JILL BARNETT

The Days of Summer

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are

the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is

entirely coincidental.

AVON

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This paperback edition 2007

First published in the U.S.A by

Atria, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 2006

Copyright © Jill Barnett 2006

Jill Barnett asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

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HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9781847560025

Ebook edition © SEPTEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780007278916

Version: 2018-05-21

This writing life I’ve stumbled through has brought me an abundance of riches, the most valuable a friendship of twenty years.

To Kristin and Benjamin Hannah, who have stood by my side and protected my back through all the wins and losses. Only the angels could have sent you.

Life can only be understood

backwards;

but it must be lived forwards.

Søren Kierkegaard

Contents

Title Page Copyright Dedication Part One: 1957 Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Part Two: 1970 Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty One Chapter Twenty Two Part Three: 2002 Chapter Twenty Three Chapter Twenty Four Chapter Twenty Five Chapter Twenty Six Chapter Twenty Seven Chapter Twenty Eight Chapter Twenty Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty One Chapter Thirty Two Chapter Thirty Three Chapter Thirty Four Chapter Thirty Five Chapter Thirty Six Epilogue Acknowledgments The Days Of Summer Questions And Topics For Discussion A Conversation With The Author About the Author About the Publisher

PART ONE

1957

A hurtful act is the transference to others of

the degradation which we bear in ourselves.

Simone Weil

CHAPTER 1

Southern California

Warm and motionless nights were natural in LA, a place where so much of life was staged and the weather seldom competed for attention. There, events and people stood in the limelight. On most nights, somewhere in the city, searchlights panned the sky; tonight, in front of the La Cienega Art Gallery. All the art show regulars were there in force, names from the society pages, old money and new, along with enough existentialist poets and bohemians to fill every coffeehouse from Hollywood to Hermosa Beach.

Well-known art critics chatted about perspective and meaning, debated social message. They adored the artist, a vibrant, exotic woman whose huge canvases had violent splashes of color charging across them, and wrote about her work in effusive terms as bold as the work itself, likening her to the abstract expressionists Pollock and de Kooning. Rachel Espinosa was the darling of the LA art scene, and Rudy Banning’s wife.

Rudy came to the show late, after drinking all afternoon. His father was right: he was a sucker—something that was easier to swallow if he chased it with a bottle of scotch. The searchlights were off when he parked his car outside the gallery. Once inside, he leaned against the front door to steady himself.

A milky haze of cigarette smoke hovered over the colorless sea of black berets, gray fedoras, and French twists. In one corner, a small band played an odd arrangement of calypso and jazz—Harry Belafonte meets Dave Brubeck. The booze flowed, cigarettes were stacked every few feet on tall silver stanchions, and the catering was Catalan—unusual—and done to propagate the lie that his wife, Rachel Maria-Teresa Antonia Espinosa, was pure Spanish aristocracy. This was her night, and her stamp was on the whole production.

She stood near the back half of the room, under a canned light and in front of one of her largest and latest pieces, Ginsberg Howls. The crowd milled around her, but most managed to stay a few feet away, as if they were afraid to get too close to such an icon. A newspaper reporter for the Los Angeles Times interviewed her, while a staff photographer with rolled-up shirtsleeves circled around her, snapping photos with sharp, blinding flashes.

Rachel turned on for the camera, striking a carefully choreographed pose Rudy had seen before: arm in the air, a martini glass with three cocktail onions in her hand. Tonight she wore bright orange. She knew her place in this room.

Rudy helped himself to a drink from a cocktail tray carried by a passing waiter, then downed the whiskey before he was ten feet away from her. She didn’t see him at first, but turned with instinctive suddenness and looked right at him. What passed between them was merely a ghost of what had been—the days when one look across a room could evaporate everything around them. His wife’s expression softened, until he set his empty drink on a passing tray and grabbed another full one, then raised the glass mockingly and drank it as she watched him, her look so carefully controlled.

“Darling!” Rachel said quickly, then turned to the reporter. “Excuse me.” She rushed forward hands outstretched. “Rudy!” When he didn’t take her hands, she slid her arm through his and moved toward a corner. “You’re late.”

“Really?” Rudy looked around. “What time was this charade supposed to start?”

“You’re drunk. You reek of scotch.” She pulled him away from the crowd.

“Are you trying to shove me off into a corner? I’m six foot four. A little hard to hide.” Rudy stopped bullishly and turned so she was facing the room. “You crave attention so much. Look. People are staring.”

“Stop it!” Her voice was quiet and angry.

“I know, Rachel.”

“Of course you know. No one force-fed you half a bottle of scotch.” Her deep breath had a tired sound. “Dammit, Rudy. Do you have to ruin everything?”

“You bitch!”

Her fingers tightened around his arm. Murmurs came from those nearby, and people eased closer.

“I know,” he said with emphasis. The music faded and the room quickly grew quiet. Rudy had the laughable thought that if it wasn’t a show before, it certainly was one now.

“What are you talking about?”

Apparently lying and persona were all that was left of the woman he’d married. Strange how confronting her felt nothing like he’d imagined. “You want me to shout it? Here? For everyone?” He waved his hand around. “For that reporter, darling?” His breath was shallow, like he’d been running miles. His vision blurred around the edges, and the taste of booze lodged in his throat. “I will shout it to the world. Damn you. Damn you, Rachel!” He threw his drink at the painting behind her, and the glass shattered in a perfectly silent room. He stumbled out the front door into the empty night air. At the curb, he used the car’s fin to steady himself, then got inside.

Rachel came running outside. “Rudy!”

He jammed his key in the ignition.

She pulled open the passenger door. “Stop! Wait!”

“Go to hell.”

She crawled inside and tried to grab the keys. “Don’t leave.”

Rudy grabbed her wrist, pulled her across the seat until her face was inches from his. “Get out or I’ll drag you with the car.” He shoved her away and started the engine.

“No!” She closed her door and reached for the keys again.

His foot on the gas, the car raced down the street, straddling lanes as he struggled for control. Tires screeched behind them, but he didn’t give a damn.

“Rudy, stop!” She sounded scared, so he turned the next corner faster. The car fishtailed and he floored it again. She hugged the door and seemed to shrink down into someone who actually looked human, instead of a goddess who painted intricate canvases and saw the world with a mind and eye unlike anyone else’s. Ahead the stoplight turned red. He slammed on the brakes so hard she had to brace her hands on the dashboard.

“You’re driving like a madman. Pull over and we can talk.”

“There it is again, Rachel, that calm voice. Your reasonable tone, so arrogant, as if you are far above the rest of us mere mortals because you don’t feel anything.”

“I feel. You should know. I feel too much. I know you’re upset. We’ll talk. Please.”

“Upset doesn’t even come close to what I am. And it’s too fucking late to talk.” The light turned green and he floored it.

“Rudy, stop! Please. Think of the boys,” she said frantically.

“I am thinking of the boys. What about you? Can you ever think about anyone but you?” He took the next corner so quickly they faced oncoming traffic, honking horns, the sound of skidding tires. A truck swerved to avoid them. It took both of his hands to pull the careening car into his own lane. At the yellow signal, he lifted his foot off the gas to go for the brake, paused, then stomped on the accelerator. He could make it.

“Don’t!” Rachel shouted. “It’s turning red!”

“Yeah, it is.” He took his eyes off the road. “Scared, Rachel? Maybe now you’ll feel something.” Her whimpering sound made him feel strong. His father was wrong. He wasn’t a weak fool. Not anymore. The speedometer needle shimmied toward seventy. The gas pedal was on the floor. He could feel the power of the engine vibrate through the steering wheel right into his hands.

“Oh, God!” Rachel grabbed his arm. “Look out!”

A white station wagon pulled into the intersection.

He stood on the brakes so hard he felt the seat back snap. The skid pulled at the steering wheel, and he could hear tires scream and smell the rubber burn. Blue lettering painted on the side of the station wagon grew huge before his eyes:

ROCK AND ROLL WITH JIMMY PEYTON

AND THE FIREFLIES

The other driver looked at him in stunned horror, his passengers frantic. One of them had his hands pressed against the side window. A thought hit Rudy with a passive calmness: they were going to die. Rachel grabbed him, screaming. With a horrific bang, her scream faded into a moan. The dashboard came at him, the speedometer needle still shimmying, and everything exploded.

CHAPTER 2

Seattle, Washington

Three hours ago, a complete stranger stood in the doorway of a downtown apartment and told Kathryn Peyton her husband was dead. The stranger, a local police detective, wanted to notify her before some reporter did, but the news flashed on the radio within minutes after she closed the front door.

“Twenty-six-year-old singing star and entertainer Jimmy Peyton, whose fourth record went number one last week, died tragically tonight in a deadly car accident in LA.”

Hearing the report on the radio made her husband’s death more real—how could this be happening?—and when Kathryn called Jimmy’s mother, she was told Julia Peyton was devastated and unavailable. So Kathryn dialed her sister in California and talked until nothing was left to say and staying on the phone was empty and painfully awkward.

A few reporters called to question her. She hung up and unplugged the phone. Later came the knocks on the door, which didn’t sound as loud from her bedroom, and by midnight they’d left her alone. In her bedroom with the curtains drawn, it was easy to ignore the doorbell, to turn off the phone, to lie on their bed holding Jimmy’s pillow against her, holding on so tightly every muscle in her body hurt.

The smell of his aftershave lingered on the pillowcase; it was on the sheets, and faintly recognizable on the oversized blue oxford shirt she wore. Sheer panic hit her when she realized she would have to wash the pillowcases and sheets; she would have to get rid of his shirt, all of his clothes, or turn into one of those strange old women who hoard the belongings of the one they’d lost and who kept rooms exactly as they had been—cobwebbed shrines to those taken at the very moment they were happiest. Now, alone in the dark, Kathryn cried until sleep was her only relief.

The ringing of the bedside alarm startled her awake, then made her sick to her stomach, because every night when Jimmy was on the road, he would walk offstage and call her. I love you, babe. We brought down the house.

But in this surreal world where Jimmy no longer existed, the alarm kept ringing while she fumbled in the dark for the off switch, then just threw the damned clock against the wall to shut it up. A weak, incessant buzzing still came from a dark corner of the room, and she wanted to put the pillow over her head until it stopped, or maybe until her breathing stopped.

Eventually, she got up and turned off the alarm. A deep crease on the wall marked where she’d thrown the clock. The paint was only three weeks old and blue like the sheets, like the quilted bedspread and the chairs, blue because Jimmy’s latest hit song was “Blue.”

Kathryn dropped the clock on the bed and walked on hollow legs into the bathroom, where she turned on the faucet and drank noisily from a cupped hand. She wiped her mouth with Jimmy’s shirtsleeve, then opened the medicine cabinet.

His shelf was eye level. A clear bottle of golden hair oil she had bought last week. A red container of Old Spice without the metal cap. She took a deep breath of it and utter despair turned her inside out. The bottle slipped from her fingers into the wastebasket. Seeing it as trash was more horrific than seeing it on the shelf. Didn’t that then mean it was all true? When all was in order on the shelf, life still held a modicum of normalcy.

She carefully put it back exactly where it belonged, next to a small black rectangular case that held Gillette double-edged razor blades, which she looked at for a very long, contemplative time, then she reached for a prescription bottle with “James Peyton” typed neatly in epitaphic black-and-white. Seconal. Take one tablet to sleep. Count: 60.

Take one tablet to sleep. Take sixty tablets to die. She turned on the faucet and bent down, a handful of red pills inches from her mouth.

“Is that candy, Mama?”

“Laurel!” Kathryn shot upright, the pills in a fist behind her back, and looked down at the curious face of her four-year-old daughter. “What are you doing up?”

“I want some candy.”

“It’s not candy,” she said sharply.

“I saw Red Hots, Mama.”

“No. It’s medicine. See?” Kathryn opened her hand, then put the pills back inside the bottle. “It’s just medicine to help me sleep.”

“I want some medicine.”

Kathryn knelt down. “Come here.” Laurel would have found her. Laurel would have found her. Shaking and numb, she rested her chin on her daughter’s head, surrounded by the scent of baby shampoo and Ivory soap, a familiar, clean smell. It took a long time for Kathryn to let go.

“I can’t sleep.”

Jimmy’s face in miniature stared up at her. Every day she would look at that face and see the man she loved, and Kathryn didn’t know if that would be a gift or a curse. “Let me wash your face. You can see tear tracks.” She used a warm wash rag to clean Laurel’s red face. “There. All done.” Kathryn straightened and automatically shut the mirrored medicine cabinet. In her reflection she caught a flicker of a pale, shadowed life and had to brace her hands on the cold sink. It was achingly painful to realize she was here and Jimmy wasn’t.

Eventually she would clear out the medicine chest; she would put things in the trash without panicking, wash the sheets, and do something with his clothes. They weren’t him, she told herself; they were only his things.

“Does the medicine taste like candy?” Laurel pointed to the prescription bottle.

“No.” Kathryn made a face. “It’s awful.” She dumped the pills into the toilet and flushed it. “We don’t need medicine.”

It was amazing how skeptical a four-year-old could look.

“It’s late,” Kathryn told her. “You can sleep in our—in my bed.”

Laurel jumped up, all excited and so easily distracted. “Because Daddy’s gone?”

“Yes. Because Daddy’s gone.”

The last time Laurel Peyton waved good-bye to her father was from the backseat of a long black Cadillac that belonged to the Magnolia Funeral Home. Waving goodbye was normal when your father was on the road all the time, but the camera flashbulbs and reporters alongside the car were anything but normal.

The three women inside the car—Kathryn, her sister, Evie, and Julia, Jimmy’s mother—tried to shield Laurel from the faces at the car windows, until the press, dressed in their amphigoric darks, were left behind and stood crowlike at the edge of the grave site while the Cadillac continued down the hill.

Behind them Kathryn saw only a monochrome Seattle sky, and scattered all over the lush green lawn were absurdly bright clumps of fresh flowers, bits of life scattered over a place that was only about death. The tires crunched on the gravel drive and sounded as if something were breaking, while rain pattered impatiently on the roof of the car and the electronic turn signal ticked like a heartbeat.

Jimmy’s mother tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Young man. Young man! Can’t you hear that? Turn off that turn signal!” Julia Laurelhurst Peyton looked as if she were carved from granite. Only Jimmy could ever seem to crack through her veneer.

Laurel began to sing one of Jim’s hit songs in a slightly off-key young voice. Feeling sickened, Kathryn glanced at Julia, who was looking out the car window, her face away from everyone else in the car.

Evie took her hand. “She doesn’t understand, Kay.”

“She will soon enough,” Julia said without turning, her voice serrated and burned from too many cigarettes. She opened her purse and pulled out her cigarette case. “You must make her understand, Kathryn. It’s your job as her mother.”

Her job as a mother was not to swallow a handful of Seconal. Her job as a mother was to go on hour by hour and day by day. Her job as a mother was to do what was best for Laurel, at the expense of anything else, because Jimmy wasn’t there.

Julia tapped a cigarette against the back of her hand, then slid it between her red lips and lit it. Smoke drifted around them. “My son was a star.” She looked at Kathryn, at Evie. “You saw the reporters there.” Julia took short drags off her cigarette. “Tomorrow, they’ll play his songs on the radio.”

Kathryn wondered if she would constantly search the radio for his songs. She began to silently cry.

“Don’t, Kathryn.” Julia held up her hand. “Don’t.”

Evie handed her a tissue. “She can cry if she wants to.”

Julia crushed her cigarette in the ashtray. “Laurel? Come see Grandmama.” She patted the seat next to her, but Laurel climbed in her lap instead. Julia began to hum the same song, holding her granddaughter tightly, and soon tears streamed down her slack and chalkish powdered cheeks.

Six long hours later, it was Kathryn who hung on tightly to Laurel as she ran through the waiting reporters at the front doors of their apartment building.

