Or maybe the ticking time bomb of Grandma doesn’t matter anymore because the real bombs were the other things I was wrong about all along. Like my mom. And my father … Because I’m still struggling to reconcile the image I have of him from all the interviews I’ve read online—from the few times I’ve met him. Our scattered phone conversations. His cool life. His perfect family. His house in Malibu.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

God, that stupid magazine internship that I fretted over—that got me so angry at Levi Summers for rejecting me … All of it goes back to wanting my father’s approval.

And it was all for nothing.

It’s hard to accept something’s wrong when you once felt deep in your soul it was right.

I once felt deep in my soul that Los Angeles was my way forward.

That my father was my ticket out.

That my grandmother was going to tear my family apart.

That my mother didn’t want me.

But I was so wrong about all of it.

What else am I wrong about?

What else … ?

But I try not to think of it now, here in our suite at the Marblecliff, where not only did I sleep like the dead last night, I did it with Mom curled up next to me in the same bed, because there was only the one room with two queens available when we arrived, bedraggled, at midnight. Evie and Franny took one bed, Mom and I took the other.

One fractured and very strange family.

And I don’t know. Maybe Marblecliff’s mattresses are stuffed with drugs as well as feathers, or maybe it was the sound of the harbor waves crashing against the rocky cliffs below that lulled us to sleep. Or maybe it was that my entire life was turned upside down in one day, and my body just said, Forget it, I’ve had enough. Regardless, after we deplete all the hot water and luxury hair products in the newly remodeled bathroom, we gather in the suite’s cozy sitting area in front of the enormous fireplace, lounging in crested bathrobes.

“I feel like I’ve just returned from a really bad weekend in Las Vegas,” Mom says, looking out over a stunning view of the blue harbor, where the mid-morning sun is glinting across boats dotting the Beauty Yacht Club’s waters.