My mother looked the same as she always did.
Long brown hair streaked with blond. Porcelain-pale skin. Hazel eyes with fine wrinkles at the corners. A small, lithe frame. She looked a good ten years younger than her actual age of fifty. Somehow, even after thirty years of bludgeoning her system with vodka and wine, the alcohol hadn’t aged her the way it did most drunks.
In a bar or behind bars, Carolina Braddock was beautiful.
I stood outside the cell, hands shoved in my pockets. “Nice place you got here.”
She was sitting on the cot and turned in my direction. She looked fatigued, not drunk-a special talent of hers that sometimes helped her mask her inebriation.
A surprised smile formed on her face. “Noah. How are you?”
“Good. I love cruising the jail, looking for old friends and family members.”
She laughed softly. “Well, you’re lucky I’m here, then.”
“So lucky.”
She stood up from the cot. She wore a sleeveless yellow blouse and navy walking shorts. She ran her hands down the shorts, smoothing out the wrinkles in the cotton fabric. Another small trick she had perfected over the years. It allowed her to collect herself and attempt to present a sober image before she spoke.
She looked at me. “You look well.”
She had to be drunk if she thought I looked well.
“Thanks,” I said. “So do you.” I gestured at the cell. “Save for the bars, of course.”
She nodded. “Not my best feature.”
“But a familiar one.”
She hesitated for a moment, then nodded again. “Unfortunately, that’s true.” She tilted her head to the side. “And your tongue is as sharp as ever.”
Perhaps her most infuriating talent was to turn my own sarcasm against me. It never seemed to sting her the way I wanted it to and I always felt small when she deflected it.
She walked over to the bars, her sandals clapping against the concrete floor. She rested her hands on the metal door.
“How did you know I was here?” she asked.
“A friend of mine works here,” I told her. “She thought she was doing me a favor.”
“She?”
She knew Liz from years ago, but I didn’t feel like giving her any details.
I shook my head. “None of your business.”
She shrugged. “Just checking.”
We stood there awkwardly for a few moments, each of us trying to avoid looking at the other. A four-year gap in a family relationship is hard to erase in just a couple of minutes, particularly when the parties weren’t sure about wanting the chasm to disappear.
Carolina was the first to break the ice. “Where did you get the bruises on your face?” she asked as she studied me with a little more focus.
“Someone’s fists.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “Why not?”
My sarcasm may not have fazed her, but I knew that indifference could sometimes get to her.
She pulled her hands from the bars and folded her arms across her chest. “Are you here to tell me my fate?”
I leaned back against the wall. “They’re dropping the charges.”
She slid her eyes away from me. “The stop was ridiculous anyway. I never moved out of my lane.”
“You blew.21. You were lit. So the stop was good. Carolina.”
My sarcasm always failed. My indifference was a long shot. But I knew using her first name would draw a little blood because it reminded her that I didn’t think of her as a parent.
“You’re my ride home, then?” she said, colder than before.
“Have I ever been anything else?”
“You know better.”
“No, actually, I don’t,” I said. “My most cherished memories are propping you up in the passenger seat after carrying you out of some dive.”
“Stop it.”
“And then lugging you inside the house, only to have you wake up the next day pretending it all never happened.”
“Noah.”
I smiled. “I mean, honestly. That accounts for a good part of the early nineties, right?”
Her eyes locked on me for a moment, the faint lines at the corners now defined with tension. Her lips were pursed tightly together, contemplating her response. She knew I was right, yet she’d never admit it. She’d always lived in the moment, preferring to ignore the past, no matter what the consequences or how it had affected me.
She dropped her arms from her chest. “I didn’t ask you to come here, Noah. If you don’t want to deal with me, then just leave,” she said, as if it didn’t matter to her. “I’ll find my own way.”
I knew that was true. As many times as I’d rescued her from a bar or a parking lot, there had been just as many nights when she had managed to get herself home. I’d lie in bed, knowing that sometime in the middle of the night at the oddest hour, a car door would slam outside and the front door would creak open, signaling that she was home and I could look forward to the same scenario the next night. If I left now, she’d figure out some way to get out and get back to her life.
An officer approached from down the hall. He looked at me, uninterested. “She going with you?” he said.
I looked at Carolina, my mother. So much of me wanted to say no, just to say it in front of her face and see if there was any satisfaction in walking away from her. See if it made up for all the anger, guilt, and shame I’d felt for so many years.
But a small part of me simply saw my mother and felt sorry for her once again.
“Yeah,” I told the guard. “She’s going with me.”
Nineteen
For two people with big mouths, my mother and I were having an easy time keeping them shut.
Carolina and I rode up I-5 from downtown without speaking, the only noise being Ben Harper’s whispering from the speakers of the Jeep. The wedge of silence sat between us like an uninvited passenger.
I took the Sea World Drive exit, went east, then made a left on Morena, heading back into a neighborhood that I always did my best to avoid.
Bay Park is a small community cut into the hills that face west over Mission Bay and out to the Pacific Ocean. The majority of the homes were built in the 1950s, but the views and sprawling decks kept their values in the half-million-dollar range.
Sandwiched between the bottom of the hills and the highway was a small cluster of bungalows. Small lots, drab paint, and no views made it an area that the other residents in Bay Park tried not to claim.
I’d grown up in the bungalows and I didn’t want to claim them, either.
My mother lived in the same house two blocks off of Morena that she’d raised me in. The blue paint was still faded, the small lawn was still overgrown, and the garage door that always stuck was still half a foot away from closing.
And I still hated it.
I eased the Jeep next to the curb and shut off the engine.
My mother turned to me. “You’re living in Mission Beach, right?”
“Yep.”