“Kay, I’m sorry,” Evie said. “We should have hired some security.” She blocked the closing elevator doors as a couple of persistent newsmen shouted questions at them.

Thankfully no one was on the tenth floor while Kathryn waited for Evie to unlock the apartment door. “Look, Evie. Laurel’s sound asleep. I want to be a child, oblivious to that chaos downstairs. I want to wake up and have it be a bad dream.”

Evie quietly closed the door behind them. “Go on. Put her to bed.”

A few minutes later Kathryn walked into the living room.

Evie stood in the corner over a bar cart with an ice bucket and crystal bottles of decanted liquor. “I’m getting us drinks. Strong drinks. God knows I need one.” She studied Kathryn for a second. “What am I saying? I should probably just give you a straw and the whole bottle.”

Kathryn unpinned her hat and tossed it on the coffee table. “Today was bad.”

“Your mother-in-law didn’t make it any easier. Look at me, Kay.” Evie patted her cheeks. “Am I pale? Do you think I have any blood left since leaving Julia’s, or did she suck it all out of me?”

“You’re awful.”

“No, she’s awful. I’m truthful.”

Kathryn unbuttoned her suit jacket, sank into the sofa, and let her head fall back on the pillows. Above her was the hole in the acoustical ceiling left over from a swag lamp. One of those things they’d meant to fix. The iron poker near the wood box was bent from when the movers ran over it. The mirror over the fireplace hung a little crooked. Everything was the same, yet nothing would ever be the same again.

“You’re a sweetheart for putting up with that woman. She’s so critical.” Evie dropped ice cubes into a couple of highball glasses. “What do you want to drink?”

“Anything.”

“I don’t know where you get your patience. Pop used to check his watch every two seconds if anyone kept him waiting, and Mother was just like I am: intolerant of anyone who disagrees with us. You are the saint of the family, Kay.”

“No, I’m no saint. I just loved her son.”

Evie paused, ice tongs in her hand. “It broke my heart when Laurel started to sing.”

“My first urge was to put my hand over her mouth.”

“I can’t think of anyone better to sing a Jimmy Peyton song than his daughter. The only reason you didn’t know what to do was because Julia makes everything so uncomfortable.”

“It’s not Julia. I don’t understand the world anymore. It seems so wrong, Evie, so unfair. I want to shout and shake my fist at God and tell him he made a huge mistake. Jimmy had so much left to give the world. He was going to make it big. I knew it. You saw it.”

“Everyone saw it, Kay.”

“We had such big dreams. The sheer waste of his life makes me want to scream.”

“You can holler the walls down if you want. It is unfair. Do whatever you have to do to get through this horrible thing.”

It was a horrible thing. Everything was changing and out of her control. Her skin hurt; it felt too small for her body, like the changes to her were happening in a matter of days. She glanced at the crooked mirror above the fireplace to see the ravages of sudden widowhood right there on her face.

Evie clattered through the bottles on the cart. “Where are those silver things that go on the bottle necks to tell you which liquor is which?”

“Laurel thought they were necklaces. She put them on her storybook dolls.” Kathryn dropped her hands away from her strained face. “It drove Jimmy nuts, but he didn’t have the heart to take them away from her.”

Evie held up two of the bottles. “I wonder which one is the scotch.”

“The brown one.”

“Funny.” Her sister sniffed one of the bottles. “Bourbon.”

“I’ll take bourbon and Coke.”

Evie dumped bourbon into the glass and splashed a small bit of Coke over it.

“One night Laurel made me tell her what each necklace said. She named her dolls Bourbon, Scotch, Rum, Gin, and Vodka. Jimmy and I laughed about it.” Strange how his laughter was still fresh in Kathryn’s mind, and for just the briefest of moments, she didn’t feel locked in some dark, parallel dimension made for those left behind.

Here.” Evie handed her a drink and sat down, folding her legs under her. They didn’t speak.

Her years with Jimmy filed through Kathryn’s mind like frames in a documentary. His laughter, his fears, his tears of excitement when he first saw their daughter in her arms, squalling and hungry. She could hear him singing the songs he had written to her, and for her. She heard the first thing he ever said to her—and the last: Just one more night on the road, babe. I’ll be home tomorrow.

Her sister set her glass down. “Lord, that tastes good. Maybe a few drinks will wash away the bitterness of Julia’s tongue.”

“Do you think what she said was true?”

“I doubt it,” Evie answered. “But which tidbit of your mother-in-law’s viperlike wisdom are we talking about?”

“That society treats women without men as nonentities.”

“Oh.” Evie laughed bitterly. “The idea that widows should be strong because it makes people uncomfortable to see someone’s grief.”

“Well, she is a widow. She should know.”

“She’s a black widow. They eat their mates. She deals with her grief by denying yours. She also said single, independent women have their life preferences questioned.” Evie raised her chin and mimicked Julia’s husky voice: “‘You are a divorcée, Evie dear, and marrying a divorced woman is like going to the track and betting all your money on a lame horse. Divorcées are only fair game for men who want to get them into the bedroom but would never consider marrying them.’”

“You shouldn’t let her get to you.”

“You’ve had more practice dealing with her than I have, Kay.”

“I might be getting a lot more practice.” Kathryn rested her glass on her knee and stared into it. “Julia wants me to give up this place and move in with her.”

Evie turned sideways on the couch, facing her. “You cannot live in the same house with that judgmental woman who will suck every bit of life from you. Half the time I want to muzzle her. Even now, when I should feel terribly sorry for her, she can say something that makes me just want to pop her.”

“Underneath, Julia is as fragile as I feel. You saw her in the car. She needs Laurel, and with Mom and Pop gone, Laurel needs to know her only grandparent.”

“The woman is an emotional vacuum.”

“She’s never that way with Laurel. It’s sad, really, the way she was talking today about her son the star, as if all she had left of him would be those few minutes when some radio station played one of his songs. I have Laurel. Maybe Jimmy’s mother should, too.”

“You’re Jimmy’s wife. She should treat you better.”

“He used to say it wasn’t me. She couldn’t let go of him. I look at Laurel and I’m so scared about what kind of parent I’ll be. What if I cling to her? How do I do this alone? How do I know what’s right and wrong, and how do I protect her?”

“The same way you did when Jimmy was alive. You can’t completely protect her from everything.”

“Laurel doesn’t have Jimmy anymore, but if we move in with Julia, at least she would have his mother. This apartment isn’t the same. All the colors look so faded. Nothing is sharp or clear. It feels empty. I don’t know if I can stay.”

“You can stay with me, Kay. It’s wonderful on Catalina. The island is small and safe. The house is small, too, but we all can fit. There’s room in back to build a small studio for your kiln and wheel.”

“You said you were going to plant a garden there.”

“Who needs a garden? My faculty meetings are always in the mornings. I could watch Laurel in the afternoons and evenings while you work. Please. Think about it.”

“I love you for offering, but it would be a disaster. Besides the fact that you just bought the place, you have one bathroom. You know we’d be on top of each other.”

Evie took her hand. “I wish you would.”

“I know you do.” Kathryn looked around. “Maybe I’m being silly and I should stay here.”

“Oh, hell, Kay, I don’t know. I can’t tell you what to do. I worry about you both living with that woman.”

The doorbell rang.

“Ignore it. They’ll go away.” Kathryn took a drink.

The bell kept ringing and ringing.

Evie shifted. “I can’t stand it. I’ll get it.”

“No. No.” Kathryn stood. “I’ll do it.” When she opened the front door, a flashbulb went off and everything was suddenly white.

“Star magazine, here. We’d like an interview, now that you’re Jimmy Peyton’s widow.”

“Leave her alone!” Evie was suddenly standing behind her, a hand on Kathryn’s shoulder. “Go away!” Evie reached around her and slammed the door, swearing.

Kathryn buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Mama?” Laurel was standing in the dark recesses of the hallway, a stuffed duck Jimmy had given her tucked under one arm.

Kathryn rushed to pick her up. “Are you okay, angel?”

Laurel nodded, hugging the duck, but she kept staring curiously at the front door.

“That kind of thing wouldn’t happen at Julia’s.” Kathryn looked pointedly at her sister. “She has the front gates and hired help.”

Evie nodded.

First and foremost, Kathryn knew she had to protect her daughter. Today people had said the stupidest things: It’ll get better with time. God needed Jimmy more. You’re young, dear, you’ll marry again. She could only imagine how Laurel might interpret any one of those comments. And how long would it be before the newspaper people finally left them alone?

“Mama?” Laurel framed Kathryn’s cheeks with her small hands and brought her face very close, the way she did whenever she wanted someone’s sole attention. “Those people at the door want to view you because you’re Daddy’s window.”

The words took a moment to register. Kathryn turned to Evie. “I’m a window.”

Her sister looked as if she were trying not to laugh.

“I’m a window,” Kathryn repeated—it was all so ludicrous—then laughter poured out of her, uncontrolled, like water running over. She couldn’t stop. It was just laughter, she told herself, a silly emotion, really, and panic edged it—a sound that was closer to shattering glass—and she knew then her laughter was anything but natural.

CHAPTER 3

Orange County, California

On that long stretch of land between LA and San Diego, towns grew quickly and sprawled all over one another. Amusement parks with gravity rooms and wild toad rides replaced boysenberry fields and orange groves where people could pick all the fruit they wanted for a fifty-cent piece. Tracts of shake-shingled homes with attached garages sold out before the houses were even built, and traffic signals sprang up on street corners suddenly too busy for stop signs.

Public transportation? It was an afterthought. Cars were necessary in Southern California, and oil was big business. Hammer-shaped oil pumps lined the coast highway all along Huntington Beach, where tar spotted long stretches of sand and stuck like gum to broken seashells, litter, and the murky green kelp that washed ashore. The locals called it Tin Can Beach—it looked like a dump, so everyone just used it as one.

If tar was the automobile driver’s grim trade-off for pumping oil up from the ground, so were the skeletal black oil towers on Signal Hill and the churning refineries off Sepulveda Boulevard, with their tall, cigar-shaped towers that spit white smoke and all those acrid smells into the sweet California air. A popular joke regularly ran through the LA nightclubs that Southern Californians paid the prices for their automobiles in dollars and scents.

But the truth was, people spent money on cars for mobility and freedom, so they could be in control of where they went and when. They bought homes because they liked to think they owned a piece of a place where the sun shined most of the time and movie stars lived large and died tragically.

The coastal resort town of Newport Beach was all prime property. The ocean was clean, the sand fine as sugar, and there was no litter anywhere. Pristine white yachts pulled into private docks along the isles, where sprawling California-style homes carried addresses as distinctive as those in Beverly Hills. Whenever the Santa Ana winds blew in, the scent from the eucalyptus trees above Highway 1 cleared the sinuses better than Bano-Rub, a petroleum-jelly-and-camphor mixture that helped launch Banning Oil into the petroleum by-products industry and gave Victor Gaylord Banning enough money to buy up a chunk of Newport’s exclusive Lido Isle with hardly a dent in his bank accounts.

It was a Thursday afternoon, maybe three o’clock, and Victor was home in the middle of the day, facing a wall of windows—all that stood between him and the civilized edges of the wide blue Pacific. He stared at his reflection in the glass, seeing only the physiognomy of the one person he vowed he would never become. His father had been weak, unable to succeed in anything except failure.

Victor grew up in a house of discontent, with only his sister, Aletta, as champion against a mother whose elusive approval he could never capture, because she saw in Victor only his father standing there in miniature, a constant reminder of her bad choices. It was Aletta who paid the biggest price for their father’s failures. She died a useless death when there was no money to save her, and Victor was abandoned by the one person he depended upon.

For his mother, Aletta’s death was complete devastation. She couldn’t bear to look at the only child left, so she would lock him in the closet for hours. Eventually she saw suicide as the only release from her agony. She didn’t want to live in a world with only her weak husband and his look-alike son, who, try as he might, would never be a substitute for the girl child she truly loved. To Victor’s complete dismay, he cried for days after his mother killed herself, unable to control his emotions. The Banning legacy was jagged and sharp and part of him, no matter how he tried to prove otherwise.

Today, his cheeks and eyes were proof that sleep escaped him. He hadn’t shaved since yesterday, when he went to identify the bodies of his son and daughter-in-law, filed in long stainless steel cabinets at the LA morgue. Until a few days ago, he hadn’t seen or spoken to his son, Rudy, in almost ten years. His only source about anything in Rudy’s life had been Rachel. What Victor was feeling at that very moment—had he allowed it inside—would have brought him to his knees. Grief was crippling. Allowed in, it made the strong weak.

At the sound of his Town Car pulling in, he moved to a narrow window where he could see the driveway through the waxy leaves of a fat camellia bush. Next to his Lincoln the boys stood side by side, wearing similar striped T-shirts and stiff new jeans cuffed up. Although four years apart, they looked like Bannings: blond hair, square jaws, and wide mouths, all inherited from his own grandfather. Their skin was pale, their expressions thinly serious, and they had their mother’s thick, dark eyebrows. Cale, the younger, took hold of Jud’s hand. They looked like bookends that didn’t quite match.

Victor saw only their vulnerability, as they clung to each other like scared little girls. They would never be able to stand on their own. Rachel had ruined them. He’d seen enough and walked away, wondering exactly what he would have to do to turn them from pussy little boys into the men they needed to be to make it in his world.

Soon he heard the hushed voices of the help, and the hurried steps in the entry hall of children he had never spoken to. His driver came into the room, his chauffeur’s cap in his hands. “Your grandsons are here.” Harlan wasn’t a huge man, but he was stronger than an ox and looked a little like one. He was an ex–middleweight boxer with a flat, broken nose and porcelain front teeth Victor had paid for. “Do you want me to take the boys upstairs?”

“No. I’ll be out in a minute. They didn’t give you any trouble?”

Harlan shook his head. “They sat in the backseat whispering about riding in the limousine. Thought it was pretty special.”

“Is the MG back from the paint shop?” Victor asked.

“Yes sir.”

“Check the paint job on the running boards and the hood.”

“I checked it this morning.”

“Good.” His son had loved the MG, but that had been back in the days before Rudy threw the car keys at him and walked away from everything Banning. “Let the boys wait in the entry for now,” Victor said evenly. “I’ll be out soon.”

Harlan left, and Victor poured a scotch, wanting to be somewhere else—a sweeter time—the few in his life he could count on one hand. Under his feet, the wood floor creaked, and he looked down at the hairpin edges of a trapdoor to the fallout shelter, something his architect insisted he needed. But it was a useless hole in the floor that did nothing to protect him from the real fallout of his life: his son had died hating him. A scotch didn’t help. Mistakes wouldn’t dissolve in alcohol—although Rudy had certainly tried. So Victor remained there, his feet on the cracks of the trapdoor, a useless drink in his hand, facing the largest ocean in the world and the worst of his sins.

Cale Banning stood with his older brother in the hallway of a strange house, in a strange neighborhood, waiting to meet a stranger—the grandfather he’d never known he had until a few hours ago. Their suitcases and toys were piled up in the hallway, stacked in a hurry and looking as confused as he felt. He tugged on his brother Jud’s shirt. “How come I don’t remember this grandpa? Why wasn’t he ever around? Didn’t he like us?”

“Who knows?”

Cale stared at their things and thought they looked like they didn’t belong there.

Jud sat down on the stairs, his elbows on his long skinny legs, his hands hanging between his knees. “I remember his car,” he told Cale. “I saw it drive away from the house a few times.”

“Did you ever see him?”

“No.”

Cale searched the hollow room for something familiar. High on the wall above the staircase was a window of colored glass, like in church. “Look up there.”

“I saw it,” Jud said distractedly. “It’s one of Mom’s paintings.”

Cale studied the painting hung near the stained-glass window; it was huge. Once, when he’d asked his mother why she painted so big, she told him large canvases had bigger things to say, and he wouldn’t understand until he was older, so he should ask her again when he was Jud’s age. He looked at Jud. “Do you know why Mom painted big pictures?”

