When the honking starts, I’m already halfway out my apartment door, since my uncle texted me only five minutes ago to tell me where he was at. And before that he messaged me when his plane from Houston landed this morning, and then again when he got the keys to his rental car, and once more half an hour ago when he was “stuck in goddamn traffic on the 405.” I guess he’s lived away from Southern California too long if that came as a surprise to him.
It’s a hot and humid July morning, and when I step out through the wooden side gate, I’m blinded by the glaring sunlight. While putting on my shades, my progress down the driveway falters as I notice the car sitting by the curb: a fiery-red Corvette convertible with the top down.
Huh. Is that not Uncle Warren after all?
But then I spot his black-haired head on the driver’s side, and he raises his hand in greeting before jumping out of the car and walking around it with a grin on his face.
We say hello and hug—a quick but solid squeeze—and my uncle claps me on the back before taking a step back, his lingering smile bringing out the faint crow’s feet on his darkly tanned face and showing off his almost perfect row of teeth.
You think your grandparents could afford braces? Get the fuck outta here, he told me once when I pointed out that his slightly protruding front tooth wouldn’t have been a big fix. Warren Miller is not known for mincing words.
“Nice ride,” I comment, opening the passenger-side door while my uncle strides back around the hood.
“Yeah, you know me,” he says as he slides into the driver’s seat. “Go big, or go home.”
Uh, no, actually, I’m pretty sure the last time he visited he drove a compact car. Guess he wasn’t in the mood for a boring vehicle today?
And I get why. It’s going to be a bad day. There’s no way around that. So I can’t fault him for splurging like this, because the small things you can do to make your day a little less shitty? They’re all important.
The smooth and slippery leather seat creaks as I sink down into it, and I try to relish the sensation of sitting in a badass car. But I find that today is no different than every day lately, where I can’t seem to find joy in anything.
“Well, I’m sure it beats the hell out of what you usually drive,” I say to my uncle while buckling myself in, remembering the beat-up SUV that we bounced and jostled around in on bumpy dirt roads the summer I spent with him in Africa.
“Beats the hell out of just about everything.” With a smirk, he picks up his sunglasses from the cup holder between us and pops them on. In his light khaki short-sleeve and slightly darker khaki pants, he looks like he’s going on safari rather than cruising on California freeways in his ’Vette.
But this is how he always looks, so anything else would be weird. My mom used to ask if it was really necessary for her brother-in-law to dress like Indiana Jones all the time. She didn’t appreciate it when I pointed out that he probably doesn’t need to or want to own a large and varied wardrobe, not with his job and how often he has to pack up his stuff and move around.
“Ready for lunch?” my uncle asks, shifting the car into gear.
“Yup.” It’s almost one o’clock, and I’ve done nothing so far today except hit the gym this morning and then wait for him to show up. Unless you count spending a couple of hours browsing the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s website for info on death row inmates and execution procedures.
I didn’t take a vacation day or swap shifts or anything.
No, it’s just a happy coincidence that I was scheduled off work on the day my father’s going to die.
“Where do you want to go?” I say.
“You have to ask?” he replies, scrunching up his face, pretending to be offended.
Right. I manage to force a small smile as I give him directions to the closest In-N-Out, and he peels the car away from the curb.
My uncle has a true California native’s love of the state’s favorite burger chain, and if he hadn’t already agreed to go to lunch with me, he probably would’ve headed straight there from the airport and picked me up afterwards.
We mostly talk about work on the way, his and mine. As always, I smell the fast-food restaurant before I see it, a mix of grilled beef and onions and deep-fried potatoes and something else, a savory aroma that can only be described as the smell of In-N-Out.
The parking lot is packed, the drive-thru line coiling around the building and almost all the way to the street. Uncle Warren pulls around back and turns into a spot farther away from the entrance than he needs to, probably because he’s driving a rented Corvette.
