Page 92 of Find Me in California

“I’m barely keeping it together,” he whispers.

He’s scared, which makes Julia think that he thinks it’s too good to be true and he’ll lose it all again at the snap of a finger.

She looks up at him, her eyes bouncing between his, and shares the one thing she’s never told anyone. “I have two brothers.”

“What?”

“After she left me, my mom got married and had two sons. She doesn’t need me. She has a family. That’s why I haven’t contacted her. She gave me up and now she has them. But today—” Tears unleash. Her voice shakes. “Today—”

“What happened today, Jules?”

“Mama Rose said something that makes me think she hadn’t given me up, not in the end. She said my mom came back but Mama Rose sent her away. I’m afraid, so afraid to call her to ask if that’s true only for her to reject me again. And I’m sorry, Matt. I hate that it was so easy for you. That they accepted you so willingly.”

“It wasn’t easy. Calling my aunt was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I dialed four times before I let it ring, and even then I almost ended the call before she answered.”

“But she and Adam welcomed you, and now you’ve got this big family. You won’t be alone anymore, and I still am. Mama Rose is going to die and it’s going to be just me, and I’m scared.”

Matt is quiet for a moment, then whispers, “When my mom died I told the police and everyone else she had drowned. My friends, neighbors, Liza. They all believed it was an accident.”

“What really happened?”

“She killed herself in front of me.”

The admission sends a shock wave of despair through her. “Matt.” He was just a boy.

Sensing he wants to withdraw, she squeezes his hand and cries for him.

“That’s why Elizabeth blamed me for my mom’s death. We were on the skiff together. I gave my grandmother the impression my mom fell into the water. She couldn’t understand why I didn’t try to save her. No concern for me. Just her Aubrey.”

“Did you try to save her?”

Matt shakes his head. “She told me not to.”

Julia is speechless.

“She was mourning my dad. I shouldn’t have listened to her; I realize that now. But it’s a cold reality when you know you aren’t enough for your mom to stick around, and I was frozen. I don’t think I could have made myself jump into the water if I tried.”

Julia knows that feeling well. Her breath shudders when his remark brings forth her own memory of Lea driving away.

“She was sick, and she should have sought help. Still doesn’t change the fact she couldn’t love me enough to keep living. That I wasn’t enough for her.”

Julia looks at him, really looks at him, his firm-set jaw and intense eyes, and she sees something there that he hasn’t shown her before. The despair and self-loathing. It breaks her heart because that simple statement—that simple truth he believes about himself—sheds so much light onto why Matt is the way he is. He’s alone because he believes nobody would want him. He believes he can’t be enough for someone to stay.

His mother left him, and Liza neglected him.

So he pushes people away with anger and his gruffness.

In so many ways, they are the same.

Julia expects he’ll push her away next. She deserves his rebuke after the way she’s been acting toward him tonight. He’ll walk out the door and she’ll never see him again. His admission—that one thing he’s never told anyone except her—will take its toll. The vibration in his hand has spread. His entire body is quaking. His skin has turned ashen, and his eyes dart from her to the doorway behind her as if he’s set on an escape. Despite his habit of keeping to himself, now is not a time he should be alone. Neither of them should push the other away. Neither should bury their grief and regret and go about as if that’s the way of things.

So she does the opposite. She kisses him.

Let him work his anger and frustrations out on her. She’ll do the same.

Matt lurches back and grabs her upper arms, holding her away from him. Tension tautens his spine, keeps his legs braced. His eyes searchher face as if looking for a place to land, from her flushed cheeks to her parted mouth and down to her quivering chin and the outline of her breasts under her uniform tunic before lifting to her eyes again. Then a different kind of tension fills him.

“Jules.” Her name is an exhale of breath.

---