“So are you going to say it or not?” Bailey asks.
I turn and look at her, the Pacific Coast Highway floating by outside the driver-side window, the ocean in the distance, the late-morning traffic going mostly toward Los Angeles as opposed to farther away.
“Say what?”
“Dad shows up on the same night that Grandpa dies?” she says. “That’s so fucking weird.”
“I know,” I say. “It’s weird. I won’t try to convince you that it isn’t.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better, Mom.”
Bailey purses her lips, starts nervously biting her nails. Her eyes wide with sadness. It squeezes something deep inside me, how much it makes her look like the younger version of herself—the guarded, unapproachable teenager who wanted nothing to do with me, who I could never seem to do right by.
It took me a long time to understand that Bailey wasn’t being snarky or difficult, back then. (How easy and wrongheaded to name her fears in that way.) Bailey had just been scared—for different reasons than she is scared now—but scared all the same. She’d been scared to trust anyone who wasn’t her father, especially someone coming in as hot as I did. She’d been scared that she didn’t even know how to trust someone who wasn’t her father. We’d had that in common.
I reach over and gently move Bailey’s hand away from her mouth, give it a squeeze, grateful for how far we’ve come since then. Grateful that, even though I fail at times, I’m now much better at knowing how to ease her.
“Bails,” I say. “This is all a lot to process, for me too. But, for what it’s worth, I am certain that Owen had nothing to do with Nicholas’s death. Grady didn’t give me any indications that foul play was involved. And your grandpa has had a serious heart condition for a while now. You know that. And you know your father. You know that he would never hurt your grandfather.”
I say it emphatically. Because I know that’s what she needs to hear—and I know that it’s true. Owen wouldn’t hurt Nicholas. He’s not built that way.
Bailey takes that in, and I can see her start to relax, the fear dropping out of her eyes.
“Yeah… I guess that’s true.”
I nod. “Good.”
“But how do you explain it then?” she asks. “You know, all of this happening at the same time?”
“If I’m being honest? I’m still figuring that out…”
She nods. And I leave out the other part. The part I do know, the part left unspoken between us. That even if Owen didn’t have anything to do with Nicholas’s death, it’s connected. Losing Nicholas, Owen coming back. It’s all connected.
Get out of the house. Now.
“Where are we going anyway?” Bailey asks.
“North,” I say.
“Care to be more specific?”
“Well, right now, we just need to get some distance between us and the places where they have been tracking us.”
“They’ve been tracking us?”
I don’t answer her. She knows that answer.
“How much distance?” she asks.
I have two answers for her, and they both start the same way. They start with us avoiding the major highways (no 101 or I-5, except when absolutely necessary) and taking surface roads whenever possible. We are avoiding tolls and cameras. We are going to hug the coast and take side streets and avoid any surveillance that we can.
Without the flash drive, this trip north would take us to Santa Cruz, a beachside town situated on the northern edge of Monterey Bay—home to the Mission Santa Cruz and surf shops, and (most importantly) UC Santa Cruz, where Jules spent a year teaching. And where she has a wealthy friend from graduate school who owns a boat. A forty-foot boat that is the same make and model of a yacht in Marina del Rey that over the last five years (over weekends and workdays) I learned how to operate.
A French-manufactured forty-foot boat that I studied intensively: learning how to handle the lines and operate the engines and work the thrusters. Spending my weekends navigating to Catalina Island and the Channel Islands and San Diego. First, with my very patient instructor. Then, eventually, on my own.
If we follow my original plan, we will stop for the night in the hills above Scotts Valley at the house of Jules’s friend, in the upland slope of the Santa Cruz Mountains, and not too far from the marina.
As soon as there is sunrise, we will drive the last eight miles to the marina and get on that forty-foot boat—and we’ll pull up anchor and head to the Sea of Cortez. We’ll swim in that sea and get too much sun and talk about Nicholas. We’ll process that loss. We’ll process the stress of all of this. And, most importantly, I’ll keep Bailey safe until we navigate a way to permanently keep Bailey safe.