Inside, the restaurant is crowded, but the line isn’t nearly as long as the drive-thru made it seem, and it doesn’t take long before it’s our turn to order. When I pull out my wallet to pay, my uncle shakes his head and quickly hands the cashier some bills that look flat and crisp and fresh from the ATM.
“I’ll let you pay for dinner later,” he says as the cashier hands him back his receipt and change along with our fountain drink cups. “You’re probably making more than me now, anyway, Mr. Big-Shot Doctor.”
“Don’t get to keep much of it,” I grumble back at him, accepting my cup as he offers it to me.
“Life’s a bitch,” he says dryly as we go to fill up our drinks, mine with water and Uncle Warren’s with pink lemonade from the juice dispenser.
His statement about making less money than me is probably not true. And even if his salary is about the same as mine, he has close to zero expenses, since the organization basically provides everything he needs, like paying for his housing and giving him a per diem and a vehicle and medical coverage.
At least I hope it’s not true—and I hope he’s managing to save enough that he can afford to retire at some point and live comfortably. He’s worked his ass off for Relief International for almost all of his adult life, and he deserves a break. Though it’s possible he won’t want to stop until old age forces him to. That’s just how he rolls.
I take a seat in the only empty booth with its white-and-red seats, and soon my uncle slides in across from me, setting two little cups of ketchup on the table.
I haven’t been to In-N-Out since I broke things off with Mia, I realize. It reminds me of her, makes me remember how at least once a month she’d text me late, as I was about to leave work, saying she was hungry and asking if I wanted to go eat.
And we usually ended up here. Eating the food that somehow always tasted better late at night while sitting across from her. Talking and laughing. Rolling our eyes at the immature antics of the groups of teenagers who always came in for milkshakes.
My throat closes up. Fiddling with my straw wrapper, I decide I might as well get to the topic we’ve been carefully avoiding so far. “How was Texas?”
“Hot and full of Texans.” Uncle Warren leans back and spreads his arms, draping them both on the backrest.
I let out a snort-chuckle. And then, because I’m not ready to talk about my dad yet—and, judging by his evasive answer just now, neither is my uncle—I ask, “Did you see Mom there?”
“Nope. Was I supposed to?”
I shrug. “She called a couple of weeks ago and said she’d talked to you.”
“Uh-huh,” he says, looking unimpressed. “She called and asked for money so she could go see your dad.”
I freeze and shoot him a hard stare. Motherfu— “You sent her money?”
“Yeah, why?” His eyebrows draw together in confusion, and then his expression clears, comprehension lighting his eyes. “She asked you, too.”
It’s a statement, not a question. He knows my mom well enough that I’m surprised it took him that long to figure it out.
Shaking my head in disgust as I slouch down and shove my hands into my shorts pockets, I tell him, “I told her she could have it if she agreed to never call me again.”
“Ha!” The burst of laughter that escapes my uncle is like a sonic boom, loud enough to turn heads at neighboring tables. “How did that go over?”
“About as well as you’d expect,” I say glumly.
I’m actually not proud of how I handled that conversation. Yeah, my mom has had it coming for a long damn time, but I feel like I ended up stooping to her level. Aside from the money-begging part, her phone calls are so rare that they hardly qualify as a nuisance. Letting her reduce me to nastiness and pettiness gives her too much control over me. I need to do a better job of not allowing her to piss me off, because succumbing to those emotions hurts me more than it does her.
“Oh, I think that’s us,” Uncle Warren says when the girl behind the counter calls out the number forty-two, and he glances at the receipt to confirm. “Yup.”
Before I manage to move a muscle, he’s already jumped out of the booth to go grab the food, and I settle back to wait. He soon returns with the red basket containing two sets of Double-Doubles and fries, and I’m smart enough to shut up and let him enjoy his first bite in peace. Immediately, he closes his eyes and lets out a small grunt of appreciation. “Goddamn,” he growls. “I’ve been dreaming about this.”