“No.”

“It’s supposed to say something.” Cale studied the colors of red and blue, green and yellow slashed across the painting above him. Her studio had never been off-limits. She usually smelled of something called linseed oil and her clothes were covered in paint splotches that made about as much sense to him as the paintings did. But inside her studio, the two of them would drink bottles of Coca-Cola, eat egg salad sandwiches and Twinkies, and she would talk to him while she painted with huge long strokes of color that involved her whole body and seemed to make sense only to her. As she stood back and away from her work, she told him there were messages in art about life and the way people thought and felt, that sometimes the messages were hidden, secrets only some had the eye to see, but the soul of the artist was always there if anyone chose to look close enough.

“Jud? What does a soul look like?”

His brother looked at him. “You’re weird.”

Cale sat down and rested his chin in his hands. “I miss her.”

Jud didn’t say anything, but slid his arm around him, so Cale leaned against his shoulder, because if his parents were really dead, then Jud was all he had left.

When he glanced up, a man stood off to the side. His father’s father was tall and looked a little like his dad. But his hair was a mix of blond and brown and gray. He was looking at him with an unreadable expression. Cale straightened. “Why did you bring us here?”

Jud stood up so fast it was like he had a fire in his pants.

But their grandfather remained silent.

Why didn’t they know him? Why didn’t he say anything? Why did their mom and dad have to die and leave them with no one but him? Cale wanted to hit something, maybe this grim-faced man who stood away from him. “How come I don’t know you? Are you really my grandpa?” Cale took a step.

Jud grabbed his arm and hauled him back. “Stay here.”

“You’re Cale,” his grandfather said finally.

Cale stood in the taller shadow of his brother. “Yes.”

“And you’re Jud.” His grandfather shook his older brother’s hand as if he were a grown man, but didn’t offer to shake Cale’s. “Come with me,” he said to Jud, then went out the front door with Jud following.

Cale was his grandson, too, so he ran after them, dogging his brother, who was beside their grandfather. Cale ran past both of them and turned, half-running backward in front of his grandfather. “Where are we going?”

“To the garage.”

“Why?”

“I want to show your brother something.”

He wanted to show Jud but not him. “What?” Cale asked.

His grandfather kept walking.

“What do you want to show him?” Cale stayed ahead of him because he was afraid if he stopped now his grandfather would walk right over him. “You don’t like me,” Cale said.

His grandfather looked at him. “Does it matter if I like you?”

“Yes,” Cale said.

“Why?”

“Because you’re my grandfather. It’s your job to like me.”

He laughed then. “Good answer, Cale.”

For just a second, Cale thought his grandfather might like him after all.

“What makes you think I don’t like you?”

“You won’t talk to me.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“So you think that you have to do something wrong for someone to not like you?”

Cale knew sometimes people had no reason at all not to like you. “I don’t know,” he answered truthfully.

“Think about it, and when you have an answer you can knock on this door and tell me.” His grandfather turned to Jud, holding the door open. “Come inside, son.”

Jud disappeared inside.

When Cale tried to sneak a peek, his grandfather blocked the doorway. “What if I told you that I like Jud because he’s the oldest?”

Cale stood stick-straight, arms at his sides, like soldiers in tall red hats who guarded queens and refused to show people what they were feeling.

“Answer me,” his grandfather said. “What would you say to that?”

“I would say that you’re a stupid old man.”

His grandfather’s expression didn’t change. “Perhaps I am,” he said finally, and closed the door in Cale’s face.

Cale lay in bed, listening for silence in the hallway. A tree outside the window moved in the wind as he lay there, his heart beating in his ears, his breath sounding loud and hollow beneath the covers. His brother was all the way down the hall in the house of a man who said they were supposed to call him Victor. Not Grandfather or Grandpa. Victor.

When only silence came from the hallway, Cale bolted from the bed and went straight to the closet. He carried an armload of clothes back to the bed, pulled up the covers, then socked them a few times so the lump looked like him sleeping.

His grandfather’s bedroom was at the end of a long, dark hallway on the second floor. The double doors were slightly open and a shaft of bright light cut across the wood floor. Cale followed the sound of Victor’s voice coming from inside. His grandfather was yelling on the phone.

“What the hell do you mean you can’t get the paintings? What auction house? Where?”

Cale stopped two feet from the door.

“Tell them they aren’t authorized to sell. Those paintings belong to the family. Screw the contract! You’re my attorney. Stop that sale. Hell, if you have to, buy them all. I don’t care how much it costs. I want every last painting.” His grandfather slammed down the phone, swearing.

Cale waited until he saw Victor walk into his bathroom, then moved quickly toward Jud’s room and slipped inside.

Jud sat up on his elbows. “What do you want?”

“Can I sleep here?”

“Have you been crying?”

“No. I wasn’t crying,” Cale lied.

Jud lifted the blankets. “Come on.”

Cale ran over, jumped in the air, and rolled into the middle of the bed.

“Move over, you hog,” Jud said, shoving him.

“I’m not a hog.” Cale stared up at a black ceiling, worried that tomorrow would be as bad as today and yesterday. He pulled the covers up.

A second later the light came on, bright and blinding, and Victor stood in the doorway. “What are you doing in here?”

Cale felt instantly sick.

“Never mind,” he said in the same angry voice he’d used on the phone. He crossed the room and pulled off the covers.

Jud looked too scared to say a word.

“In this house, we sleep in our own rooms.” Victor pulled Cale up, put his hands on his shoulders, and marched him to his own room, where he flipped on the light and paused before he pointed at the lump on the bed. “You know what that tells me?”

I’m in trouble. But all Cale said was, “No,” in a sulky voice.

Victor threw back the blankets. “It tells me that you knew damned well you were supposed to stay in your own bed.”

Cale didn’t admit anything.

“You are eight and I’m a lot older. There isn’t a trick you can pull I won’t see through.” He threw the clothes into a corner. “Now get into bed.”

Cale crawled in and lay board-stiff, his eyes on the ceiling.

“Do you want the light on?”

“No,” Cale said disgustedly and jerked the covers up over his head as the light went off. He could see through the white sheet.

His grandfather filled the doorway, backlit from the hall light. “Banning men don’t need anyone, Cale. We stand on our own.” He closed the door and the room went black.

* * *

Jud awoke to a sound like someone beating trash cans with a baseball bat. By the time he reached the window, the neighbor’s dogs were barking. It was after midnight, and misty fog hovered in the air. Cale lay sprawled in front of the wooden garage doors, two metal trash cans lids next to him, one of them spinning like a top, the barrels rolling down the concrete driveway toward the street. His little brother had tried to look in the high glass panes of the garage doors. Jud opened the window and called in a loud whisper, “Are you nuts? Get back inside. Hurry up!”

Cale sat up, rubbing the back of his head. “I want to see the red car.”

“Moron! It’s the middle of the night.”

“I know, but he won’t let me see it. He won’t let me talk to you or sleep with you. Besides, he’s asleep.”

“I was asleep, but someone woke me up making more noise than a train wreck.” Their grandfather stepped out of the shadows and walked toward Cale. There was a threat in the way he moved.

Jud leaned out the window. “Don’t you hurt him!”

His grandfather looked up, frowning. “I’m not going to hurt him.”

“How do we know that?” Jud yelled. “We don’t even know you!” He raced down the stairs. By then the chauffeur was outside his room over the garage, dressed in pajamas and carrying a shotgun, and Cale glared up at Victor with a stubborn look on his face … one that was exactly like their grandfather’s.

“Don’t hit him,” Jud said.

“I’m not going to hit him,” his grandfather said in an exasperated tone. He looked down at Cale. “Do you think I’m going to hit you?”

“I don’t care if you do.”

“This is all your fault,” Jud said. “You should have shown him the car, too.”

The chauffeur came down another step. “Mr. Banning?”

“I’ve got it, Harlan.” His grandfather sounded tired. “Go back to bed.”

The chauffeur turned back up the stairs.

“Harlan, wait! You—” Victor pointed a finger in Cale’s belligerent face. “Apologize for waking him up.”

For a moment Jud thought Cale was going to say no. The silence seemed to stretch out forever, then Cale faced the chauffeur and didn’t look the least bit apologetic when he said, “I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“It’s all right, son.” Harlan went back upstairs, leaving the three of them standing silently.

“So, Jud. You think I should show Cale the car?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Victor took a key from the pocket of his robe, unlocked the door, and held it open. “Go inside, both of you, and look all you want.”

In a flash of brown Hopalong Cassidy pajamas, Cale slipped under Victor’s arm and Jud followed. The MG was low and lean, its chrome sparkling. The tan top was folded down and the glass in the headlamps picked up the reflection of too-bright overhead lights. You didn’t see that kind of car anymore, except in old movies. It was square, with running boards, tan leather seats, and a red paint job that made it look like a miniature fire engine.

“Wow!” Cale walked around the MG, then put his hands on his knees and made a face in the side mirror, then more faces in the polished chrome grille. He was just a little kid with his pajamas buttoned wrong and leaves from the driveway sticking to his back and spiky hair, which looked as if it were angry.

Their grandfather leaned on the fender. “I bought this car for your father.”

Jud didn’t know the MG had been his dad’s. He could only picture his dad behind the wheel of that old two-tone Ford. But something wild had lived inside his father, like the red car.

“Jud.” His grandfather opened the car door. “Get in.”

He slid into the soft leather seat and placed his feet on the pedals. His little brother crawled into the passenger side, chattering, cranking the window up and down and punching the door locks, while Jud just held the steering wheel in both hands and stared out the low chrome-edged windshield, trying to feel something familiar: a sense of his dad, whatever was left behind—if anything was ever left behind after someone died. A strange kind of hunger came over him, sharp and intense: this car belonged to him. He wanted this car more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life.

Beside him, Cale was up on his knees, bouncing and gripping the seat back. “Someday I’m gonna have this car. I’m gonna be just like my dad and drive it everywhere.”

Jud shot a quick look at his brother, then up at the old man, who was watching him with an unreadable expression. Jud turned back around. No, little brother. No. This car’s going to be mine.

CHAPTER 4

Kathryn paid the driver and got out of an orange cab that smelled like dirty ashtrays. Laurel ran up the front steps of Julia Peyton’s home, an English Tudor gabled house with leaded glass windows, stone chimneys, and lush gardens flanking a downward sweep of sheared lawn.

“You’re late, Kathryn.” Julia stood at the front door dressed in heels and pearls. “I expected you before lunch.”

“The movers took longer than I’d thought.” Kathryn snapped her purse closed, annoyed at herself for automatically making excuses.

“Grandmama! Grandmama!” Laurel jumped up and down. “We’re coming to live with you!”

“Yes, you are. Come give me a hug.” Julia opened her arms and Laurel ran into them.

Kathryn turned to look back down the hill at the tail end of the cab as it disappeared around the iron gates. In the distance, a metallic sheet of water spread out to the cloudless blue horizon, broken only by a green hump of land called Bainbridge Island and the snow-dusted Olympic Mountains. Puget Sound. This is the place where eagles drift by. A line from one of Jimmy’s songs. Too many lines came to her now, not just as song lyrics—but the words gave a timelessness to his thoughts and proof he had once lived.

With a loud hiss of air brakes, a green-and-yellow Mayflower moving van turned up into the driveway. It was done, she thought.

“Come along now, Kathryn. There’s so much to do.” Julia disappeared inside with Laurel still chattering excitedly.

Unmoving, Kathryn clung to her handbag with both hands and stared up at the imposing house where her husband grew up, and where now her daughter would do the same. In the useless days since Jimmy’s death, nothing had changed the feeling that she was trapped between him and their child. Trapped. She felt it now. She had no home anymore. She had no husband. Laurel was here. Julia was here. Some part of her must still be here? That’s what she told herself.

Kathryn put one foot in front of the other and said, “I can do this.”

Within two weeks, the tension between the women in Jimmy Peyton’s life could be cut with a knife, and Kathryn, who didn’t handle conflict well to begin with, was quickly losing her will to fight Julia.

The first incident happened when Kathryn unpacked Jimmy’s framed records. Just looking at them tore her apart, so she put them in a box and sent them up to the attic, only to come home a day later to find them displayed in the front entry hall, where everyone could see them the moment they stepped through the door. Crying, she hid them under her bed. At dinner that evening—meals that nightly consisted of Jimmy’s favorites—Julia confronted her.

“You took down Jimmy’s records.”

“Yes.”

Her mother-in-law angrily chain-smoked through dinner, until the silence was thick as cigarette smoke and sitting there became unbearable. Kathryn stood. “It’s time for your bath, Laurel.”

“Let the child have dessert.” Julia dropped her linen napkin on her plate and slid a bowl of ice cream in front of her granddaughter.

Kathryn sat down again and stared at the heavy gold draperies on the windows. Underneath them were pale sheers covering the glass panes. She felt as invisible as those sheers.

“Johnny Ace’s family gave his records to a museum,” Julia said.

“The records should go to Laurel someday.”

“Laurel will know they’re important if they’re hanging in the entry.” Julia’s voice was clipped. “I took down a Picasso and the Matisse.”

Later that night, Kathryn rehung the records, then walked to her bedroom, closed the door, and lay there staring at nothing and feeling everything. From then on, she came in the house through a side door or the kitchen.

Between the time she had agreed to let their downtown apartment go and their actual move, Julia had redone Jimmy’s bedroom for Laurel, but the adjoining playroom remained untouched from Jimmy’s childhood. A few nights later, Kathryn walked in on Julia with Laurel in her lap while they looked at old slides through a viewfinder.

“Come sit with us, Kathryn. I don’t believe you’ve ever seen these photos.”

“Come, Mama. Come here. Daddy had a red tricycle just like mine.”

Already Laurel sounded like Julia. Come here. Come with me. Come there. Come. Come. Come.

So Kathryn looked at photo after photo, each one drawing a little more of the life from her. She didn’t tell Evie when they talked on the phone that night, because she didn’t want any more stress. These days she folded so easily under pressure. But she slipped the rental section of the Sunday morning paper under her arm and in the quiet of her bedroom began to circle the ads.

On the sly the next week, she looked at a small house in Magnolia with a backyard and a view of the sound, and she came home later than she’d planned and rushed right to the kitchen to make Laurel lunch. On her way to find her daughter, Julia stopped her. Kathryn tried to escape. “I’m taking Laurel a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

“It’s one o’clock. She’s already eaten. I gave her a ham salad sandwich.”

“Laurel doesn’t like ham.”

“Of course she does. It was Jimmy’s favorite.” Julia took the plate from Kathryn and set it on a nearby table. “Come. I have something to show you.” She led her out through the back of the house, past the new swing set and jungle gym, to a break of cedars that bordered the back lawn. Julia stopped. “Look, Kathryn.”

Between those trees was a small building, a miniature of the big house. Julia handed her a key. “Go inside.”

What Kathryn had assumed was a playhouse for Laurel was a large open room with shelves along the walls and a deep work sink and tiled counter under a wide front window.

Julia leaned against the counter, her hands resting on the rim. “You can see Laurel’s play area from here. And from that long window. I thought we could put your wheel there. The kiln is around the corner so this room won’t get too hot. And that refrigerator is for the clay.”

“I don’t know what to say.” And Kathryn didn’t. “This is wonderful.”

“Good.” Julia cupped a hand around a match, held it to the cigarette hanging from her lips, then tossed back her head and exhaled smoke. “I know coming here wasn’t easy for you. I wanted you to know I’m glad you’re here.” For a raw instant, Julia stared at her with the expression of an animal caught high in a tree, staring down at the hunter and his gun. “Enjoy it.” Julia turned and left.

The studio of Kathryn’s dreams couldn’t have been any better. Light and warmth came through the window; the tiles were gleaming, the room pristine, new still, no earthy smell of damp or baking clay. The walls were white, stark, and clean, without a trace of life. As she stood there, her past was wiped out, her future hauntingly empty.

