“And then, you know, go. Fly to Portugal and do something for you. For once. Just for a little while,” Kit said.
It was the “little while” that got her. She could go for a little while. There would be no harm in a little while.
“What about the restaurant?” Nina asked. “Who is going to make sure everything runs—”
“We’ll sell the restaurant,” Kit said. “I’m sorry but we need to sell it and take the money. Mom hated that place. She never wanted it for us. Let Ramon take it over—he actually cares about it. We should let it go. We don’t have to live life the exact same way Mom did or Grandma did. It’s ours to do with what we want and I say you go to Portugal and let us sell the damn thing, please.”
Nina looked at Hud. Hud looked at Jay. “Yeah,” Jay said. “Kit’s right. Mom wouldn’t want you to stay here so you could run the restaurant. Mom would have hated that.”
That was true, wasn’t it? And yet here Nina was, holding on to it simply because her mother had carried it before her.
Nina suddenly had a picture in her head. It was as if June had given her a box—as if every parent gives their children a box—full of the things they carried.
June had given her children this box packed to the brim with her own experiences, her own treasures and heartbreaks. Her own guilts and pleasures, triumphs and losses, values and biases, duties and sorrows.
And Nina had been carrying around this box her whole life, feeling the full weight of it.
But it was not, Nina saw just then, her job to carry the full box. Her job was to sort through the box. To decide what to keep, and to put the rest down. She had to choose what, of the things she inherited from the people who came before her, she wanted to bring forward. And what, of the past, she wanted to leave behind.
And so, she put down the restaurant. Just as her mother would have wanted her to. And when she let it go, she let it go for June, too.
“Yeah,” Nina said. “You’re right. We don’t need to keep the restaurant.”
And as quickly as she understood all of this, she also understood that eventually, she would have to open the box her father had given her, too, the one she had all but thrown away.
One day, when the world made a bit more sense to her, she would have to go through that box and try to see if there was anything inside worth saving. Maybe there wasn’t much. But maybe there was more than she thought.
Hud smiled at Nina. “Go, Nina, seriously. Go.”
Was there even a good excuse to say no? Nina was having a hard time thinking of a single reason to stay except the people standing in front of her.
“I can be the Nina now,” Jay said. “Let me. Know that no matter where you are, no matter what happens, you and these guys will always be safe because of me.”
“And me,” Hud said.
“And me,” Kit said. “And Casey,” she added as she put her arm around Casey’s shoulders.
And so, Nina, breathless and stunned at the joy daring to bloom within her, pulled her siblings to her, and decided to go. Just for a little while.
7:00 A.M.
Mick Riva couldn’t find his Jaguar. There were still a few cars left in the side yard but none of them were his, and none of them had keys. And he didn’t want to bother his kids.
So, as he stood at the entrance to his daughter’s driveway, where the gravel met the road, he smoked his last cigarette, and then decided to walk to PCH, where he would hitch a ride.
Mick Riva, hitching a ride. What a riot. He’d make someone’s day.
He took the final drag of the cigarette, blew out the smoke, and threw the butt in the air. It cascaded over the gravel drive and landed, softly, in the bushes.
The dry, arid desert bushes of Malibu. On a morning plagued by Santa Ana winds. In a land of scrub brush. In a town under constant threat of combustion. In an area of the country where a tiny spark could destroy acres. In a region that yearns to burn.
And so, with the very best of intentions, Mick Riva walked away, having no idea he had just set fire to 28150 Cliffside Drive.
Before the smoke had become visible, Hud and Jay hugged Nina and told her they loved her and would see her soon. And then Jay drove Hud to the hospital.
As they sat in the waiting room, Jay told Hud the very thing he had been afraid to tell anyone.
“I have cardiomyopathy,” he said and then explained what it meant: that he would have to stop surfing.
“But you’re going to be OK?” Hud asked. His eyes were starting to water and Jay couldn’t quite stand to see his brother cry at that moment.
“Yeah,” Jay said, nodding. “I’ll be OK. I’m just gonna find something else to do with my life, I guess.”
Hud shook his head. “I mean, no worries there. You’re good at almost everything you do.”
Jay smiled and breathed in deeply. “But, I …” he said, having a hard time finding the words. “I’ve just been … worried. About letting you down.”
“Me?”
“We’re a team.”
Hud smiled and then came clean himself. “I actually think pretty soon I won’t be able to travel as much.”
“What do you mean?”
“I … I don’t know the best way to tell you this. And I swear, I just learned it tonight but …”
Jay knew. He knew it a half second before