I bite into my own burger, and the flavors hit my tongue all at once—the toasted bun, the meat, the cheese, the crispy lettuce and tomato, and the tang of the secret sauce.
And it tastes like crap. Just like all food has lately. I’m rarely actually hungry anymore and usually feel like I have to force myself to eat.
While slowly and unenthusiastically dipping a French fry in my ketchup cup, I ask, “Do you think she’ll actually fly down there?”
“Who knows? She might be there as we speak.” My uncle’s words are muffled by his mouth half full of food, and when he finishes chewing, a look of disgust passes over his face. “Can’t imagine what that conversation would look like.”
Uh, yeah. My parents were never exactly a match made in heaven.
After eating in silence for a minute, I decide I need to just ask it straight out. Not for my own sake. For Uncle Warren’s. Because he still cares. So I draw in a deep breath and say, “How was he?”
Holding the wrapper with his half-eaten hamburger up to his mouth, my uncle meets my gaze. He grows somber, the corners of his mouth turning down. Heaving a sigh, he sets down the burger and brings up a napkin to wipe his mouth before answering.
“His mind’s gone, Jay.” A faraway look steals over his face, and with a shake of his head, he explains, “It’s partially the drugs. You don’t do that to your body for as many years as he did without causing damage. But he’s been in solitary for twelve years, sitting in that tiny cell twenty-three hours a day, and when they do let him out of there, he’s still alone. He’s had no one to talk to except the voices in his head.”
Yeah. Boohoo.
“Did he recognize you?” I ask, realizing I’m feeling a remote kind of curiosity.
“Intermittently. It was like he was there one minute, and the next he was gone. He’d just, you know, go off on one of his rants about the government and how they know he’s ‘the one’ and are out to stop him, but they can’t because he knows all the tricks.”
I shake my head and briefly close my eyes. Tough luck, Dad. Pretty sure the government already got you.
My uncle picks up his burger again and chomps down while I take a sip of my water, the liquid leaving an icy trail as it washes down my throat. “Does he understand what’s about to happen to him?”
Uncle Warren nods with his mouth closed while he chews. As soon as he can, he replies, “Beatty, his attorney, was there when I got there, and we talked for a while. He said there were some serious concerns about Mendes’ testimony and that they could probably have kept the appeals going for a good long while. But last year, in one of his lucid moments, your dad told him to stop.”
Looking down while he dunks three fries at once in his ketchup, he adds, “He wants it to be over.”
Well, shit. I wait for my usual gut reaction of cynicism and disgust, but this time it doesn’t happen. Because my dad losing the will to fight is just fucking sad. Not in an oh-poor-him kind of way. More like, if he had any shred of humanity or guts or dignity, he would’ve owned up to what he did a long time ago. He wouldn’t have just sat there rotting in that prison cell until he couldn’t take it anymore.
Jesus.
I give up and toss my burger down into the basket, leaving half of it unfinished.
Across from me, my uncle is done with his and is crumpling up the wrapper. His voice cautious, he says, “He asked about you.”
My whole body stiffens. “Don’t,” I plead mildly, shaking my head.
“I’m not going to give you any shit, Jay. You know me better than that.” Uncle Warren drops back against the backrest again, giving me an unflinching look. “He understands why you want nothing to do with him. But when I talked about you, how you were doing, that’s when he looked and sounded the sanest. The most…there.”
Clenching my jaw, I return his stare. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.
My uncle is visibly upset, though—upset and agitated. Which is understandable. So I soften my voice and say, “Are you okay?”
“Yup. It is what it is. We’ve had a long time to prepare for today.” He straightens and starts stuffing wrappers and napkins into our basket. “Kind of doesn’t feel like it, though. Stuff just creeps up on you, you know?”
I bob my head in agreement.
And then we get up to go, throwing away our trash before we push our way out the doors.
My watch face shows two thirty. Less than four hours until six p.m.