But something else haunted her. She looked back to where Julia had just stood and realized she understood her mother-in-law’s terrified look. Only that morning Kathryn had seen it in the mirror.

Over the next few days, Kathryn stopped reading the rental ads and Julia stopped telling her what to do and how to feel. Kathryn was dressing after a shower when she heard Laurel singing. It sounded like she was jumping on the bed next door.

Kathryn ran into the hallway. “Laurel! Tell me you are not jumping on your grandmother’s bed.” She entered Julia’s suite for the first time.

Laurel was bouncing jubilantly on her grandmother’s silk-dressed bed and chanting, “I love coffee, I love tea …”

“Stop it!”

Laurel looked at her midbounce.

“She’s fine, Kathryn.” Julia came out of her bathroom rubbing cold cream on her face. “I told her she could jump on it.” Her robe matched the room, which was a clean soft white. Even the furniture, including a dressing table in one corner and a hi-fi in the other, were painted white, and the suite was luxuriously decorated from the carpet and the bed linens to the silk draperies on two long mullioned windows that looked out over the water. Between those long windows was a five-by-eight-foot canvas of bold colors, contemporary like most of Julia’s art. Kathryn felt the blood drain to her feet.

“It’s impressive, isn’t it?” Julia used a tissue to wipe the cream off. “There’s another over the bed.”

Kathryn faced the bed where Laurel was still jumping.

“The artist is Espinosa. I bought them a while back. Their value must be rising, although Lord knows I paid enough for them to begin with. The gallery called a week ago. The artist died recently and her family has been trying to track down all her pieces. The canvases fit so perfectly in here I don’t think I want to sell them. I decorated the whole room around them.”

Kathryn found her voice. “Do you know who that artist is?”

“Rachel Espinosa. A Spanish artist.”

“She was married to Rudy Banning.”

“Banning?” Julia sat down. “Banning?” There was a hollowness to her voice and her skin was gray. She looked up at Kathryn. “He killed Jimmy. Rudy Banning killed my son.”

“Rachel Espinosa Banning died in the same accident. She had an art show that night. Didn’t you see the newspapers?”

Julia shook her head. “I couldn’t read them. I didn’t want to read them. I was afraid to read them.”

“She and her husband left the show arguing. He lost control of the car.”

“My God.” Julia stood. “My God …” She walked into the bathroom and shut the door.

Kathryn was left to stare at the paintings, first one and then the other, until they all blurred together and she couldn’t see them anymore.

Later that night, Kathryn awoke from the throes of a nightmare and sat up, startled at the sound of Jimmy’s music playing so loudly from the next room.

Laurel came to her bed. “Mama. The music’s too loud. Make it stop.”

Kathryn tucked her in. “Stay here. I’ll ask Grandmama to turn it off.” What the hell was Julia thinking? She rapped on the door. “Julia?” Inside, she froze. Her mother-in-law stood on the bed, a long kitchen knife in her hand, the painting slashed from one corner to the other. “Julia!”

Calmly, she sliced down the other side and faced Kathryn, then stepped down to the carpet. “I don’t want them in this room. In this house.” Julia started toward the other painting.

“Wait! Don’t.”

“I need to destroy it. They destroyed my life. They killed my son.”

“You said the family wants the paintings.”

“They do.” Julia looked so small and lost and confused, not like someone capable of setting your teeth on edge. She merely looked half there.

“Then don’t destroy them. To never sell them back is the best revenge.” Wicked words, she knew, but that made saying them all the better. “Never sell them.”

Julia looked from the knife in her hand to the other painting on the wall. She took deep breaths and wiped at her tears with the sleeve of her silk robe, then handed Kathryn the knife. Kathryn put her arm around her. “It’s okay.”

“Nothing will ever be okay again.” Julia started crying and leaned against her, no longer hard as stone but frail and brittle as shale.

“Come with me,” Kathryn said. “You can sleep in one of the guest rooms tonight. I’ll have the paintings removed tomorrow.”

“I’ll never sell them. You’re right, Kathryn. We will never sell them.”

PART TWO

1970

We often make people pay dearly for what

we think we give them.

Marie Josephine de Suin de Beausac

CHAPTER 5

Newport Beach, California

The soil was rich in this Golden State, dark as the oil pumped up from its depths. Bareroot roses planted in the ground bloomed in a matter of weeks, and every spring the lantana tripled in breadth, filling the narrow property lines between homes where every square foot was valued in tens of thousands. Roots from the pepper trees unearthed backyard fences, and eucalyptus grew high into the blue skies, like fabled beanstalks, shooting up so swiftly the bark cracked away and fell dusty to the ground. If you knelt down and dug your hands into the dirt, you could smell its fecundity, and when you stood up you might look—or even be—a little taller.

Billboards sold everyone on growth, and the coastal hills swelled with tracks of housing because people hungered for a false sense of peace from the Pacific views. Newport was not the small resort enclave it had once been, with new restaurants now perched on the waterfront, housed in everything from canneries and beam-and-glass buildings to a grounded riverboat. Luxury homes stood on most lots, which had been subdivided into smaller shapes that couldn’t be measured in anything as archaic as an acre. At the entrances to entire neighborhoods, white crossbars blocked the roads and were raised and lowered by a uniformed security guard in a hut, a kind of cinematic image that brought to mind border crossings and cold wars. But the guard wasn’t there to keep people out; he was there to keep prestige in.

The Banning boys grew into young men here, tall and athletic, golden like everything in California. Thirteen years had changed who they were, now brothers separated by a demand to be something they weren’t. They wanted to win. They had everything, except their grandfather’s approval.

As soon as the opportunity arose, Victor Banning had bought the homes on either side of him, torn them down and renovated the Lido house until it spanned five lots, encompassing the whole point. The place had three docks, boasted a full basketball court and seven garages.

Today, Banning Oil Company was BanCo, involved in everything from petroleum by-products, fuel, and manufacturing to the development of reclaimed oil land. Annually listed as a Fortune 500 company, it was the kind of proving ground hungry young executives clamored to join.

Hunger wasn’t what had sent Jud Banning to work for his grandfather the previous May, when he’d graduated from Stanford Business School in the top five percent with a master’s in corporate finance along with degrees in business and marketing. Expectation sent him there, Victor’s idea of natural order.

Every summer since the start of high school both Jud and his brother had worked for the company in some capacity—mostly peon. But a career working for his grandfather wasn’t the golden opportunity Jud’s grad school buddies imagined. For as much as the house and business had changed, Victor hadn’t. He was still difficult and demanding. Nepotism didn’t feel like favoritism when Victor Banning was the one doling it out.

It was early spring now, a time of year when the morning marine layer seldom hung over the coast, so the sun glinted off the water and reflected from the glass of waterfront homes across the isle; it soaked through a wall of windows on the water side of the Banning home. The dining room grew warm, sunlight spreading like melted butter over the room and over Jud Banning, who was sound asleep at the dining table.

He sat up, suddenly awake. And just as on the last three mornings, the housekeeper stood over him holding a carafe of coffee. He glanced around the room, a thread of panic in his voice. “What time is it?”

“Early.” Time was either early or late in Maria’s eyes. Days, weeks, and months were noted only if they held religious significance—Ash Wednesday, Lent, the Assumption of Mary. You could ask her when the steaks would be done and she’d tell you how to butcher the cow. She had come to work from Mexico as cook, housekeeper, and nanny two days after Jud and Cale arrived, and thirteen years later she was still the only woman in an all-male household. She set the coffee and a mug down with a meaningful thud. “You fall asleep here every night, Jud. Papers everywhere.”

“I know. I know.”

“Mr. Victor is coming home today. You want him to see you like this?”

“He won’t. The board meeting is today.”

“Beds are for sleeping. Desks are for working. Tables are for eating.”

“I’ve never eaten a table,” he said, deadpan. She merely looked at him, so he changed the subject. “I won’t be here next week. I’m going to the island with Cale tomorrow.”

“That boy.” She shook her head and headed for the kitchen. “He never comes home.”

“He’s busy with school.”

“He’s busy with the girls,” Maria said and disappeared around the corner.

Jud could hear the sound of Barbara Walters’s voice on the Today show coming from the kitchen TV, a sign he wasn’t late. Under the charts and graphs, notes, and P&Ls piled on the table he found his watch; it read seven fifteen. He slipped it on and ran both hands through his shaggy hair. He didn’t cut it, just to annoy Victor. Unlike Cale, Jud kept his revolts on a more subtle scale.

Around him were weeks’ worth of paperwork, but stacked on a nearby chair were glossy black presentation folders with his proposal ready for board approval. Today was the first Friday of the month, and the board meeting would begin as always at precisely 10 A. M. From the moment he’d been able to negotiate with another supplier, he knew this was a winner of a deal. It would cut the proposed cost for new oil tankers by over two million dollars, a figure he expected would bowl them over.

So an hour later, he came down the stairs whistling as he tied the knot in his new tie, then shrugged into his suit coat and stopped by a mirror for a quick look. Tugging down on his cuffs, he said, “Old man, have I got a deal for you.”

A few minutes later Maria met him at the door. “Take Mr. Victor’s newspapers with you.” She dumped them on the box of folders he carried and opened the front door for him. “It’s Good Friday. You go to church.”

“Sure thing.” He hadn’t been in a church since his college roommate got married.

The static, machine-gun racket of an air compressor came from the garages, where there was room for seven cars, plus a full maintenance bay and workshop. Harlan had his head under the hood of Victor’s silver Bentley. Three sports cars were parked in the small bays on the left side. A ’59 Porsche 1600D roadster, a ’63 Corvette convertible, and a Jaguar XKE. All of them belonged to Cale. All of them were bright red. But his brother never drove any single one of them with the regularity of a favorite. No matter how many expensive red sports cars Cale bought, none would ever be a replacement for their dad’s MG.

The MG was parked in the fourth bay, gleaming like California sunshine because Harlan was a man who truly loved cars. Every Banning automobile ran to its capacity as a finely tuned machine, engine smooth, body always washed, and the chrome and tires polished.

Jud opened the driver’s door, dropped the folders on the floor, and threw his briefcase on the passenger seat. He opened the trunk and tossed the newspapers inside—the Los Angeles Times, the Examiner, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Register, the Daily Pilot, and the San Diego Tribune. He didn’t understand his grandfather. If you’d read one paper, hell, you’d read ’em all.

Harlan lifted his head out from underneath the Bentley hood and grabbed a rag from the back pocket of his gray work coveralls. He spotted Jud, frowned, and glanced at an old Banning Oil Company clock on the back wall, then switched off the noisy compressor. “You’re leaving early. Your grandfather’s plane isn’t coming in until nine thirty.”

“I need to be there early.”

But Harlan’s expression said what every Banning employee knew. No one did any board business before Victor arrived. Harlan stuffed the rag in his pocket and went back to work.

Jud let the engine warm up and backed out, waited for the electronic gates, tapping the steering wheel impatiently before he honked the horn twice and sped away.

The Santa Ana headquarters for BanCo occupied the top seven floors of the Grove Building, a glass, metal, and concrete structure that took its vanilla name from the old orange groves that had been plowed under to clear the building site. From Fifth and Main, towering glass buildings bled from one mirrored image into another, looking nothing like farmland. Sound carried up from the nearby freeways, the constant hum of cars along Interstate 5, and the air had an energized buzz, a swarming sound of human activity that hung above busy streets at lunchtime and after five.

On the fifteenth floor, no traffic noise came into the boardroom as Victor Banning sat in front of his unopened proposal folder and listened to Jud talk.

“I know Banning has never dealt with Marvetti Industries,” Jud said. “But I’ve met with them and found their tankers to be top of the line.”

Victor heard the word “Marvetti” and stood up. “This meeting is over.” A pointed pause of absolute silence existed for a nanosecond, then the board members dropped their folders and fled the room like rats from a sinking ship.

Jud stared at him, red-faced. “What the hell was that all about?”

“We’ll talk in my office.” Victor headed for his private office.

Silently, Jud followed him inside and shut the doors. “Okay. What’s going on?”

Victor took his time. He sat down at his desk, a large, impressive piece of rectangular furniture that put space between him and everyone else. “You tell me.”

“Tell you what? You cut the meeting off in the middle of my presentation.”

“To stop you before you made a complete fool of yourself.”

Immediately Jud’s hackles went up, his body language stiff and all too readable. Sometimes Victor forgot how young he was. By the time Victor was twenty-five, he’d learned to be ruthless, how to protect his ass and his business. He had a wife and child at home and he worked eighteen-hour days with single-minded purpose.

“I wasn’t going to make a fool of myself. Do you think I don’t know how to make a presentation?” Jud drove a hand through his goddamned long hair. “Shit …”

“You’re standing knee-deep in shit right now with this Marvetti deal.”

“Marvetti’s company has the rigs ready for purchase. We don’t have to wait for Fisk to reinforce their tankers. We don’t have to order the tractors separately. With Marvetti, it’s all one deal and the tanker reinforcements have already been done. All at a cost that’s a third less.”

Victor just looked at him. He hadn’t done the right research.

“This deal—my deal—will save the company two million dollars.” Jud held up two fingers. “Two million dollars.”

“I can’t believe my own flesh and blood could be so fucking stupid. Just what did they teach you in six years of college?”

“Enough to figure out how to cut a deal with one of the biggest suppliers in the world.”

Victor laughed at him.

“We’ve never dealt with Marvetti before.” Jud tapped his chest. “I got us in. Me.”

“You actually think I can’t make a deal with anyone I want?”

His grandson had no quick comeback. The kid wasn’t stupid, just green. Jud’s voice was quiet when he said, “I checked the company records. There’s no record of any deal with Marvetti.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Because we didn’t have an in.”

“Who told you that?”

“Joe Syverson said there was a rumor that Marvetti hated you.”

“I wouldn’t do business with him when I was small potatoes, and I sure as hell won’t do it now. You should have asked me, not Syverson.”

“The last time I asked you a question, you said you weren’t going to wet-nurse me through my job. You told me to learn to think for myself.”

“‘Think’ is the definitive word, Jud.”

“Go to hell.”

“For Christ’s sake, stop glaring at me and calm down. Tell me how this deal of yours came about.”

“I ran into Richard Denton at the club a few months back.” Jud began to pace in front of Victor’s desk. “He asked me to have drinks with his foursome. Marvetti’s sales manager was one of the group.”

“So they came after you.”

“No.” Jud spun around and faced him. “That’s not what happened. I had to work my butt off for this deal. I did everything but kiss his ass.”

The kid never saw it coming, Victor thought. “Was Fitzpatrick there?”

“Yes.”

Victor looked up at Jud. “So you think men like Denton and Fitzpatrick are going to welcome you into their inner business circle just like”—Victor snapped his fingers—“that? Why would they do that? Because you went to Stanford? Because they like your looks? Because you drive a hot little MG, wear cashmere sweaters, and can shoot three under par on the back nine? Or do you think it just might be because you’re my grandson?” Victor leaned forward, his palms flat on the desktop. “You’re a snot-nosed kid just out of college.”

Jud’s head snapped back as if Victor had punched him.

“You’re twenty-five years old and you have a helluva lot to learn.” Victor took a long deep breath and sat back in his chair. “First rule of business: Examine the offer. Don’t look first at what kind of deal they’re giving you. Look at what’s in it for them.”

“I know what’s in it for them. A multimillion-dollar deal with BanCo. That’s what I can give them,” Jud said, wounded pride in his voice.

Victor understood pride in all its forms. “You’re exactly right.”

Jud looked confused. He ran on ego instead of instinct, something he had yet to develop.

“If a smart businessman wants something and can’t get it, he looks to his opponent’s weakest spot.” Victor paused, then said, “In my case, you’re it.”

Jud spoke through a tight jaw. “Just what do you want from me?”

