Page 72 of Find Me in California

He owes his buddy a call and an apology.

Matt locates his phone between the couch cushions. The device is dead. He plugs in the charger and takes a quick shower. When he’s done, the phone has enough juice to power on. It steadily chimes with text and missed-call notifications, dozens from Dave, Lenore, and Julia. Dread is a heavy stone in his stomach.

On instinct, he calls the most recent number on his phone. Julia’s. She answers after the first ring. “Matt? Thank God. We’ve been trying to reach you all morning.”

Her tone sets off alarms. He suddenly feels excessively anxious, like he’s late for a flight and stuck in traffic.

His tone is cautious. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Liza. She’s in the hospital. How soon can you get here? She doesn’t have much time.”

CHAPTER 35

MATT

Matt stares at the slight form in the hospital bed. Elizabeth is a fraction of the size of the intimidating woman he remembers. A monitor tracks her vitals. A ventilator keeps her alive. She hasn’t woken since her stroke, and her nurse told him that she’ll go quickly when she’s taken off the machine, as her advance health care directive dictates. He’s been left alone so he can say goodbye.

How does he say goodbye to the person who loathed him?

After his call with Julia, he ignored everything else—voicemails, texts, the state of the motel room and his mind—and drove to the nearest airport. Shock propelled him onto the first flight to Burbank, but once he was settled on the plane, he argued with himself about why he needed to go. There wasn’t anything he could do for her. He doubted she would have wanted him there.

Standing over her, he remembers how cold she was toward him when he couldn’t talk about his mom, and in a snap, he’s that orphaned boy again who only wanted to be told everything would be all right. Who only wanted to feel safe and loved. Instead, Elizabeth not only left him to contend with the trauma of losing his mother on his own but also reinforced his belief that he was to blame.

Intense feelings of regret and failure that he didn’t do more leave him shaken. He holds up his hand and watches it tremble. He knew being in his grandmother’s presence would trigger his PTSD.

He forces out a long stream of air and makes a fist. The tremors stop. He retreats one step, then another, intent on leaving. Why did he come? What’s he supposed to do? What can he say? Does it even matter? She’s in a coma. She can’t hear him. She doesn’t know he’s here. And nothing he says will change the past or what he believes of himself.

“It’ll matter to you,” comes a gentle voice behind him.

He turns to find a woman who just reaches his shoulders looking up at him with a mix of curiosity and concern. Her brown hair is a knotted mass atop her head. Freckles sprinkle her nose like a dusting of cinnamon. And her eyes—they’re a startling shade of green bordering on blue that study him with a degree of familiarity. She’s wearing a navy-blue smock of sorts with white pants and Crocs, and if he hadn’t recognized her voice, he would have mistaken her for one of Elizabeth’s nurses.

“It’s you.”

“Hello, Matt.” Julia’s smile is kind, and all at once, he’s relieved, embarrassed, and furious. Relieved she’s here. Embarrassed by what he revealed of himself to her over the past few days. Furious because he let Elizabeth get under his skin and didn’t arrive in time for her to share with him what she had to say about his mom. Now he’ll never know, and he’ll spend the rest of his life convinced it was something important.

He clears his throat behind a sweating palm. “I, uh ... I didn’t realize I said that out loud.” The part about not knowing what to say and whether it mattered. He glances between her and his grandmother.

“I’ll give you some privacy.” Julia turns toward the hallway, and his reflex is to follow her out. He feels useless. There isn’t anything he can do.

Julia stops in the doorway, her expression warm and open with understanding. “It’s okay to just sit with her if you don’t know what tosay. But if there’s anything you’ve wanted to get off your chest”—she tilts her head toward Elizabeth—“now’s the time.”

He blinks at the empty doorway, Julia’s advice winding through him until it settles with meaning. He doesn’t need to stay for his grandmother. He needs to stay for himself.

He mechanically turns back to Elizabeth and moves to her side. His gaze slides from her matted hair down her arm and back to the mask cupping her mouth and nose. Her eyes are unmoving under the tissue-thin eyelids.

Magnolia’s advice—or maybe it was Julia’s—comes back to him.Time doesn’t heal relationships, but conversation does.

Even if it’s one sided?

He dares to touch the back of her flaccid hand and wonders if she ever felt anything for him. Thinking back on those first weeks that he lived with her, it occurs to him that she must have. That she, like him, perhaps felt too much in the aftermath of his mom’s death. And that also like him, she didn’t know how to process the loss. She’d already tragically lost so much, and his very presence was a reminder that she’d never see her daughter again. She’d never have the chance to resolve whatever it was that had his mom fleeing California with his dad. So she pushed him away, thereby neglecting him.

He vividly recalls entering her library to retrieve a book only for her to rise from the chair where she’d been reading and leave the room without acknowledging him. Numerous times she had Adam remove him from the patio before she went for a swim. It happened time and again with almost every room in the house until Matt looked for reasons not to go home after school. He remembers the despair and guilt he felt on a daily basis. No wonder he left on his eighteenth birthday and never looked back.

She shouldn’t have ignored his suffering. Though she probably couldn’t see his through her own. It still doesn’t excuse how she treated him or make him inclined to forgive her.

Rage simmers, and contempt pushes the words from his mouth. “I was just a kid,” he begins. She doesn’t react, and he doesn’t know if his words will register. But he pulls up a chair and tells her what he saw and felt—still feels—about his dad, his mom, and her. He shares his fears and shame and regrets. He gets everything off his chest short of forgiving her. He’s not ready to. He doesn’t know if he ever will be.

When he finishes, he touches his grandmother’s hand one last time. Then he leaves the room.

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