Back in the car, I ask my uncle what he wants to do next, and without hesitating he says, “The beach.”
With me giving him directions, we take surface streets west toward Huntington Beach. While he leisurely steers the Corvette down the road from one red light to another, passing residential neighborhoods and strip malls and parks and schools, we discuss the practicalities of what happens after tonight. He tells me he’s flying back to Texas tomorrow afternoon and will be claiming my dad’s body and making burial arrangements.
Not once can I detect any hint that he thinks I should be involved, that I’m somehow shirking a responsibility by refusing to step up and help. Still, I’m having some pangs of guilt—for my uncle’s sake, anyway.
I’m pretty sure that if it weren’t for me, Uncle Warren would be in Texas today, to witness. He’d feel obliged to put himself through that, but instead he’s here with me. The significance of that is not lost on me. In fact, that knowledge is churning in my gut, and my chest is tight with the love I have for this man. The day I get to go work with him can’t come soon enough.
After arriving at our destination, we leave the car in the parking lot by the pier. Since neither of us came prepared to jump in the water, my uncle suggests we rent bicycles and ride the trail along the beach. Which is fine with me, and to the sound of the crashing surf and the screeching of seagulls and squealing children on the busy beach, we stroll the short distance down the boardwalk from the pier to the small rental shop, where we pick up a couple of beach cruisers.
“So your dad asked if you have a girl,” Uncle Warren says without warning right after we start pedaling down the paved path with the golden sand and the ocean on our left side and cars rolling down the Pacific Coast Highway on our right. “I didn’t know the answer to that.”
My stomach cramps, and I tighten my grip on my handlebars.
I did have a girl. But I wasn’t right for her. And I knew that.
“I don’t,” I answer, struggling to sound casual, unemotional.
My uncle gives me a sideways glance. “Why the hell not?”
Yeah. Going into the truth of that is way too complicated, so instead I try to blow him off with, “Haven’t found one?”
“Give me a fucking break,” he scoffs, and apparently his irritation makes him pedal faster, because he shoots ahead of me.
I pump my legs to catch up. Okay, so maybe I’ll try something a little closer to the truth. “Guess I just don’t have the time.”
He throws me another quick look while we coast down a slight incline. “Don’t make work your whole life, Jay. Take it from someone who knows.”
Surprised, I clamp my mouth shut, and we both stay silent for a while as our beach cruisers carry us smoothly down the beachside path. The sun has crested and begun its slow descent toward the horizon, and the smell of saltwater and seaweed blends with the exhaust fumes from the highway.
This is the first time I’ve heard Uncle Warren voice anything resembling dissatisfaction with the choices he’s made. I guess I’ve just assumed he was content with dedicating his life to his job, and that made complete sense to me, because it’s tough and all-consuming work that’s extremely important and, according to my uncle, highly rewarding.
But now he’s suggesting that maybe it’s not worth it? That news is like a punch in the nose, and I’m feeling as dazed as if he’d done just that.
Something compels me to offer up another dose of honesty. “Okay, so there was a girl, but it didn’t work out.”
Uncle Warren widens his eyes at me. “Again: why the hell not?”
I take a second to mull over my answer. “A serious relationship doesn’t really fit in my plans right now.”
“And if you decided to stay here instead?” His head swivels back and forth as he alternates watching the path and watching me. “Would she fit then?”
Would she?
That’d depend on Mia, I suppose. Because the truth is, I have no clue how she really feels about me. I only know what she told me, which can simply be summarized as: I was her best friend, she was attracted to me, the sex was great, but she didn’t want a boyfriend.
Which I’m convinced is mainly because she still has feelings for Fuckface.
If that’s all there is to her feelings for me, then she’s not worth even considering changing my plans for the future over. I’ve been telling myself that for weeks now, but for some reason, I’m not being convincing.
Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed her away. Maybe I should’ve fought harder to find a way to keep her. It’s a struggle to swallow past the sudden tightness in my throat.