“I want you to do your job. When you start a deal, you make damn sure you know everything there is to know about who you’re dealing with. Especially their motives. You find out their shoe size, their kids’ names, their goddamn blood type. Know how much they paid the Internal Revenue Service last year. Know every fucking thing there is to know before you ever negotiate anything.”

“What’s wrong with Marvetti? Why won’t you deal with them?”

“I’m not going to do your job. You need to use your head, dammit. I want you to understand that—”

“You want me to be perfect!”

“No. I don’t believe in miracles.” Victor would have bet Jud wanted to hit him right then. He took a deep breath. “What I want is for you to learn to work the same way I do. I want you to think like I do.”

“Why in the hell would I want to be like you?”

Victor stood up. “You cocky young fool. You have no idea of the mistakes ahead of you.”

“Yes I do. I’m looking at my biggest mistake, old man. I thought I could be part of this company. You’re the one who’s mistaken if you think I ever want to be anything like you!”

“Then you’re stupid, and I’ve never thought that of you, Jud. You wanted to learn this business. Then watch me and goddamn learn it!”

“I didn’t ask to be raked over the coals every time I turn around! I can’t do anything right around you!” Jud leaned on the desk.

They were almost nose to nose. Victor straightened, then spoke in a calmer tone. “Your only problem is that you’re young. And you don’t like to admit you’re wrong.”

“With you I’m always wrong.”

“You’re not always wrong. You just think you know everything.”

“Then I guess I am just like you.”

In the utter silence that followed, Victor asked himself how many mistakes it would take to crack through this kid’s hard head. He thought Jud was like Rudy in that and he looked at the angry young man standing before him and felt as if he’d been thrown back in time. Rudy would have run the company into the ground, but Jud was whip-smart, took chances, and he was the stronger of the boys. Unlike Cale—who was screwing his way through Loyola—a woman would never get between Jud and the business. Jud didn’t think with his fly.

“You think I’m tough on you? Well, I am.” Victor sat again, leaning back in his chair and never taking his eyes off Jud. “I built this business by being tough and I’ll be damned if I’m going to lose it because you’re too hardheaded to listen and learn.”

“So what am I supposed to tell Marvetti? My grandfather said no deal. I can hear the buzz now. ‘Jud Banning is a real pussy. A puppet. He does exactly what his grandfather tells him.’ Great … just great.”

“You want me to give you all the answers and I’m not going to. I didn’t have anyone to tell me what to do. Solve this yourself. Show the world the kind of a man you are.”

“So in this hard-edged, tough business world of yours, you become a man by welshing on a deal? How in the hell will anyone ever take me seriously?”

Victor leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and merely looked at him. He refused to lead Jud through life by the nose.

“Damn you, Victor. This is my deal. I have to lose my respect and integrity because you don’t like Marvetti?”

“You lost your integrity when you let his flunkies lure you into a business deal with him. Find out for yourself why. Then you come and tell me how good your deal is.”

Anger, humiliation, and something almost elemental were in Jud’s taut features. “I want the chance to make my own mark on this company, to do things my way.”

“Your way is wrong.” Victor didn’t move. Jud was pigheaded but Victor knew he wouldn’t cross that final line—the one that would send his butt out of the company. The silence between them was tense, and silence between people said more than words ever could. “Go on.” Victor waved a hand and looked away. “Get out of here.” He picked up a folder on his desk, but when Jud was almost out the door he called his name. “Don’t come back until you’re ready to do things the right way.”

Jud jerked open the door. “You mean your way.”

“Yes. I mean my way.”

Loyola University Marymount College, Del Rey Hills, California

There were no doctors in the Banning family. Cale wasn’t trying to follow in some relative’s hallowed footsteps. He defied Victor’s rule of natural order, but not for the sake of defiance. When Cale was young and someone asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, his answer was always the same. While his friends vacillated between a cowboy one week and a fireman the next, he saved the life of everything from earthworms to a neighbor’s half-drowned cat. Whenever a seagull flew into the almost invisible glass windows of the Lido house, Cale would put the senseless gull in a box with a beach towel warm from the dryer, and an hour later the bird would have flown away.

Those nights he would sleep without moving. He would crawl out of his bed the next morning, the sheets still tucked in, and later Maria would swear he’d slept on the floor or in Jud’s room. The truth was, he never tried to sleep in Jud’s room after that first month. Their boyhood closeness was just that, part of boyhood. Jud was his brother, but like those unsuspecting seagulls, Cale had slammed headfirst into a glass wall Victor built between them enough times to not fly there anymore.

By the time Cale started high school, he sought his comfort from the opposite sex. At college those first few years, partying was preferable to catching some Z’s, and he had a new freedom living away from home. Everyone slept in dorms, which was where he headed that afternoon as he left the student post office with an envelope from the University of Washington.

A cool afternoon breeze swept in from the Pacific, pushing the smog farther inland and away from the campus perched on a bluff above the western fringes of the LA basin. Students sat on benches and lounged across lawns surrounded with the clean smell of mown grass and beds of rosebushes with flowers the size of an open hand. As on most days, older priests and nuns played boccie at one end of the green, a spot called the Sunken Garden, and some students tossed around a Frisbee at the other end. A banner painted with a bulldog behind bars and the cry Pound the Zags! hung between two huge magnolia trees in the middle of the mall, because tonight—the last night before spring break—was the night when Loyola challenged Gonzaga for the number one position in their division.

Cale’s mind wasn’t on the big game when he left Saint Robert’s Hall and headed straight for the senior apartments, a three-story stucco-and-wood building that could have easily melted into any block of apartments in any part of LA. Four seniors shared each two-bedroom unit, but the place was empty when he tossed his books on an orange Formica table, grabbed a cold Coors, and headed for his room, which smelled like old socks, wet towels, and pizza. He sat down on the bed, staring down at the white envelope for a long time before he opened it and unfolded the letter.

March 24, 1970

Dear Mr. Banning:

We regret to inform you that you do not meet our requirements for admission into the University of Washington School of Medicine.

Blah … blah … blah … He crushed the letter into a ball and rested his head on his fists. Every letter was the same. The rejections from the first-tier schools had come rapid-fire fast—Harvard, Stanford, Johns Hopkins. The rest came week after week, like some unending boxing match he was destined to lose.

The door flew open with a bang and his roommate and teammate shuffled in singing the team fight song off-key, “Willie and the tall boys are dancing, on the home court tonight.”

William Dorsey was the grandson of a big band leader whose musical talent was not passed on to subsequent generations, but whose showmanship was. Will loved a cheering crowd, whether it was on the basketball court or in the dorm back in their freshman year when he was the only guy who could chug a six-pack of Colt 45 malt liquor in under three minutes and not throw up. He was a basketball star. Six foot six, a loose walker, all rubber arms and legs, and on the court he was magic in motion. His jump shot was tops; he could score more points in two minutes than any other player in the division; and it was no surprise when he was unanimously voted captain of the Lions. Scouts had been around him at almost every game.

Will kicked the door closed and stopped to blow a ritual kiss at a color eight-by-ten photo of Jeannine Byer, a knockout blonde, a Mount Saint Mary’s nursing student. He gave Cale a quick glance, then stopped. “Who died?”

“Me.” Cale held up the crumpled letter.

“Another one? Which school?”

“U Dub.”

“Ah, hell, man. You didn’t wanna go there anyway. It rains all the time.” Will dropped his books on the floor, picked up a metal wastebasket, and balanced it on his head. “Here.” He pointed to the basket. “That letter belongs in here. Those sorry bastards. One throw. Come on, man. Go for it!”

Cale pitched the letter into the air; it arced across the room and dropped inside the basket with a soft ping.

Will lifted Cale’s Coors can to his mouth like a mike. He blew into it, making a hollow sound. Mimicking a famous American sportscaster, he said, “We have an-nuther goal scored by Cale Banning tonight. He is well on his way to breaking all … ex-zisting records for med school rejection! But there’s hope! This erudite fuckup of Loyola has not exhausted all his options. Canada? Mexico? The third world countries? Or if all else fails, Mis-ter Cale Banning can apply to Uncle-Sam-Wants-U, where he will swiftly be transferred to the renowned University of Da Nang!”

“Funny.” Cale threw a wet towel at him. “University of Da Nang, my ass.”

“Hell, if I were sending men into the jungle, I wouldn’t want dropouts leading the way.” Will swept a couple of eight-track tapes off the bed, fell back flat on the mattress, and crossed his big feet. He was wearing squeaky huarache sandals he’d bought for a buck on a weekend trip down to Tijuana over Thanksgiving break. “When I was dreaming of the draft, I was thinking NBA, not U. S. Army.” He folded his hands behind his head and lay staring up at the ceiling before he raised his head off the pillow and looked at Cale. “Your MCATs aren’t doing it?”

“Med schools are packed. No one wants to go to Da Nang.”

“Too many body counts on the news. Was that the last of your applications?”

“No. I haven’t heard from San Diego, Texas, and University of Southern California.”

“What are you going to do if they all say nada?”

Head down, Cale rested his elbows on his knees and rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know.”

“I can’t believe you gave away your Grade Point Average for a forty-inch bust. Did you go to any classes last year?”

“Some.”

There was a long pause before Will asked, “Was she worth it?”

Cale laughed bitterly. “No.”

“Have you talked to your grandfather yet?”

“Oh, yeah. Sure. I’m looking forward to that conversation.”

Will picked up a basketball and began to toss it from hand to hand. “Victor Banning. The great and powerful Oz. I only met him once. Kept wishing I had a crucifix to hold in front of my face.”

“One of his better qualities.”

“He has to be able to help you. With his connections?” Will quit tossing the basketball and faced Cale. “What would happen if you had a heart-to-heart talk with him?”

“He doesn’t have a heart.”

“Talk to him.”

“I’ve spent years trying to talk to my grandfather. No one talks to Victor. He talks to them. Every time I go home, I hear about how I’m throwing my future away. It’s one of the many reasons I don’t go home.” Cale looked down, then shook his head. “God, Will. How could I screw up so bad?”

The only sound in the room was the basketball bouncing off the ceiling, then nothing but a long silent pause. Will held the basketball at chest level, looking at him. “Bad-ly,” he said, and threw the ball at Cale.

Instinctively, Cale caught it, then laughed. “Kiss my ass, you literate jock.”

Will grabbed the ringing phone. “Timothy Leary’s House of Hash. You smoke ’em, we coke ’em.” His gaze shifted to Cale. “Yeah, he’s here … somewhere. Let me see if I can find him. Oh, I think I see his foot. There! Yes! In the corner! He’s buried under … Wait! Wait, I need a skip-loader here.” He paused for drama, then shook his head. “Uh-oh. Too bad. Looks like he’s a goner. Make a note for his epitaph, will you? ‘Here lies Cale Banning, who, on April 3, 1970, suffocated to death under the largest pile of med school rejections in the history of the modern world.’” Will held out the phone and whispered, “It’s Jud. Lucky Mr. Four-F.”

“Hey, there, big brother.”

“Hey, you.” Jud’s bass voice sounded exactly like their dad’s. Cale always had to take that one extra second to remember who was on the other end.

“Will Dorsey is a nutcase,” Jud said.

“Yeah.” Cale looked at Will. “I know. You ought to try living with him. It’s like being trapped inside a Ferlinghetti poem.”

Will flipped him off and jogged into the bathroom. A couple of seconds later, Cale heard the shower running, then the tinny notes of a transistor radio playing a Jimi Hendrix song. “What’s going on?” Cale asked Jud.

“I’m on a pay phone at the steamer dock, waiting to board the boat. I’m going to the island a day early.”

Damn … He’d forgotten this was the weekend they’d planned to meet at the Catalina place. “I can’t leave yet, Jud. There’s a play-off game tonight.”

“I know. I just wanted to let you know I’m going over early. I’ve got to get out of here today.”

“What’s wrong?”

“What isn’t wrong.” Jud sounded disgusted.

“Victor.”

“Yeah, well, don’t get me started. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”

They hung up. He hadn’t seen Jud in months. Cale used school as an excuse to avoid going home; it had become a comfortable habit. He used sports, studying, anything to weasel out of going to Newport. Nothing waited for him at home but Victor’s expectations. He grabbed his game gear from under the bed, slung the athletic bag over a shoulder, and hammered on the bathroom door, then opened it. Steam hit him in the face. “How long are you going to be in here?”

“Till I’m clean.”

Cale turned down the radio.

“What’s going on with Mr. Perfect?” Will asked.

“Jud’s not perfect.”

“He’s a helluva lot closer than anyone I know.”

Cale glanced in the mirror at his foggy reflection. Smeared and far from perfect. Maybe his grandfather wasn’t the only person he was avoiding. Jud had been accepted to his first choice—Stanford—for both undergraduate and graduate studies. He wouldn’t have any idea what a rejection letter looked like. Cale’s most insurmountable problems were a piece of cake for Jud, who skated through life on silver skates, never slipping, never falling. Never failing. Jud first took off for college when Cale was still in high school, and he knew he would never forget that summer, because Victor gave Jud their dad’s MG.

By August it was just Victor and him, which meant they lived in a house of silence until a long weekend or school vacation when Jud came home. Life was pretty much a set formula. Jud set the bar; Cale usually failed to meet it. From the very day they drove up to their grandfather’s home in that long black limo, his life had been very different from his older brother’s, and he had the feeling that was exactly the way Victor wanted it.

Cale zipped his shaving kit closed. “I’m going to meet my brother tomorrow at the Catalina place. Since it looks like you’re gonna stay in that shower till graduation, I’m heading over to the gym. I’ll shower there.” He closed the door, but stopped in the middle of the room. The torn envelope sat on his bed. Talk to Victor, Will had said. Cale could just hear his grandfather now. You young fool. You let a girl snatch away your dreams. Your only job was to go to college and study, not skip classes and screw some sweet young thing. Victor had an uncanny ability to zero in on an open, bleeding wound and stick a knife squarely into it.

Cale threw the envelope in the trash. No way he would go to Newport now. Will had been right on when he’d called Victor the great and powerful Oz. He was. But for Cale, no place was home.

CHAPTER 6

During the years she lived with Julia, Kathryn Peyton had lost herself. Her mother-in-law hadn’t been old when Jimmy died, only fifty-five to Kathryn’s twenty-three, but she was frail, her bones the first thing anyone noticed about her and much of what gave her the hard look that went along with her controlling nature. With Laurel in the house, Julia’s mind stayed sharp, but her body hadn’t. Those bones shrank into nothingness over twelve years, and even Julia, with her sheer determination to control everything, couldn’t stop her own death.

Those same twelve years had shrunk Kathryn into a nonentity. She was Laurel’s mother, Julia’s daughter-in-law, a reclusive artist known only through the pieces sold. No Kathryn. Her life had been dissected into two precise pieces—before Jimmy died and after Jimmy died. Everything before was only a dream, everything afterward alien territory.

It wasn’t until recently that she had faced her own existence with clearer eyes, and saw what it had been—one distraction after another. Laurel needed her. Julia needed her. Her work—a place to hide from what she was really feeling. Then one day she was living in her dead mother-in-law’s home with no one to tell her what to do or how to live. She didn’t fit anymore and felt swallowed by the emptiness of her own existence. Until Evie called with a plan. She was getting married and moving to Chicago, so Kathryn should buy the house on Catalina Island. The timing was perfect. Nothing was keeping her in Seattle. “After all, Kay,” Evie said, “you’re almost thirty-six years old.”

So Kathryn bought the house and moved to Santa Catalina, a small Channel Island off the coast of Southern California, where everything was different. From the island village of Avalon, the moon looked as if it rose right out of the sea, and the palm trees stood so tall, like hands waving hello in the sea breezes. It was lazy here; things began only with an arrival from the mainland—a regatta, a steamship, or a seaplane. This was the land of glass-bottomed boats, of coves named after jewels, of starfish and abalone shells, a place where people preferred to drive golf carts instead of cars.

