“I’m fine. Totally okay. Hey, we need to get you to the doctor tomorrow at nine thirty. Will you be ready, or do you need me to wake you up? I was thinking of catching some waves beforehand.”

“Definitely. I’ll be ready. Dr. Fox, right?”

“No.” I scrunched my nose, giving her a funny look. Dr. Fox was her plastic surgeon. “Dr. Knaus.” She thought she was getting Botox? And that I would take a day off work to get her there?

“Oh, him.” She pursed her lips, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. “I think I should just go cold turkey on the pills, to be honest. I’ve read an article, Edie. It says that they really mess with your head. Those psychiatric pills make you feel like there’s a weight lifted off of your shoulders and you get addicted to it, and to them, and it never stops. A vicious cycle. I don’t need them.”

But you certainly do.

“Listen, Mom…”

“Yes, Mom. I’m your mother,” she reminded me, pulling at her hair again, like it was a nervous tick. “The responsible adult in this situation. And I don’t want to take the pills anymore.”

“But…”

“No but.”

“You need them, Mom. I’m not saying forever, but you have to get yourself checked and take care of this, eh, situation. Please, let’s go to Dr. Knaus. He’s been dealing with issues like yours for years. He’ll know what to do.”

“Is that why he gave me the wrong meds?”

“It’s all trial and error with these things. It’s difficult to find the right balance, but once he does…”

“Edie Van Der Zee.” Her voice turned to steel in a second, her tone like whiplash on my skin. My shoulders sagged. Unreachable. She always lived behind a screen I didn’t know how to peel back. “Enough with that. I understand that you are desperate to go surfing, and taking me to the doctor is the perfect excuse to ditch work for a few hours, but you need to respect my decision on this. It is my body. I have plans to make and I want to go on a family vacation, which I intend to start planning for first thing tomorrow morning. The pills are making me gain weight. It’s a proven side effect. They make me tired all the time. I have a bladder infection because of them. Again. I’m telling you, I’m better off doing yoga and drinking that herbal tea your daddy makes me every night when he’s at home.”

For a moment, I just blinked. She thought I was mad because I wanted to go surfing tomorrow. Thought she was a tool, a pawn, a small chunk of a bigger plan. Clearly, she’d lived with my father far too long. I got up from her bed, running my fingers through my long, untamed hair.

“If you need anything, you know where to find me,” I murmured.

She gave me a slight nod, pressing the play button on the remote, her eyes shifting to her soap opera. “Same goes to you, darling.”

I walked out of her room trying to think of the last time Mom had helped me with anything and couldn’t come up with one.

An odd feeling coated me. Like everything was going to shit and I had no way of stopping it. I’d caught Trent having sex with another woman—a woman, God, she looked to be in her late thirties—and my mother was starting to deteriorate, slipping further away from sanity right before my eyes.

I stuffed my cell phone into my JanSport, grabbed my keys and surfboard, and went to the beach in the middle of the night, not caring how stupid and dangerous it was.

Everything felt pointless.

Everything but the ocean.

CARDIO. I NEEDED TO WORK on it.

At least, that’s what I tried to tell myself when I found my pathetic ass in running shorts, a dri-fit gray shirt, and my Prada sneakers. I’d been doing too much weightlifting recently. It was time to do some aerobics.

I almost believed myself but for the fact I was standing on a sandy beach at six a.m. staring at the young surfers paddling their boards into the ocean, looking for a blonde mane.

You’re fucking mental, and you’re taking this way too far.

I started jogging, throwing a look over my shoulder to the troubled waters every once in a while. She wasn’t there. I replayed last night in my head, trying to see it from her eyes. Sonya had come over with sign language brochures. She’d praised me for making the effort to try to communicate with Luna and went through all the classes near us and what they had to offer. We were strictly in business mode. In fact, I hadn’t fucked her in quite a while. Preoccupied with work and shit. Then Sonya had said that she was thirsty, and Rina was no longer at the office, so I’d gone to make us some coffee. In the hallway, I’d spotted Edie. She was leaning against a wall, her back to me, talking on the phone. I’d slowed down, not stopping—I wasn’t a fucking creep, no matter how much I felt like one around her—and her conversation had leaked to my ears.