Realizing my uncle is arching his eyebrows at me, still waiting for a response, I give myself a mental shake. And reluctantly admit, “Possibly.”
“Then you make it work regardless.”
Well, that’s pretty easy for him to say, isn’t it? “I’m not going to ask her to wait for me. That’s not fair, to either of us.”
“Uh-huh,” Uncle Warren fires back in a tone like that was exactly what he expected me to say. “I asked a girl to wait. She said she would. But she didn’t.”
He’s kind of proving my point, isn’t he? I have enough sense not to say that aloud, instead asking, “So if you could do it again, what would you do?”
“I’d marry her and take her with me,” he answers right away, apparently not needing to even think about it.
Take her with me.
Something shifts inside me. It’s as if my perspective does a one-eighty and goes from fuzzy to focused.
Mia could go with me. She’s a nurse. And especially if she got her midwife certification, Relief International would be thrilled to have her. Midwives are always needed in the areas where they operate.
Well, hell.
“Tell you what else I would’ve done differently,” my uncle suddenly adds, watching the path ahead instead of me, “after all that shit went down and especially when you got into all that trouble…I should’ve stayed.”
What? No. I frown at him, stunned and confused by his words. Sure, it would’ve been nice if he’d stayed after he came home to help straighten me out. Actually, it would’ve been great to have him around, especially if he’d convinced my mom to let me live with him, which probably wouldn’t have taken much effort.
But still. He shouldn’t have to feel bad about that.
“I wasn’t your responsibility,” I point out.
“Yeah, you were,” he insists. “Who else was there? Sure as hell not your mom.”
Okay. True. But still…“I think I turned out okay. And I have you to thank for that. You did enough to make a huge difference.”
“Well.” My uncle squints out at the water, which sparkles like diamonds in the sunlight. “I’m just saying. Sucks to live with regret. Don’t be that guy.”
Yeah. Message received.
“Got it,” I grind out, because I do get it. I’m just not sure what to do about it.
Is it too late? Does she want me back? Am I right for her?
“Beat you to that guard tower up there,” Uncle Warren says, pointing ahead, and then I have to scramble to even keep up as he takes off, pedaling at full speed.
My heart starts hammering, my adrenaline surging, and my legs are pumping so fast that my muscles scream in protest, because there’s just no way I’m losing a bike race to a guy almost twice my age.
Yeah, it definitely would’ve been nice to have him around.
It’s about five thirty when we return the bikes to the rental shop, and my uncle isn’t ready to leave yet, so I follow him as he strolls down to the beach. We take off our shoes and walk barefoot in the warm and grainy sand, walking in silence. I know what time it is, he knows what time it is, and we have nothing to say right now.
We reach an empty turquoise lifeguard tower, and my uncle starts climbing the ladder. He’s definitely not supposed to do that, but so the hell what? Without hesitation, I climb up after him. There’s no one nearby except an older couple out for a stroll down by the water; all the surfers and swimmers still around are a way down the beach, closer to the pier.
We sit down in the opening of the railing that faces the ocean, our feet dangling over the edge. The sun still burns bright in our faces while we sit there watching the vast and beautiful Pacific from behind our sunglasses. And it hits me with a twinge that I’m going to miss this. I’ve lived here all my life, and I doubt any other place will ever feel like home.
I look at my watch. It’s almost six p.m. While I keep my eyes fixed on it, the second hand ticks and ticks, steadily approaching the hour. When it gets there, I hold my breath, expecting…what? I have no idea.
Nothing changes. My uncle and I still sit there in silence, watching the surf as it washes onto the beach in a rush of white foam before retreating again. How many other people would I be comfortable doing that with? Just sitting here like this, saying nothing?
Probably only him.
Maybe Mia.
What is she doing right now? How is she holding up, and does she ever think about me? I want to make sure she’s okay. With sharp, stabbing sensations in my chest, I’m wishing she were here right now.