Esther Williams had leapt off an island cliff on horseback once, creating a small but dramatic piece of cinematic and island history. The movie studios had shipped a herd of buffalo over to film a Western, and left them to become part of the place, like the wild boars and herds of goats and other seemingly mythic animals. So, given all the elements, Catalina became the magic isle, a place that rose out of the fog, an emerald in a sea of sapphires, a place where the fish could really fly.

Here the rain didn’t come down in sheets of water so thick they blocked out life going on around you. Island sunshine made things appear clearer. You could see all the sharp edges and soft curves of life. Here, when you looked into a mirror, you saw what you had become, not what you had been.

Hiding in excuses wasn’t so easy in the clear air and sunshine, or inside a small house filled with rooms as colorful as her sister’s personality. So perhaps it wasn’t all that surprising when Kathryn shared a pitcher of margaritas and a platter of nachos earlier that evening with a man named Stephen Randall, whom she’d met at a Chamber of Commerce meeting the week before. She had sat down alone in the bar of the local Mexican restaurant and felt reckless for even showing up. She knew how to hide; she didn’t know how to date.

Just drinks, he told her when he’d come into her shop one afternoon. But tonight he came into the bar with his arms full of yellow daffodils, so drinks moved on to appetizers, and he left hours later with her home telephone number. Funny that she didn’t regret giving it to him, even now, as she set an overflowing vase on a glass table in her bedroom. His flowers were the same sunshine-warm shade as the walls. Happy colors, Evie called the paint she’d used inside the house. Daffodils were happy, like snapdragons, and pansies, and lost women who moved to small islands in the blue Pacific.

Wilmington Pier, Los Angeles Harbor

Laurel Peyton stood on the corner as the local bus pulled away from the wharf and headed back toward downtown LA. A slight breeze lifted her hat, so she pressed it down, picked up a large, rusty brown suede purse, and rushed toward the boat as she did almost every Friday, when she routinely made the two-hour boat trip home.

The SS Catalina was a three-hundred-foot white steamer, a ship really, but everyone called it a boat. As always, the Catalina was docked in the last slip, where nothing but an expanse of blue-gray water stood between her huge hull and the Channel Island she serviced. On most days, you could see the island from almost anywhere along the Southern California coast. Against the western horizon, Santa Catalina Island looked like an enormous sleeping camel, sometimes shrouded in marine mist and sometimes sitting there so clearly you could almost make out the saw-toothed outline of the trees along its ridges.

Laurel joined the long line waiting to board. The late afternoon sun was hot and shone at eye level. The sun was more intense in California, especially at the very end of land and on days like today, when no cool wind blew in off the ocean. People shifted in line and muttered impatiently, removing jackets and sweaters. Kids whined or ran about. Their mothers ignored them, fanning themselves with island pamphlets and folded-up guide maps.

Although she hadn’t lived in California a year yet, Laurel could spot the tourists with the innate eye of a native. Men in dark shirts wore straw hats with black hatbands and socks with their sandals. Women in floral print dresses carried white patent-leather purses and wore nylons. California women were true to the golden land and wore only their tanned skin, polished with a bit of baby oil.

Laurel glanced left at the sound of a deep male voice coming from a bank of pay phones. The young man leaned casually against the wall, his back to her. He was tall, with light brown hair and the lanky build of a movie idol. He wore khaki shorts and a polo shirt the color of fresh lemons, his skin looking darkly tanned against that light clothing. On his feet were sandals—no socks.

The line shifted with an almost unanimous sigh of relief as two crew members came down the gangplank and unlocked its chain. He glanced over his shoulder and she forgot to breathe. Paul Newman and Ryan O’Neal rolled into one. He was too old for her, really—in his mid-twenties—but when he walked past her, he winked.

She counted slowly to ten before she turned around, and had lost him while pretending to be so casual. The boarding line was backed up to beyond the turnstiles, four or five people wide. The Gray Line tourist buses in the parking lots still unloaded passengers, but he was tall enough to stand out in any crowd, so she systematically scanned the dock from right to left.

“Excuse me, missy.” A man tapped her on the shoulder. “You’re holding up the line.”

A gaping distance stood between her and the gangplank. “I’m sorry.” She rushed forward, her face red, struggling to sling her bag up her arm.

A familiar crewman greeted her at the gangplank. “Going home again?”

“Sure am. Looks like you have a full boat.”

“Spring break starts today. The next couple of weekends will be pretty wild. College kids. High school kids. Heard last year was almost as wild on the island as Palm Springs. This might be the last calm crossing for a while.”

Her frozen smile hid the truth: she had no idea what spring break on Catalina Island was like. She and her mother had lived there only since summer, after they had moved away from everyone and everything they’d ever known. Halfway up the gangplank she looked back over the crowd, searching, but the line was now just heads and hats and people milling together like spilled marbles. Once on board, she searched for that handsome face and yellow shirt, but soon gave up and went to find a seat.

An hour and a half later the seat felt hard as a rock. The sun glowed low on a vibrant pink horizon, a golden ball magically balancing itself on top of the blue sea. Passengers shifted to the bow, where the colors of the sunset looked like fire, which meant no lines in the snack bar. Inside, she stared at the black menu board with its crooked white letters. She glanced back and Paul O’Neal himself stood three people back. He smiled. She smiled back.

“What can I get for you?” The worker behind the snack counter waited impatiently, a plastic smile on his face.

She glanced quickly at the board and blurted out the first thing: “A white wine.” There was complete silence for an instant, the kind where you wish the floor would swallow you up.

“Can I see your ID, please?”

She dug through her bag pretending she had an ID. “It’s here somewhere. I’m certain of it.” She moved her face so close she could smell the old sticks of Juicy Fruit gum in the bottom. “Give me a second.” Her cheeks felt hot. She shoved her wallet into a dark corner at the bottom and looked up. “I’m sorry. My wallet isn’t here.”

“I can’t serve you any liquor without an ID.” Why did his voice sound like he was hollering on the ship’s loudspeaker? “Can I get you something else?”

She glanced at the board, then at her bag. “No wallet,” she lied, then walked away without looking back. She straight-armed one of the swinging doors, and the air hit her flushed face.

At the back of the boat, the seats were sheltered from the wind and spray. She sat down on a bench where she could lean her head back against the side of the ship and hide. Seagulls drafted alongside the boat and the mainland was a distant outline of dusky hillsides, where pinpoints of light began to sporadically wink back at her. It was still light out when the ship’s overhead lamp flickered on. The light was bright and white, so she opened her bag and pulled out her book, then reread the last page she’d read on the bus.

Someone came around the corner and stopped—a yellow shirt. She pulled the book so close she couldn’t read a word. The change jingled in his pocket as he sat down next to her.

How do I pretend I’m not the moron who was just carded?

He set down a plastic glass between them and sipped a beer.

Was she supposed to reach for it? If it wasn’t for her … well, she would just die … again. She shifted and looked down at the lonely glass.

“Are you going to let the ice melt in that wine?”

She lowered the book. “What?”

He handed her the plastic glass. “This is for you.”

“Oh. Thank you.” My God, but he was good-looking, and watching her with eyes the color of blue ice. “It’s good. Thanks.”

“That’s heavy reading you’ve got there. Is it for an economics class?”

“No.”

He laughed. “What kind of girl reads Wealth of Nations for fun?”

She closed the book and looked at the front jacket, then at him. “It’s a shame really. I had nothing else to read. I left all my Barbie comic books at home.”

“With your wallet?” he shot back.

“Yes.” She had to laugh, too. “With my wallet.”

“Okay,” he said. “I deserved that Barbie comment. I didn’t say that right at all, did I?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“And here I was trying to impress you.”

“You were? Why? Do I need impressing?”

He watched her for a long few seconds. “Maybe I was wrong again.”

“Maybe buying me a drink was impression enough. That was very sweet of you.”

“You looked thirsty.”

“Did I?” She laughed softly. “I thought I looked embarrassed.”

“That, too.” He sipped his beer and glanced out at the water.

She stared down at the drink in her hands and felt every awkward second of silence. “So what do you like to read?”

“After what I just said, I’m surprised you aren’t asking me if I can read.”

“Actually, I was thinking your reading material might be the kind that has staples in the centerfold.”

He burst out laughing. “I deserved that.”

“You probably did.”

“You’ve got a great sense of humor.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I don’t think I’m going to answer that. I’ll just get into more trouble.” He stood up. “I’d like another beer before they close. Do you want another drink?”

“No, thanks.”

She was smiling, probably a goofy smile that told the entire world what she was thinking. He was coming back. She sipped her drink at the railing, watching the island and the glimmering lights of Avalon, home after her mother moved them there when Laurel graduated high school. Moving was tough when she’d lived in a place where her friends had been her friends since they’d all played in a sandbox together. In a new town, Laurel was suddenly the outsider. All those lights before her and not a friend among them.

“We’re almost there.” He walked toward her, a dripping beer bottle in his hand.

“That didn’t take long.”

“No line.”

She felt different when he looked at her—like he was doing now—as if she weren’t a friendless, lonely thing. She longed to say something clever and memorable.

“Okay.” He braced his arms on the railing next to her, his beer in his hands. “Time to come clean. You didn’t leave your wallet at home.”

“No.”

“So, I’m guilty of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” There was a softness around his eyes and mouth, no judgment or censure.

“You could say that.”

“How minor?”

Laurel contemplated lying. In the right clothes, she looked at least twenty, but wanting to be older didn’t make you older. She faced him. “I’m seventeen.”

He choked on his beer. “Seventeen? You’re kidding.”

“No. I’ll be eighteen soon.”

He watched her, probably half hoping she would suddenly age five years, then swore under his breath. His gaze dropped to the drink in her hand. Without a word he took it and tossed it in the water.

She drew back from the rail and crossed her arms in front of her, equally silent, her body brittle, her knees locked.

He looked surprised at what he’d done, but not apologetic.

“You paid for the drink,” she said. “You can do what you want with it.”

He lifted his hand toward her cheek, almost approachable again, almost apologetic, and standing close enough for her to smell his aftershave. “You’re in high school?”

“No, I’m in college.”

“At seventeen?” Clearly he thought she was lying.

“I skipped the third grade. I graduated high school just after I turned seventeen.” She could almost read the word “jailbait” in his expression.

The loudspeaker crackled on. “Attention, please, we are now arriving at the Avalon dock, Catalina Island. Make certain you have all your personal belongings. All passengers will disembark on the starboard side of the ship. For safety, please securely hold the hands of all young children as you leave.” The loudspeaker cut off.

She gave him a direct look. “Do you want to hold my hand securely as we disembark?”

He didn’t laugh.

“I guess my age killed your sense of humor.”

For just a moment she thought he wanted to say something kind to her, but a group of young kids scattered away from the nearby railing and jumped up and down, shouting, “We’re here! We’re here!”

“We’re here,” she said over their noisy little bouncing heads. The kids ran around them in rambunctious circles. She broke eye contact, and when she looked up again he was shaking his head.

“I’m sorry.” He walked away and never once looked back.

She stood there, empty, embarrassed, ashamed, and upset. Maybe because of him. Maybe because of her. Listlessly, she picked up her thick book with its conservative literary jacket and dark, unaffected type. The things you could hide … She slipped off the paper jacket. Hot pink lettering glared back at her from the real cover—The Adventurers, by Harold Robbins. She dropped the other jacket into a nearby trash can, tucked the book under an arm, and made her way toward the gangplank.

Behind the hills the sunset glowed pink, and a noisy hum came from the crowds. Pole lights lit the dock and shone down on the boarding ramp. Only a few hundred feet down the dock was Crescent Street and the heart of town. Local boys sold newspapers and, for fifty cents, offered to cart suitcases in red wagons to side-street hotels and cozy island inns. The crowd split around girls in white shorts and sandals who handed out flyers with discount coupons for abalone burgers, lobsters, and pitchers of draft beer at two for one.

But nowhere in that crowd below her did Laurel see a tall, handsome man in a lemon yellow shirt. He had disappeared as if he had never existed. And for her, he didn’t exist. Not really, because she didn’t even know his name.

Victor checked the clock on his desk, stood—his foot on a floor button that buzzed his secretary—and effectively brought the magazine interview to an end. The interviewer’s questions had just gone in a direction he disliked. “I have another appointment.”

“But I have more questions, Mr. Banning … Victor. It’s only five thirty. You know this is our cover story.”

Victor laughed at him. “I wouldn’t be talking to you if this weren’t your cover story.”

The door to his office swung open and his secretary recited, “The car’s waiting, Mr. Banning. You’re running late.”

The journalist still sat there, a tape recorder on the arm of the chair and a shiny Italian pen in hand. He wore a clipped beard and his dark curly hair in a ponytail, which fell halfway down the back of a five-hundred-dollar suit.

Victor came from behind his desk. “I see I’ve reduced you to silence, which is best. We don’t speak the same language, son.” He left the young man juggling his pad and recorder, stammering for him to wait, and headed down the hall toward his private elevator.

The article would label him a corporate villain. At his center he was a hardscrabble oilman born in a boom-or-bust era, and the polar opposite of a journalist out to cauterize enterprise and whose radical point of view smacked of being all too trendy. An ill-fitting sobriety emanated from men like him, a languidness in the face of the real and vital things that changed the world around them.

That reporter’s Berkeleyesque scorn was detectable even when cloaked by a professional voice. With high degrees from expensive schools, his kind persuaded courts to stop the building of freeways, put hundreds of people out of work, boondoggled, and stopped progress to save a damned frog. Victor could have respected them if they were actually doing it for the frog, but men like him were faux avant-garde—the ultimate luxury for those who already had everything.

Victor and men of his ilk made things better for everyone: gas stations with car washes and streets fitted with drains so they wouldn’t flood; tax dollars that fed the public schools and highways, and opportunity for golden equity in land and homes with values that rose monthly.

Later, at home, he took an overly long shower—an attempt to wash off the grit of an interview that implied what he had accomplished in his life was all wrong. His annoyance was difficult to shake off. The seeds of it stayed with him even as he traveled north along the 405, Harlan at the wheel of his Bentley.

In the distance, covered in a green veil of haze, were the rolling hills connecting San Pedro to Palos Verdes. Victor could remember those hills when they were just purple wildflowers, waist-high mustard, and a crumbling Spanish hacienda with its scattering of guest ranches, land deeded before California was ever a state. Now streets with expensive homes cut along those hillsides, looking as pronounced as veins on the arm of a growing economy.

It was change. It was good. So he told himself he didn’t mind articles written about men like him—a generation hungry for success and power, winners who carried with them accomplishment and the pride of building something out of nothing, instead of making a brouhaha out of nothing in order to sell magazines.

Lately he’d been the topic of too many articles, and the human interest ones made him clam up faster than today. Perhaps he was annoyed now because he’d had a touchy interview for Look six weeks ago. Newspapers and magazines sent women reporters for human interest stories, armed with his family history and seeking an angle that was lonely, silly, and romantic—something his life was anything but.

Victor had been married twice and in love only once. He’d worked most of his life, hardest when he had a wife and young son. Anna died with no warning, and he couldn’t remember crying for her, a woman forbidden to him whom he’d married after a long chase.

His son was a stranger, barely three when he buried Anna. Victor remembered thinking he had nothing in common with Rudy other than bone and blood and the same last name. His son cried every time Victor came home—took one look at him and ran away, disappearing for hours in some nook of the monstrous Pasadena house that belonged to his wife’s family.

The day Victor found his son cowering in Anna’s closet symbolized their dismal relationship: the father who had been locked in a closet and his son who sought refuge in one. It was a long time before Rudy could sit in the same room with him, longer still before he accepted that Victor was the man who fathered him.

Victor had spent his childhood fighting for acceptance. Not even for his son would he fight for acceptance again. Soon he recognized in his own son’s expression his father’s look of failure. He and Rudy were doomed from the start. The Banning curse had skipped a generation, and nothing Rudy ever did changed Victor’s opinion that he was a weak young man, destined for nothing. The only thing his son ever had the strength to do was walk away from Victor and stay away.

