Pack Up the Moon (25 page)

Saturday, May 17, 2014
11 a.m.

I
f anything, Kate should have been scared of flying. On planes, she should have gripped her armrests and prayed to a God she didn’t understand while soaring through the clouds. But she didn’t. She loved flying. It was always water she’d been scared of without a good reason. And now there were so many reasons to hate being on this boat, to hate being this terrified.

“This was your idea, you know,” said Nolan. He still had that ability to read her.

She ignored him and went up the steps.

The closer they got to the Golden Gate Bridge, the windier it became. Brian had told her on the phone that the best place to dump ashes was in the ocean, outside the bay, but she was worried that it would be even rougher. If Pree had been sick on the little wavelets, what would happen out there?

Brian stood with his hand resting lightly on the wheel. His legs were planted far apart and he gazed straight ahead. He didn’t acknowledge her. He was obviously accustomed to these trips of grief, used to pretending he wasn’t there. Kate was grateful.

Pree sat at the bow, her legs slung over the edge, her arms wrapped around the rail in front of her, watching Alcatraz glide past to her right.

Kate stopped, unable to move forward or back. She held the rail but only lightly. Ironically, her legs seemed to take to this—she swayed from her kneecaps as if she’d been on boats all her life.

Brian looked at her over his sunglasses and blinked. The skin of his eyelids was pale in contrast to the rest of his face. Then he looked past her to Pree. “Hey, you wanna steer the boat?”

Pree turned her head. “Me? No.”

“Come on.”

“No way. I’d put us on those rocks.”

“I won’t let that happen.”

“No.” Pree was firm. “Never.”

“You don’t want to be able to say that you steered a sailboat under the Golden Gate? You won’t regret that someday?”

Kate saw Pree bite her lip.

Come on, Pree.

“Show me,” Pree said, standing.

Brian put her hands on the wheel and stayed next to her. “That’s right,” he said. “You’re a natural.”

Pree looked jittery. “But how do I avoid the legs of the bridge? They’re huge.”

“Same as you avoid things in a car. Just think your way there. Watch with your eyes—your hands already know how to do it.”

Pree narrowed her eyes the same way Nolan did when he was concentrating. The boat’s sail guttered as the wind shifted.

“What do I do?”

“To the left a little,” said Brian calmly. The sail filled again and they darted forward. “Yeah, good.”

Kate felt, rather than saw, Nolan come up the stairs behind her. He put his hand, as he always had, on the small of her back to tell her he was there, and she tucked her body into his, the top of her shoulder fitting exactly under his arm. She stayed in the lee of his arms for the space of two breaths, long enough to fill her lungs with courage. Then she stepped out. She wanted to feel the wind. Still moving easily even though the boat bucked, she took Pree’s abandoned place at the bow.

She threaded her legs under the rail, letting them hang in the air. The salt spray dampened her jeans and Brian warned her that her feet might get wet. One part of her cared—her feet should
not
be getting that close to the water, period. The other part of her exulted in the salt and wind hitting her face, the slap and clank of the sails above her.

The Golden Gate drew closer, and Kate risked a backward glance. Pree’s face was as bright as the sun glinting on the waves. As the sailboat glided under the steel girders, the cars thumping far overheard, Pree barely glanced up. She appeared transfixed by the water in front of her. Behind her, Nolan looked just as transfixed by Pree.

As well he should be. Pree was remarkable. A sense of pride surged through her, as misplaced and strong an emotion as she’d ever had.

The boat sailed into open waters. They could sail due west for days, weeks, and not run into anything until they hit Japan, just as Robin had always said. It was dizzying, and Kate held the rail tighter. The swells were different here, wider somehow, more spaced apart. While earlier the boat had jogged like a trotting horse, now it swayed like an enormous rocking chair.

“I’m done,” said Pree. “That’s all I need. Can you do it now?”

Brian took the wheel. “I’ll take her out a ways and then we can heave to. Rest for a while. Do our thing.”

Kate considered what “our thing” meant and thought about the small boxes belowdecks. A boat with bright green sails came into view around the curve of the Marin headland, and she wondered what the people on board were doing. Drinking champagne and toasting a celebration? Or dumping loved ones over the rails also?

She expected Pree to go sit in the back, away from her, but instead she swung forward, gripping the rope and dropping onto the edge next to her. Nolan sat next to Kate on the other side. If she reached out, she could touch them both at the same time.