A hard rock song starts playing, the sound of it muffled, and it takes me a second to figure out that it’s an instrumental version of the chorus from Bon Jovi’s “Bad Medicine” and that it’s coming from my uncle’s cell phone. After digging it out of his pocket, he looks at the screen and lets it ring a few moments before he taps the green button and lifts the phone up to his ear.
He answers with his name, and then he goes quiet, a crease between his eyebrows.
I grip the warm metal railing next to me, grip it hard and keep my eyes averted from my uncle while he listens and sometimes responds to the person on the other end with short affirmatives. Okay. Yup. Mhmm.
“Sure,” he says eventually. “Hang on a second.”
He presses the Mute button on his phone. Lets out an audible breath. And then he looks me in the eye and says, “It’s done.”
Dumbly, I nod.
“Apparently he mentioned you in his last words, and his lawyer would like to tell you about it himself.” Uncle Warren holds out his phone to me. When I flinch and hesitate, my face prickling with apprehension, he quietly states, “You don’t have to.”
My arm feels disconnected from my body, moving independently of me as I reach out and accept the cell phone from him. It’s heavier than it looks, and I clench my fist around it, my hand trembling.
Tapping to unmute it, I lift the small device up to my ear and say, “Hello?”
“Hi, Jay, this is John Beatty, your father’s attorney,” comes the deep voice on the other end. He talks fast and with a hint of a Texas drawl.
“Okay,” is all I can think to reply.
“He asked me to tell you something. These were literally his last words; he didn’t say anything else after this. I wrote it down, so here it is verbatim.” The lawyer pauses for a second, and I hold my breath. “He said, ‘Tell my son, Jay, that I love him, that I’m proud of him, and that he was the best thing I ever did. I wish I could’ve caught more foul balls for him.’”
It’s like someone hit me in the chest with a sledgehammer. My vision goes blurry. Even though my tongue feels thick and stuck to the roof of my mouth, I’m somehow able to mumble out a hasty “Thank you” before thrusting the phone back at my uncle. I hear him saying something else into the phone, but it sounds like he’s far away and almost out of earshot.
The knot in my throat and burning pressure behind my eyes are suddenly just there—rushing over me and knocking me down, and then my shoulders are shaking as I stop breathing, silent shudders ripping through me.
Doubling over, I feel like I step outside my body, relinquishing control. It’s like I’m being shredded at the cellular level, my body fragmenting into tiny pieces. Each wave of agony starts deep in my core before shooting up my spine, and I can’t stop it, can barely even hang on to the railing to keep myself from tumbling off the guard tower into the sand below.
My uncle grabs the back of my neck and squeezes. He keeps his hand there, and I can hear him sniffling, know he’s hurting, too, probably more than I am. He’s mourning the little brother he grew up with. To me, Darrell Miller was a father who was hardly ever around. I worshipped him. But I didn’t really know him.
Eventually, the tears dry. I straighten my back again, and for a while I sit there, only breathing. My head feels empty, drained, and numb.
“There’s just something about the sunsets here,” Uncle Warren says, his voice hoarse and moist. His hand shifts away from my neck to rest on my shoulder.
Through swollen and throbbing eyes, I squint out at sea, where the sun is hanging low in the sky, casting a pink-and-orange light around the smatterings of clouds, making them look like an oil painting. Pretty soon the sun will sink all the way down and then behind the horizon, and it’ll be a fiery and beautiful spectacle.
“You crashing on my couch tonight?” I ask, clearing my throat.
“I don’t know,” he says, pushing off the edge so that he lands softly on the sand a short way below. “Let’s go get drunk and see where the evening takes us, huh? Maybe we’ll get lucky. I could really go for some California pussy right now. It’s been way too long.”
Oh, Jesus. For a moment, I’m just blinking at him. Then I let out an exasperated breath with a hint of laughter. “Stay classy, old man.”
“Always, buddy,” he fires back, grinning at me. “Always.”