The second wife also walked away from Victor, and he never regretted that. She was a convenience—she’d done the chasing. The women and marriages, even the affairs were long gone, and he was left now with his only progeny, Cale and Jud.

The radio phone between the car’s seats rang, his attorney calling with news. “Jameson’s kid agreed to sell the painting.”

Victor didn’t move. “How much?”

“Half a million.”

“Cut the deal,” Victor told him in a voice more even than he actually felt. To finally win was almost a physical thing, live and sweeping through him like some kind of drug. “Any word on the other pieces?”

“That Seattle gallery claims they’ve lost track of the client.”

“Then we need to find the client.”

“No one will release the name, Victor. It’s been thirteen goddamn years and I can’t even buy that name out of those people.”

“Raise the offer another quarter of a million,” he added. “And the commission another ten percent. That ought to prod somebody to locate who bought those paintings.”

After making arrangements for delivery, he hung up and rested his head against the back of the seat while Harlan turned the car into the Loyola parking lot. In an instant so real he would never be able to explain it, Victor caught a whiff of Arpège and sat forward sharply. On the seat across from him were the images of his son and daughter-in-law, an echo of another time and clearer than any memory should be; they held hands. Rachel was pregnant and Rudy didn’t look like a failure.

“The game’s already started.” Harlan opened the back door.

The images across from Victor evaporated in the overhead glare of parking lot lights, but what they represented stayed with him and made him pensive and touchy. Once inside the gym, they took seats in the middle of the crowded bleachers. By 9 P.M., Loyola was losing, so Victor sent Harlan to get the car and stood hidden in the shadows of the bleachers.

He watched Cale trot down the basketball court, weaving in and out of the other players with long-legged agility and a sure-footedness that helped him score three points. With that single basket, the energy in the gymnasium changed. The crowd noise grew louder; they were on their feet. The university band began to play with the crowd clapping and singing, “Down on the corner … Out in the street.”

Rudy had played basketball, too, but was never good enough and spent his games mostly on the bench. Victor could have missed every game and it wouldn’t have mattered.

But this game changed in under five minutes. Dorsey cut quickly, stole the ball, dashed past his opponent, his grin as big as the sections on the basketball. Then he became all business and shot the ball in the opposite direction, right to Cale, who let the ball fly. It arced through the air, then hit the rim with a deep thud, bounced, and went straight up in the air.

Nothing moved in that gymnasium but the ball. It came down on the rim, swirled around and around. On the edge of defeat or victory, players jumped up, arms reaching for the ball. The ball fell into the net and the white numbers on the scoreboard flipped: 89–87 Loyola.

Pom-poms flew into the air and the university cheerleaders tumbled across the wooden floor. The crowd cheered and stomped their feet so loudly you could barely hear the time buzzer. Players and coaches swarmed all over one another, and a teammate ripped Cale’s jersey in two and ran around him, holding the torn piece with his number, twenty-three, high in the air. They shouted, “Banning! Banning! Banning!”

Victor didn’t know he was smiling. He felt something he couldn’t ever remember feeling for Rudy. Maybe a hundred feet stood between Cale and him. They hadn’t spoken since Christmas. He placed one foot in front of the other, closing the distance.

“Cale!” An attractive young blond girl raced down from the bleachers and across the court, her ponytail flying, her long tanned legs running straight toward the knot of Loyola players. She wore a Mount Saint Mary’s sweater and flip skirt, and flung her arms around Cale, who caught her and spun her around, laughing as she kissed his cheeks.

Victor stopped, unable to move forward. Another girl he can throw his future away on. Cale hadn’t learned a thing from last year, from any years. Victor turned away in disgust and walked out of the gym without looking back. He wasn’t there when Cale set his roommate’s girlfriend down and tugged affectionately on her ponytail. And when Cale slung a towel around his sweaty neck and looked around the gym for the one person in his life to whom winning was everything, Victor was already on his way home.

CHAPTER 7

The Island Theater was housed inside the old casino and always busy on the weekends, so Laurel studied the coming attractions on posters lit with small strings of Hollywood lights. A group of girls her age joined the back of the line, chattering. Shannon worked part-time at her mother’s shop, so Laurel stepped out of line and moved toward them, then waited for a pause in their conversation. She tapped Shannon on the shoulder. “Hi.”

“Laurel. Hi. I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

“I’m home for spring break.”

Shannon introduced her, then said, “The town’s going to be really crazy. Spring break always is. The beach gets packed. The bars. Guys and girls all over the place. Parties in the hotels. It’s pretty wild. You haven’t been here for Easter yet, have you?”

Laurel shook her head. “I’m not here much anyway, because of school. Just some weekends and holidays.”

“Laurel already graduated.” Shannon explained to the other girls. “She goes to cooking school in LA. What’s that place called again?”

“Pacific Culinary Institute.” The school was one of only three in the country that offered Cordon Bleu courses and certificates. The classes were small, tuition steep, and they accepted only one out of every few hundred applicants. The administrators and internationally famous instructors there would have cringed at the phrase “cooking school.” One of them could easily have waved a boning knife under poor Shannon’s nose and said, “Culinary institute. Cooking school is for the people who work at Denny’s.”

“You want to be a cook?” one of the girls asked, as if Laurel were nuts.

“I want to be a professional chef.”

“Like the Galloping Gourmet?” One of them giggled.

Shannon gave the girl a pointed look, but Laurel laughed. “Graham Kerr is a good chef.”

“Why would you want to be a chef? You’ll have to work in a hot kitchen, just to cook food for other people? Why not just be a housewife?”

“Ouch!” someone said. “That wasn’t nice, Karen.”

“Well, I mean, isn’t that like being some kind of glorified slave?”

Shannon punched Karen in the arm. “I wouldn’t talk. You said you wanted to be a nurse. I’d rather cut vegetables and take out the garbage than change sheets, give sponge baths, and clean bedpans.”

“You don’t meet cute doctors in a restaurant kitchen.” Clearly Karen had a plan.

At the box office, Laurel paid her admission and stepped aside, waiting for them. They bought their tickets, then the girls looked at her and at Shannon.

“Well, we’re going inside now,” one of them said.

“Do you mind if I tag along?” Laurel spoke to Shannon. A couple of the girls exchanged strained looks. Karen stared pointedly at Shannon. It was one of those long moments of telling silence and Laurel felt awful, but she kept a plastic smile on her face.

“Sure,” Shannon said without much enthusiasm. “Come on.”

The lobby was crowded and the concession counter hummed with activity, surrounded with the crackle of popcorn popping, the hollow rattle of ice in an empty cup, and the whirring of the drink dispenser. It smelled like popcorn and hot dogs and Laurel was hungry almost instantly. A pack of local boys joined them and swept the girls toward the counter. Laurel ordered Coke, popcorn, and Butterfingers, and when she turned around, the two groups had all paired off. Five boys. Five girls. And her. While the others were talking, she edged her way to Shannon and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. You didn’t know we were meeting them.”

“I’ll just ease away. I don’t mind sitting alone,” she lied.

“No,” Shannon grabbed her arm and turned to her boyfriend. “Jake? This is Laurel Peyton. I work for her mom.”

He seemed genuinely nice and before she could sneak away, he introduced Laurel to the other boys. She made some lame excuse and turned to leave, but they stopped her.

“You can’t sit alone.”

The girls weren’t happy. She wasn’t alone, but a few minutes later, when the heavy red curtains parted and the lights dimmed, she decided even sitting alone would have been better than sitting in the middle of a long row of seats with snuggling couples on either side of her.

M*A*S*H flashed on the screen, and by the time Sally Kellerman was Hot Lips, the couple on her right was making out. Laurel set her Coke down and bumped into Karen’s knee. “Sorry.”

A boy’s hand closed over her thigh. Karen’s boyfriend had the wrong girl’s leg. She removed his hand, but they shifted positions and now were leaning on her arm. On her other side, Shannon was locked in a long, deep kiss with her boyfriend. Hunched in the center of her seat, surrounded by lovers, Laurel shoveled handfuls of popcorn into her mouth, ignoring the soft whispers and moans next to her.

The film suddenly fluttered over the screen, then snapped off. The audience groaned and everyone sat in the dark. The lights came on and the manager came out to a round of boos. “Sorry. Sorry. The film’s broken, so there will be free passes for everyone at the box office. But don’t leave your seats. We will be showing Love Story.”

The audience clapped and whistled as the lights dimmed and Ryan O’Neal stood on the huge screen. Both Laurel and her mother had watched every single episode of Peyton Place, her mom always joking that they had to be loyal to the name.

Laurel settled into her seat with the jumbo Coke, the tub of popcorn, and the huge yellow box of Butterfingers to hold on to instead of a boyfriend’s arm. Instead of being in a romance, she would watch one, forced by lousy luck to dream of happily-ever-afters.

The camera panned in on O’Neal, sitting alone in the bleachers as he said, “What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died.”

It seemed a cliché, a man sitting at a bar drowning his troubles. But bars supplied the perfect environment to beat yourself up for making stupid mistakes, so Jud was living the cliché in a small beachside bar in Avalon that night. The bartender whipped through drink orders and Three Dog Night blasted from the requisite jukebox in a smoky corner. Deep in the recesses of the place, couples played pool and drank.

In under an hour, the place had swelled with people until the noise level measured many decibels. Jud sipped the foam off a new beer, trying to shut out the obnoxious noise from a nearby table, where a group of college guys from University of California at San Diego were slamming back shooters and singing their college fight song in a key that didn’t exist. They acted as if the world was theirs. That kind of partying had lost its appeal before his third year of college. He felt suddenly old. Today he’d hounded after a young girl who was jailbait, and he’d managed to convince his grandfather he was a first-class fuckup. This morning he’d thought the world was his. Now he felt like the world had him by the balls.

Right after he’d left the company offices with his crushed pride and his tail between his legs, he’d wondered bitterly if what happened this morning was another way for his grandfather to manipulate him. Victor was happiest when he stirred up trouble. But now, when he wasn’t angry anymore, Jud knew Victor didn’t play games with his business deals.

Earlier, Jud had called his connections and scheduled a lunch for the next week, but he felt skittish about it. As much as he’d hated to hear the truth from his grandfather’s mouth, those men would not have welcomed him into their business ventures. He had been so full of himself, so glad to be accepted, he couldn’t see their motive anymore than he could see that that girl today was under twenty. Seventeen? Could have been real trouble there.

He stared into the bottom of his beer glass, still chewing over the mysteries of Victor versus Marvetti until he decided none of it was going to solve itself tonight. He scanned the place. Bars never seemed to change much, still smoky, still smelly, still one of the few places on earth where you could be in a crowd and feel completely alone. The empty summer house on the cove held more appeal for him than a smoke-filled bar, where too many college kids on spring break needed to let loose. He downed his beer, paid, and went outside, where he could breathe again.

It was dark and cool in the shadow of the door, and the air tasted salty with the water just a hundred feet away. Neon light from the beer signs in the front window fell onto the bricked street like brightly colored snakes. Along the beach, palm trees cast shadows that looked like giant forearms with splayed hands, and beyond, the water was cavern black out into the harbor, until the running lights flickered in a staggered chain from where the weekend boat traffic moored. The smell of the tide made it seem like summer, and it was warm for April, maybe sixty-five degrees.

There were no cars about, only the occasional electric hum of a golf cart or the clicking spokes of a bicycle. On a bench next to the sand, a couple made out. Jud lit a cigarette, took a drag, then remembered he was going to quit. He took another hit then crushed it out with his foot.

At the north point, where the street ended with the old casino, people spilled out from the movie theater. Ahead of the crowd, a girl walked faster than most, wearing a car coat, her hands shoved deep in the pockets. She had great legs. A group of kids sped past in two golf carts, shouting and waving as they passed by her. She waved and watched them disappear, then she shoved her hands back in her coat pockets and walked on, staring down at the ground as she passed under a streetlamp.

In the warm light, her brown hair brushed her shoulders; her face was distinct and familiar, because she looked so much like Jacqueline Bisset. It was Jailbait, and this was his chance to apologize, but he hesitated. The bar door swung open and almost clipped him, forcing him back and into the shadows. Jukebox music blared into the night and the UCSD guys stumbled out like a family of apes, laughing loudly and shoving one another around.

They began to giggle and took him back to those times when he acted like an asshole for fun. In a haze of mind-numbing tequila they turned and immediately zeroed in on Jailbait. She kept walking, sidestepping away from them and nearer the sand. To her credit she looked straight ahead as they surrounded her. “Excuse me,” she said too brightly and squeezed between two of them.

“Hey, there, sweet thing.” The group tightened their circle around her.

“Please. You’re drunk.” She tried to push through them.

“Come here.” One who looked like a linebacker roughly pulled her against him. His friends whistled and cheered.

“Stop it!” She pushed at his chest as the huge jerk tried to kiss her.

Jud stepped away from the building. “Let her go.”

“Please stop. Please … Don’t!” She sounded terrified.

Jud gripped the guy’s shoulder. “You. Now. Leave the girl alone.”

“Oh, yeah. Sure thing, asshole.”

Jud grabbed his arm and jerked it away from her. She stumbled backward, out of the guy’s reach, and fell down.

Jud spun around … right into the guy’s fist.

“Get him.” His friends chanted. “Get him!” They formed a circle around Jud, who ducked a punch and looked for Jailbait. He threw wild punches and twisted out of their grip twice, then one of them pinned his arms back. “I got him! I got him!” It took two of them to keep him pinned while they punched him. Jud could taste the blood in his mouth. His eye hurt. He blinked, trying to see her, but the edges of his vision blurred. The linebacker walked straight toward him, laughing, fists up, and beat the hell out of him.

CHAPTER 8

Laurel sank down next to her dreamboat as he lay unconscious on the pavement. One eye was already swelling. He had a cut on his cheek, and both his nose and mouth were bleeding. “Please wake up. Please.” The streets were empty, but she could hear the distant footsteps of the bullies, who ran away down a side street after she’d screamed for them to stop, then screamed over and over.

“Help! Someone help! Please …” She lifted his head off the hard brick into her lap. “Please wake up. Can’t you hear me?” Where was everyone? The doors to the bar were closed. They probably didn’t even know there had been a fight. It was eerie, such silence in the aftermath of something so terribly violent.

He groaned, then winced and slowly opened his eyes.

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry. Can you move? How badly are you hurt? What can I do?” Her words all came out in a rush.

He grunted something she couldn’t understand, swore, then rolled out of her lap onto his hands and knees. Silent, his breathing labored, he shook his head and tried to get up.

“Here. Let me help you.”

“No!” He jerked his arm away from her and stumbled to his feet, weaving slightly. “No.”

“Please. You’re hurt because you tried to help me.”

His face was beaten and flushed and he looked like he might fall down. “I’m fine.” He spit blood, then swiped at his mouth and stared down at the blood on his hand with a disgusted look.

“You need a doctor.”

“What?” He looked up again, scowling at her from the one eye that wasn’t swelling.

“I’ll call a doctor.”

He turned away like someone embarrassed. There were leaves and dirt on his back, so she brushed off his shoulder. “Jesus,” he scowled at her. “Just go home. You shouldn’t be out walking around town this late. You’re asking for trouble.”

“I was walking home.”

He pressed his hand to the cut on his mouth and stepped away from her. “Then go home.”

“This wasn’t my fault. You can’t blame me.”

“Go—home.”

She didn’t move.

“Go home where you belong,” he yelled at her. “Go home, little girl, and leave me the hell alone!”

His harsh expression turned blurry from her tears, and she ran—her face hot and flaming—around the corner and down the street into the small plaza by her mother’s studio and pottery shop. Laurel stood there, directionless. In front of her was the dark shop with its Closed sign hanging in the door. That sign seemed to say everything. One word that defined her life: closed. She sat down on the edge of a tiled fountain, where water spilled into a shallow pool.

