Page 52 of Wreck Me

“As your real estate attorney—” Monique began.

Ginny crossed her arms over her chest. “Who made you my real estate lawyer?”

Monique ignored the remark. “As your real estateattorney, I should see the place.”

Sadie tugged at the sleeve of Ginny’s bathrobe. “It’s perfect weather. Let’s go right now!”

“I can’t today,” Monique said, glancing at her watch, “but I could go Thursday.”

Sadie picked up her phone and checked her calendar. “No filming for us that day,” she said, elbowing Grant.

Grant gave Ginny a hopeful smile. “How about I make us a picnic?”

“That’s sweet of you, Grant,” Ginny said, “but we’ll have to do a rain check. I have a house to clean Thursday, and it’s going to take me all day.”

Monique pushed her chair back a few inches and crossed her long legs. “I’m in charge of your schedule and I just gave you the day off. So, unless there’s some importantpersonal reasonfor not going there that you haven’t told us, we should go. Once we’ve seen it, you can decide what to do with it, and I’ll help you.”

Great.Monique was clearly suspicious of her too. If she continued to refuse, they’d never stop haranguing her till she fessed up about how humiliatingly she’d been used by Nico! Why hadn’t she just stayed curled up in a ball on her bed?

Something wet and furry nuzzled her hand. Annie had come to check on her. She squeezed herself between Ginny and Sadie and rested her head on Ginny’s lap. The solid weight of it on her bare legs, the feel of Annie’s warm breath in and out in a steady rhythm, the softness of her velvety ears as Ginny gave them a scratch—calmed Ginny. She wasn’t a snail with no shell. Her shell was right here around this table – these people, these dogs—who loved her unconditionally.

Revisiting the Malibu lot might trigger even more unwelcome dreams about Nico, but facing the very thing that had hurt her in the past could also be good medicine, especially if she could replace those memories with new, healthier ones. A picnic with her family might be just the thing to snuff out those maddening dreams…

24

Despite the generous size of the backseat in Grant’s SUV, Ginny’s lap was the only available seat as far as Annie was concerned for the trip to Malibu the following Thursday. But at least that dog was zonked out. Mick and Jack insisted on leaning their block heads over the rear seat and panting warm dog breath down the back of her neck—the doggy version of “Are we there yet?”

Up front, Sadie and Grant worked through their repertoire of classic jazz songs, their gorgeous voices blending with the harmonies they practiced at home for fun.

“Everybody loves my baby…” Sadie sang out in her clear, cheerful soprano.

“But my baby don’t want nobody but me, that’s plain to see!”Grant crooned in reply as he made an especially tight, hairpin turn up the canyon road.

Monique would be arriving straight from work in her own car a bit later. Ginny had tried a few more times to keep this trip from happening, but Sadie’s excitement had eventually been contagious, even for Ginny. She would enjoy seeing the spot one more time as best she could, then let one of Monique’scolleagues sell it off. The picnic Grant prepared was a bonus – everything bagels with artichoke dip, mini asparagus quiches, and tangy mango slices over sweet, sticky coconut rice for dessert.

From the back of the car, Jack offered a hearty canine chorus of “A-roo roo roo,” and the song concluded with a group laugh.

Ginny had been keeping an eye out for the cul-de-sac and the gravel drive, and suddenly, there they were. “Turn left here.”

“This is unbelievable,” Sadie said as the SUV bumped and jiggled up the narrow, gradual incline. “But don’tyoulook Grant. You keep your eyes on the road!”

Sadie’s nervousness over the steep plunge to either side of them reminded Ginny of her own terror as Nico had headed up this impressive ridge. She’d been scared he was going to shove her out the door and over the cliff, but his actual plan had been much simpler than murder– get her far enough away from her house that his brother could turn it into topsoil.

They reached the spot where the road began to slant up sharply, the place where Ginny had screamed and gotten out of the car to walk the rest the way. Ginny had an urge to walk it alone again, one more time. “Grant, can you let me out right here? I’d like to head up there by myself first, if that’s okay.”

She wasn't sure how well she would cope with seeing the exact spot of earth where Nico had carried her after she nearly toppled to her death, the same spot where she asked for and received a kiss that still returned nightly to her dreams, leaving her lips aching and arms empty when she woke. Her family still didn’t know about any of this, and she couldn’t risk her initial reactions betraying the truth to them. She and Sadie read each other almost as if they were the same person, but today was about making new memories, not answering Sadie’s one million questions about old, humiliating ones…

“Of course,” Grant said, stopping the car.

“Just give me a few minutes, and then you guys come too?” Ginny said, getting out.

“Sure. We’ll grab the dogs and the picnic things and head up in a bit,” Sadie said. There was a curious glint in her little sister’s glass blue eyes, but Ginny chalked it up to the joyful hour she’d just spent singing.

The temperature was at least ten degrees warmer than on her previous visit. The uphill walk dampened her t-shirt, and she wished she’d grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler. The still air wasn’t as enticing for the gulls either, and she missed their overhead cries and swoops. Without wind, the local wildflowers gave up less of their scent, hoarding it for themselves and the visiting bees.

You can never go back, she thought to herself. Nothing was ever the same twice.

She was so busy thinking about the temporariness of things, of everything throughout time, really, that when the top of someone’s head became just visible over the crest of the hill, she assumed her mind played tricks on her. Was the longing for him in her ridiculous subconscious so intense that it had managed to manifest a Nico-shaped mirage, curly brown hair and all?

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