“I fucked up,” Kate said, her voice loud enough to reach both Pree and Nolan. It probably reached farther, over the slapping waves back to Brian. She didn’t care. “What I did, I just fucked it all up. I should have told Nolan about you when I got back together with him so long ago. I should have told you about him, Pree, the first time you asked. I’ve had secrets locked so long inside that I’d forgotten how to open that part.”

Kate would lose them both because of this. She knew it. This morning with Nolan had been a mirage. Whatever she might have had with Pree was evaporating into salt mist in front of her, and it was her fault. She held the cold metal so tightly her thumbs went numb. She had to keep being brave until she was alone again.

Pree faced away from her, toward the open ocean. “How was I supposed to figure anything out if I didn’t know my past? Where I came from?”

“Easy,” said Kate lightly, motioning with her head toward the land behind them. “You came from them. Isi and Marta.”

A pause. Then Pree said, “Robin’s dead.”

The words sounded worse coming from Pree. Kate closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the railing. It was cold and smelled of steel.

Pree continued, “I’m the only real link you have left to him. You’re not related to each other by blood, but both of you are related to me. That’s your connection. To him and to each other. You need me. But I still don’t get why . . .”

Kate looked at Pree. She wanted to touch her, rest her hand on her arm, but she didn’t want to risk chasing her away. “I missed you every day that I didn’t see you. There wasn’t a moment that you weren’t part of my life.”

“Bullshit.” But Pree’s word was weak and got lost in the spray.

The sailboat turned slowly, heading west and then south. The Golden Gate was farther away than Kate had realized. The only noise was the splashing of the water against the hull and the creaking of the sails overhead. Kate knew she had to speak, but she didn’t have a clue what to say.

Pree was the one to finally break the silence. “And you kept him from me. What were you thinking, Kate? Yesterday, I was just hanging out with you guys, and he’s my father? And you knew?”

“I’m sorry.” Weak, tiny words, so impotent in the face of Pree’s sorrow.

“Were you worried I couldn’t be trusted or something? Oh, maybe you’re right. Maybe I
would
have asked why he killed my brother, the one I never got to meet.”

Nolan blinked once slowly and the color drained from his face.

“Pree.”

“What? I just found out half my genes are his. You think I’m not a little worried? That I have the genetic marker of a suicidal killer? Maybe it’s hereditary, the whole not being able to take care of anything. Good thing I don’t want this kid.” Her nose was pink and her eyes were wet. Kate couldn’t tell if she was crying or windblown.

Nolan stuffed his hands in his pockets. His lips pressed thinly together.

“Robin was sick,” Kate said. “Really sick. Don’t be mad at him. Be mad at me.”

“I’m not mad at either of you. Or maybe I am. Maybe I’m going to be. I’m just confused—don’t you get that?” Pree covered her belly with her hands.

No one spoke then. Kate wished she knew the right thing to say, but she suspected it didn’t exist. Everything was wrong. Everything. Again.

They sailed another ten minutes until Brian judged they were at a good spot to stop. He turned the boat just off the wind and luffed the mainsail. He turned the tiller in the opposite direction, and the boat went still in the water. Behind them, the ocean was clear, calmer this far out.

It was time.

Kate retrieved the boxes from below. She felt a solid clunk inside, as if she were grinding gears, going from forward to reverse too suddenly. But she kept moving, up the stairs back onto the deck, her legs still working easily with the sway of the boat. It was quiet now without the flapping of the sail. Small waves splashed at the side of the boat, and two pieces of metal clanked overhead.

She didn’t know how to do this. She’d gone through Robin’s funeral without the man she loved beside her, and now he was here, and she wanted more than anything to hand him his son’s box.

But before she handed it to him, she needed to know one thing. Kate said, “Have you ever visited his grave?”

Nolan blinked.

Pree opened and then shut her mouth.

The ocean grew even more still, as if it were also waiting for his answer.

Saturday, May 17, 2014
11:15 a.m.

“M
e?” Nolan said. “You’re asking
me
that?”

The anger was back, sudden and pure, burning like gasoline through his veins. He’d never seen Kate at the grave, not once. He thought he might see her when he started taking all those walks with Fred, always stopping to talk to Robin, to touch the little Harry Potter figurine he’d found at the comics store down the street. But not one time had he seen her. “I’m there almost every day. Where are
you
?”

