By the time Liz arrived I was halfway through the huevos and slowing down. The meal was super filling. I stood to give her a hug, then sat.
“Ooh, bloody Mary?” She raised her eyebrows. “Sounds great.” She pulled out the chair opposite me, her spiked silver hair catching the morning light. Her skin was the weathered brown of a sun lover, which made the blue of her eyes pop.
“I love your jacket.” I admired the vertical stripes of turquoise and purple on the woven cloth. “Did you make the cloth?”
“I did, and I sewed the jacket, too. Weaving is the best antidote to lawyering I can imagine. It’s very meditative to sit and combine threads into something beautiful.”
Carmen approached. “Hey, Liz. We gotta stop meeting like this.” She glanced at me. “We just had book club on Wednesday.”
“Can I get one of those? But go light on the vodka.” Liz pointed to my drink. “And the veggie breakfast burrito sounds great, with extra guac.”
“Coming right up.” Carmen headed back to the kitchen.
“Mamá makes the best guacamole you’ll ever taste,” Liz said.
“I’ll have to try it this week. So how have you been?”
“Busy, good. Got a new boyfriend who’s pretty awesome. He’s still surfing at sixty-six. My kind of man.”
“You probably haven’t stopped taking a board out, either,” I said.
“Of course not. It’s in my blood, Robbie. I’ve been riding the waves since I was a toddler, almost. You never surfed much, did you?”
“No. I got conked in the head once in middle school and decided staying alive was better than drowning. That’s when I started biking for real. And since Mom grew up in Indiana, she never got into surfing after she moved out here.”
“I remember trying to teach her. It definitely wasn’t her thing.” Liz laughed. “So tell me about the reunion.”
“It was fine, with only a little high-school-level drama.” I wrinkled my nose, thinking again of Katherine. “Anyway, the food was fabulous, very fresh and light, and I caught up with old friends. Alana Lieberman and I were tight in school, but we hadn’t seen each other in person since we both left town.”
“I remember her. Super smart.”
“Yep. She got a PhD and is doing pretty important cancer research already. And do you remember Jason Wong?”
“Skinny kid, brilliant?”
“Yeah. He’s a police officer now,” I said. “Works on cybercrime.”
“I’m not surprised he’s a cop. He was always a straight arrow.”
“I’m sure he’s good at the job.”
Carmen delivered Liz’s drink and breakfast. “Careful, the plate’s hot. Enjoy.”
Liz thanked her.
“I didn’t see Zoe at the reunion,” I said. “How is she? We haven’t really kept in touch.”
The smile slipped off Liz’s face. “She’s having kind of a rough patch. She’s not really in shape to hang out with a bunch of successful former classmates.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“At least she’s working, but it’s only as a dishwasher at a restaurant, the Green Artichoke.” She tapped her fork on her plate in a slow rhythm, not meeting my gaze.
I studied her face. “Do you want to talk about her?”
She inhaled and mustered a smile. “Not right now. Let’s have a fun breakfast, shall we?” She lifted her glass. “Here’s to Jeanine.”
I clinked my glass with hers. “To Mom.”
Chapter 5
I waited to bring up what Carmen had said about Mom’s death until Liz and I were walking on East Beach. A line of tall king palms separated the road from the sand, their skinny trunks topped with tufts of swooping fronds. A paved walking and biking path wound next to the trees, but we’d chosen to tread at water’s edge. It was nine o’clock by now, under a cloudless sky. Liz pulled a wide-brimmed cotton hat firmly onto her head.
“You might not know I had a brush with melanoma three years ago,” she said in a grim tone. “All my years in the sun have come back to bite me. Luckily, the doc caught it early, but I don’t mess around now.”
“I didn’t know. I’m glad you’re okay.” I tugged my blue Pans ’N Pancakes hat a little lower on my head. “I got this Mediterranean skin from my Italian father. I tan easily, but I still try to be careful in the sun.”
Liz nodded. “Jeanine told me about Roberto a little while before she died.”
I stared at her. “She did? She never said anything to me. I had to discover him on my own.”
“She said she was planning on telling you the whole story in person the next time she went east for a visit.”
I dragged my feet to a halt, pressing my eyes shut for a moment. “And she never got the chance.”
“I’m sorry, honey.” Liz threw an arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “Your mom told me she felt bad for keeping it from you.”
“I met my father last year when he and his wife came to visit. I have Mom’s build, but I look exactly like him, Liz.”
“I expect you do.”
I hugged myself, watching a half dozen pelicans beat strong wide wings in a steady horizontal line above the ocean. “Let’s keep walking.”
We strode in silence for a few minutes. The damp sand near the water crunched under my bare feet, and the breeze was fresh and salty. I breathed deeply, shaking out my sadness.
“Are you happy back there, Robbie?” Liz asked. “You look good, you know, like you’re thriving.”
“I am. My country store and restaurant are staying in the black. I like what I
