiggled beneath her, threatening to give way. After that came a hiss from inside. Rina inhaled sharply as the two people inside the room—two people she prayed were Nathan and Gail—bickered quietly.
After a final growl, the door cracked open. A young woman with a clean, healthy face and long red hair peered out. Although she wore none of the black makeup from New Year’s Eve, it was unmistakably Gail.
When she blinked out at Rina, she smiled, just as Penny had when Rina had discovered her during hide-and-seek. The jig was up. The game was over.
“Rina!” Gail said, opening the door wider. She looked captivated. And then, her eyes flickered leftward. “Uncle Steve? What are you doing here?”
In the murky shadows behind Gail, Nathan sat on the bed shirtless, wearing only a pair of boxers. He was rolling a cigarette, and the bones of his shoulders were jagged, like those of a cheetah.
“I told you not to open the door,” he said to Gail. He sounded bored.
Gail waved her hand in Nathan’s direction. There was a strained silence. Rina tried to make sense of the previous two weeks of this young woman’s life. She’d gone on a reckless adventure. She’d worried her mother sick. But she was all right. She was here, in one piece, at the Sunset Motel.
And based on the harrowing way she looked at Nathan now, she’d learned a very difficult lesson. She’d learned that pretty promises from young men didn’t get you anywhere. She’d learned that abandoning everything you ever knew left you more alone than you ever thought possible.
Well. That was what Rina suspected, anyway. Maybe she was projecting.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Rina suggested.
“Don’t go with them,” Nathan shot out. “Or you’ll never come back.”
Under his breath, Steve urged, “Take your stuff.”
Gail froze and locked eyes with her uncle. It had been weeks since she’d had a trusted adult around. It was as though all the cells on her body stood straight up, ready for instruction. It was difficult to be an adult and make every decision on your own without second opinions. It often felt like you were flailing through time without a sense of gravity.
Steve, now, was Gail’s gravity. Steve was a reminder of the love of the Montgomery family, waiting for her at home.
Like a frightened rabbit, Gail hopped around the shadowed motel room, gathering her things and shoving them into a backpack. It looked as though she’d packed very little. That, or she’d lost things along the way.
“You’re not going to just go,” Nathan said, standing up as she neared the door. The bags under his eyes indicated he hadn’t eaten a vegetable in years. Why were young people so cruel to themselves?
“Call me when you’re back East,” Gail said with a shrug.
“I told you. I’m not going back there,” Nathan said. “What about surfing? What about our life?”
Gail seemed to take stock of him, her hand on the doorknob. Rina could practically feel the memories from the previous few months fly through her; she could feel the devastation of having thought he was someone or something he was not. That was the nature of dating as a young person. It meant trying and trying, having your heart broken, and trying again. It meant going to the ends of the earth with a person and realizing they weren’t right for you. It meant learning and moving on.
“Just think about it,” Nathan urged. “Go on your walk. I’ll be here.” He looked at her like a puppy in the window of a pet store, as though all he needed in the world was her love and care. It was difficult for anyone to walk away from someone as needy—especially someone as open to love as a teenage girl like Gail.
Gail stepped wordlessly into the California light, her backpack hanging loosely off one of her shoulders. Steve seemed to inspect every inch of her as though he expected to find bruises or broken bones. His lips were in a paper-thin line.
Rina drove Gail and Steve to Santa Monica Beach, where Gail asked in a small voice if she could talk to Rina alone. “Sorry, Uncle Steve,” she said in the passenger seat, speaking to Steve, who was cooped up in the back with his knees close to his chest.
“Take all the time you need,” Steve said.
Rina and Gail walked along the sands, gazing up at the Ferris wheel as it circled gently. The pastel colors of the morning had been burned away by the sunlight, and men and women were stationed along the beach, tanning, applying sunscreen, drinking green juices, and yawning lazily. It was hard not to fall into the dream of California. It was hard to remember that Martha’s Vineyard beckoned so many states away.
“I fantasized that you would find me.” Gail stopped short and crossed her arms over her chest. As she bit her coral lip, she looked far younger than her eighteen years; as though she were twelve, on the verge of a pre-teen breakdown. She’d wanted attention, and she’d gotten it. Just like Penny.