“Excuse me?”

“You live around the corner. It’s a five-minute walk through a nice neighborhood to get to the front gate.”

“That’s not what I asked,” she said. “I just didn’t know if you’d been there. If you knew where he was.”

“
Do
you go see him? That’s all I want to know.”

With her free hand, Kate shoved the mass of her windblown hair back. “None of your business.”

He was right—she didn’t go. And it was his business. He knew why she’d asked. In her typical Kate way, she’d assumed that, like her, he couldn’t go. She’d probably been planning to get mad at him about it, never dreaming that Nolan had never been able to stay away from the cemetery where his child was buried. Nolan knew that if Robin actually still existed anywhere, he’d be glad his father came. But the most important person to Robin had always been, without question or doubt, his mother.

And she didn’t visit him.

“That’s crazy,” he muttered. “Around the fucking corner.”

“Nolan—”

“Did you always argue like this?” asked Pree, shoving her hair back in the same way Kate just had.

“No, Pree—” started Kate. “We weren’t—”

“We didn’t argue. Almost never.” Nolan felt stricken.

“Whatever,” Pree said. “Mostly people are just who they are no matter what’s going on around them. That’s what I think anyway.” She lightly tapped the top of the rail as if to make sure it was strong enough. She was so like Kate when Kate had been that age—all ragged emotion and long limbs—that it twisted Nolan’s heart.

He closed his eyes for a moment and felt the sun heat the backs of his eyelids. When he opened them again, he looked through the bridge to Berkeley and Oakland, so far away now. The cities looked sturdy. Friendly. A myriad of red and brown roofs, tilting upward toward them. So many lives filled those spaces, all of them loving as hard as they had, and all of them would end up in the same place with hands full of ash. It was an awful thought, terrible enough for him to want to sail away forever and beautiful enough that he didn’t want to let go.

“We argued about everything except what mattered,” Nolan said. “Who needed to do laundry. Who left the cheese on the counter so it dried out. Whose turn it was to give him his medicine. Jesus. I thought it was my job. She thought it was hers. We fought about who got to sleep with him. And about what we would do when he was gone.”

“No.”

His bait had worked—the lie of his last sentence got to Kate, broke through that look on her face, the one that scared him.

“We never fought about what we would do when he was gone.” Kate lowered her voice. “We never talked about that. You know it.”

“We should have. Why didn’t we?”

Kate laced her fingers in front of her. Sun reflected off the water and dappled her curls. “Who tells you to do that? Who explains that to someone in the spot where we were?”

“Hospice did.”

“But I hated them.”

“You loved them.”

Kate gave a brittle half smile. “They were angels,” she said. “And I hated them more than I’ve ever hated anyone in my whole life.”

“They couldn’t have been any nicer. Any stronger. Any more loving. They told us what to do, Kate. They told us to start planning. We should have listened. We owed him that—we owed him more of us. We should have planned for this, for what happened to us afterward.”

“It’s like you’re blaming me.” The tendons in Kate’s neck were strained. “You can’t do that.”

“We gave up on him. I should have done more. You should have, too. So damn straight I’m blaming you.” Nolan felt dizzy and reached a hand to steady himself on the seat behind him.

And it was, finally, time for him to tell her the truth, fuck whether or not she believed him. “It was on purpose. I killed him on purpose.” Something she’d known, of course, but something he had never admitted out loud, not once, to her or anyone. “I never planned it, though. We were just going for a fucking drive. He was hurting and couldn’t sleep. But the drive didn’t help. I had to turn around before we even got up to Skyline. We pulled into the garage, and I put down the door, and then I looked in the rearview mirror, and I wished to hell my baby could just go to fucking sleep. So I didn’t turn the engine off.”

Kate made a strangled noise behind her hand.

“And for just a moment, I planned to kill myself, too. I thought I couldn’t live without him. But Jesus, just like thirty seconds later, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw that he was asleep, and I realized I couldn’t leave you like that. I could never have left you like that, Katie. The last thing I remember was panicking, fighting to undo my seat belt, but I couldn’t get my thumb to work right. It just happened so fast. I never knew it would happen so fast.” He gulped painful, salty air. “I would never have left you. Don’t you
know
that?” That had been the worst part—that she
hadn’t
believed in him. “You’re the one who left
me
.”