Again he’d made her feel young and foolish, like some thirteen-year-old with a silly crush making a pest of herself. He called her a little girl to put her down for being seventeen—as if she could change the year she was born. And no one wanted to be twenty-one more than she did, instead of stuck in some kind of hinterland between a teenager and an adult. She didn’t belong anywhere: on this island, with those girls, in Seattle; even her age was undefined. There was a time when she could have talked about what she felt with high school friends. Now, whenever she spoke with them, scattered as they all were in colleges all over the country, there were more long silences than meaningful words. None of them knew what to say to one another anymore.

Things would have been easier, maybe, if her father were alive. Somehow she knew he could have given her the answers she needed during the moments when living became so hard and ugly. Without a dad, she felt as if she were hobbling through life on one leg, when most other people had two.

Her grandmother Julia claimed her dad had been a star and made Laurel promise to never forget. It was important to her grandmother, the star thing. At first Laurel had been too young to understand the difference between a music star and a star in the sky. To children, stars were stars. Confused, she’d asked her aunt, Evie, what stars were, one night when they were standing together outside and the night sky was filled with them. Her aunt had told her that the stars were magical things, other worlds so far away that sometimes it was impossible to believe they really existed. Laurel had been probably seven at the time, an age when she had blind faith in magical things and grew up trying to believe in fathers who were never there.

He was an image in a faded photograph, a name on a record that hung on the wall of her room. He was a star—something impossible for her to believe ever existed. And now, as she sat there feeling inconsequential, she looked up in the sky and searched those stars, wanting them to magically spell out the answers to all her most important questions, like why did people have to die? Why did life move so slowly? What was real love like? Why was she so lonely? She felt as if she were in a different dimension than everyone else and destined to watch life from outside.

Sitting on the edge of the fountain, she could see copper and silver coins sparkling back at her, the water and lights making them seem bigger than they actually were. There must have been close to a thousand forgotten wishes in the bottom of the fountain. When you didn’t believe in magical things like wishes, you never set yourself up for disappointment. You understood that all too often things looked bigger than they really were.

Laurel pulled a couple of pennies out of her pocket. Two cents. There was a joke in that somewhere. She turned her back to the fountain and closed her eyes, then tossed the pennies over her shoulder and made a wish for someone to love her.

* * *

Kathryn could hear the night frogs in the side garden through an open window in the living room, so she sat down in there with a book. It was almost eleven when Laurel came in the front door and hung up her coat. “Hi, Mom.” Exhaustion was in her voice, her shoulders sloped in defeat.

“How was the movie?”

Laurel shrugged.

“You look so pretty,” Kathryn said brightly. “I bet you turned some heads tonight.”

Her daughter looked at her as if she’d slapped her, then ran out of the room sobbing and slammed her bedroom door closed.

“What did I say wrong now?” Kathryn said to the empty room. Everything had been so much easier when Laurel only worried about a Halloween costume or a book report or if she performed some complicated ballet position correctly. In those days, Kathryn had all the right answers.

She tapped lightly on Laurel’s door. “It’s me.”

“Just leave me alone, Mom. Please.”

A blank white door stood between them, a wall of Kathryn’s wrong words and wrong choices. She heard Laurel’s muffled cries and reached for the doorknob, but a voice in her head said, Don’t barge in. She understood self-pity and despair, feeling helpless, confused, and frustrated—apparently the normal state for a mother with a teenage daughter. She sagged down into an overstuffed chair and stared at the empty hallway as if she could divine answers from there, a thread and needle for the worn and unraveling seams of their relationship.

The awful truth was that the move here had made Laurel miserable. Laurel was miserable, but Kathryn wasn’t. She liked living in Evie’s house. It was well over sixty years old, with a small floor plan, tall ceilings, crown molding, and hardwood floors. Lazy beach furniture filled the rooms—Victorian wicker, an antique French daybed, rattan—so different from Julia’s formal white furniture. There had been little color in Kathryn’s life except her own blue bedroom.

Evie had painted every room a different color. The place was all spring and sunshine, yellows and pinks. It felt like a woman’s house. Here she wanted to drink tea from a flowered mug instead of a three-hundred-year-old tea service, her mother-in-law serving her without ever asking whether she wanted the lemon and sugar.

Moving to Catalina had freed Kathryn’s spirit. But her freedom came at a price, one Laurel had paid.

Kathryn waited for the sound of crying to stop. This time she didn’t knock. Inside, a muted hanging lamp and sandalwood candles lit the room. In the corner, flat on the floor, sat Laurel’s bed, covered with an ethnic print throw and mirror-trimmed pillows from India. Evie was right. George Harrison, Ravi Shankar, and the Hare Krishna who stuck carnations in your face at the airport would feel right at home in this bedroom.

But the candles flickered softly against the walls, where Jimmy’s guitar hung beside his records, some photos, awards, and framed copies of his handwritten music. Beneath this shrine to her father, Laurel lay curled in a lump on her bed, facing the wall and leaving no doubt that Jimmy’s daughter still belonged to the day he died.

Kathryn sank down beside her. “You want to tell me what’s wrong?”

“No.” Laurel gave a sharp, caustic laugh.

She’s too young to be so bitter. It’s by my example. Her mouth was dry when she asked, “Do you want me to leave?”

“No.” It was a while before Laurel spoke. “I want someone to think I’m special and beautiful and wonderful.”

“I think you’re special and beautiful and wonderful.”

Her daughter wasn’t rude enough to say, Big deal, but the words hung there in her silence.

“I don’t know what I can do to make you happy.”

Laurel reached out and touched her hand. “Look, Mom. It’s not your fault. Sometimes, like tonight, you just say the wrong thing.”

“What did I say?”

“It’s a long and miserable story.”

“I’m not going anywhere. I have hours and hours.” She settled back against a couple of those gaudy pillows. It took a moment before Laurel started talking, and once she did, everything spilled out of her in a rush of emotion—the boy on the boat, the kids necking in the theater, the fistfight—all told with that double-edged intensity of youth.

Laurel looked at her. “I feel like I’m completely invisible.”

Kathryn had watched her grow up and felt so proud, and so scared. One day, not that long ago, she turned around and no longer had a child for a daughter. The years had turned into a white blur while her daughter became a beautiful young woman. She wanted to tell her she was far from invisible, but Laurel wouldn’t believe her. Kathryn pointed to a black-and-white photograph of Jimmy onstage with his guitar. To anyone who looked at the shot, it appeared as if he were looking at the audience. “See this photograph of your father?”

Laurel nodded.

“It was taken one night when he was playing in Hollywood, at this club on the Sunset Strip. I can’t remember the name. You were maybe three at the time. This was right after his third record went number one. He was about to start the final song and looked down at us. We were in the front row. He took off his guitar and came down to us, then stepped back on stage with you in his arms, set you down, picked up his guitar, and said, ‘You wanna help me sing, little girl?’

“When you said, ‘Sure, Daddy,’ the place went crazy. They calmed down when he began to play and you stood there in front of hundreds of people, completely fearless. You couldn’t have cared less who watched. You sang with him just like you always did at home. Didn’t miss a single note.”

Kathryn handed the photo to Laurel. “You had no idea, but everyone in that place, including your father, was looking at you and thinking how very wonderful you were.”

Laurel sat cross-legged on the bed with the photo, then curled up with it as Kathryn stood. “Thanks, Mom,” she said in a small voice, already half asleep.

But Kathryn didn’t go to sleep that easily. She tossed and turned, haunted by images of fiery car crashes and slashed canvases, and woke with the sheets twisted around her legs, her pillow damp, and Jimmy’s face in her mind. There were moments over the years when Laurel looked so much like him that Kathryn found herself imagining the worst: a mind-numbing fear that her daughter might follow her father’s path to a fateful, early death. Kathryn had to fight her innate and desperate need to overprotect. She didn’t want to be like Julia, who had taught her what it was like to live inside your child’s life.

None of those fears ever materialized. Still, Kathryn hadn’t had nightmares in years. She put on her robe and left the room, then made cup after cup of tea. When the eastern skies turned purple and gold and the sparrows and robins began to sing, she still stood at her living room window, no better off really than she had been. Laurel was so very young, and she desperately didn’t want to be. She still believed and trusted the world that lay before her. Her daughter had no haunting consequences to keep her from running headlong down the wrong road.

But Kathryn was overwhelmed by an uneasy terror as she watched the day break and sipped tea, which had a sudden, bitter taste. It needed lemon and sugar. She walked into the kitchen, doctored her tea, drank it, and went into her bedroom.

She still tossed and turned, staring at the yellow walls, and told herself she was being silly, overreacting. Of course, fate had better things to do than to follow the Peyton women around, just to create havoc in two small lives.

CHAPTER 9

It was two in the afternoon when Cale unlocked the door to the Catalina house. “Hey! I’m here! Jud?” He dropped his bag on the floor and headed for the kitchen, tossing the newspaper and some magazines on the dining table as he beelined for the refrigerator. Leaning on the open door, he guzzled half a carton of milk—one of four inside. Jud had done the shopping: eggs, bread, lunch meat, cheese, steaks, potatoes, salad stuff, and fruit, even a jug of orange juice. There were probably new boxes of cereal lined up neatly in the overhead cabinet. Cale counted off Cheerios, shredded wheat, and corn flakes, pancake mix, syrup, coffee, creamer, sugar. The kitchen had everything needed for three squares a day. His brother—the poster boy for good nutrition. Hell, he even ate perfectly.

Cale tossed the lid from a container of spaghetti toward the sink like a Frisbee, missed, and grabbed a fork. Shoveling cold spaghetti into his mouth, he headed for the sliding glass doors to the deck. The beach lay a hundred feet away, and beyond, the glassy water of a slumbering cove. At the edge of the deck, hanging off the end of a lounge chair, were two really big and bony bare feet.

Jud lay in the sun, his arm slung over his face. He was snoring. Cale kicked his brother’s feet. “Wake up, you lazy bastard, and say hello to your little brother.”

Jud groaned, then mumbled into his arm, “Little my ass. You’re two inches taller than I am.”

“And twice as good-looking, too.”

“Normally I’d argue that point, but I don’t think I can today.” Jud pulled his arm away. His face was a black-and-blue mess.

“I hope the other guy looks worse than you do.”

“Got away without a cut.” Jud tried to sit up and winced. “Damn, that hurts. Everything hurts.”

“You look like everything should hurt. What happened?”

Jud rested his elbows on his knees, his hands hanging loosely between them, and he looked at him—at least, it looked as if he were looking at him. He wasn’t too sure. Jud’s eyes were so swollen it was more of a squint, like being stared at by a bruised pig.

“I tried to play Galahad and save some sweet young thing from a bunch of drunks.”

Cale straddled a lounge chair and sat down. “I hope you won some reward for sacrificing your face. Is your nose broken?”

“Only swollen and hurting like hell.”

“Tell me she gave you her phone number for your trouble.”

“Nope. Not even her name.” Jud shook his head, winced, and buried his head in his hands. “Remind me not to do that again.”

“What? Try to get lucky? Get into a fight? Or shake your head?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So, big brother, you ended up battered and bruised and without a date.”

“I’m not sure I looked very impressive passed out facedown and bloodying up the sidewalk. Stop laughing, asshole.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“I can hear it in your voice.”

“Okay. I’m laughing.”

“Hell, I didn’t get in a single solid punch.”

“Looks like it.”

“Go to hell.”

“I don’t want to go home. Victor’s there.” Cale lifted the spaghetti container in a salute and with his mouth full said, “Good stuff.”

“I made it last night.”

“Before or after you ran into Joe Frazier?”

“Before.”

“Here. Catch.” Cale tossed him his napkin. “Your nose is bleeding.”

“Again?” Jud blotted his nose. “Damn.” He started to get up.

“Stay there. I’ll get you something.” Cale came back with two steaks from the freezer. “Here, put these on your face.”

Jud frowned at the steaks. “They’re frozen.”

“Yeah, but steak is good for the black eye and ice for swelling. Two remedies in one.”

“The best I can get is frozen steak from the future Dr. Banning?”

“Shut up and put ’em on your face. After they thaw, we can barbecue them.”

“And I heard premed was hard.”

That cut deeply, but Cale said nothing. He had studied five nights straight to get a low B on his last test in anatomy. He held up a magazine, centerfold open. “Here’s a cure. Look at this.”

Jud pulled the steaks off his face and lifted his head up. “Nice.”

“Nice? That’s all you can say?” Cale studied the centerfold again. “More than nice. I’d to like to meet a girl like her.”

“You did last year and your grades went in the toilet.”

Cale’s big mistake now hung in the air between them. His brother lay there with meat on his face, yet Cale felt as if he’d just taken a punch.

Jud crossed his feet. “How’s school going?”

“Okay.”

“You keeping your grades up?”

“Jesus … You sound like Victor. It’s bad enough I have to get flak from the old man. I don’t need it from you, too.” When Jud didn’t say anything, Cale added bitterly, “I don’t need you judging me.”

“I’m not judging you.” Jud pulled the steaks off again. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“Something’s wrong. You’re way too touchy. Come clean.”

Cale tossed the magazine on the deck. “Med school. Almost all of them have turned me down. Not even my Medical school admission tests—which I aced—are helping my apps.”

“I thought Dorsey was just horsing around on the phone yesterday.”

“He was and wasn’t.”

“All of them turned you down?” Jud sounded as if a college turning someone down was as unrealistic as Martian landings or statues of the Virgin Mary that cried real tears.

Right then, Cale wanted to hit Jud himself. “I’ve still got three schools left. University of Texas, UCSD, and USC.”

“I’m sorry, bud.”

“Yeah, well, there’s not much I can do about it now.” Odd, how it was harder for him to swallow his big brother’s pity than his judgments. He felt like the wrong half of a man talking to the right half. “I don’t know what I’m going to do if I don’t get into one of these last three.”

“They can’t all turn you down.” Jud lay back down. “You’ll get in.”

His brother’s world was so easy. Just that easy. The spaghetti turned over in Cale’s stomach and felt as if he’d eaten a pound of it. He sagged back in the chair, looking out at the water because he felt like nothing when he looked at his brother.

There was no breeze and a light haze in the sky, almost like earthquake weather, but seagulls were flying all over the place. In the moments before an earthquake, all wildlife vanished. Utter and complete silence ruled, as if the world were holding its breath.

Cale listened to the seagulls whining overhead, and a few feet away, the quiet lap of the water against the sand. In the distance was the mainland. A wildfire burned in Malibu. A cloud of purplish gray smoke hovered over the hills, and Santa Monica had disappeared from sight. He followed the outline of the coast, the minuscule silver glint of planes in the sky over LAX—and the white clusters of beach towns, their piers, marinas, and homes staggered in the coastal hillsides.

Jud snored louder, lying there deep in sleep—something Cale hadn’t had much of lately. You’ll get in. His brother said it with such assurance.

“Yeah, Jud,” Cale said quietly. “Easy as taking your next breath.” He felt like his stomach was going to explode. Too much spaghetti. His next breath was as shallow as his confidence. Jud didn’t have a clue what his life was like. Cale closed his eyes and the thought hit him that maybe the lump in his stomach wasn’t from the mouthfuls of spaghetti he’d swallowed whole. Maybe it was his pride.

Jud woke up late in the afternoon with melted meat on his face. He heard Cale shooting baskets out front. Once inside, he put the steaks on a plate in the fridge and strolled out the front door. “Hey. Let me show you how the game’s played.”

Cale stopped, holding the ball in one big hand. “Yeah, right. Who just took a nap, Pops?” He casually tossed a hook shot over his head high into the air. It dropped through the net without ever touching metal. Crowing, Cale grabbed the ball, then faced him, dribbling it and shuffling back and forth.

“You cocky ass.” Jud laughed.

“We’ll see who’s the ass, big brother. I’ll give you six points. Two for old age, and four for your beat-up face. Remind me to teach you how to duck. Or throw a punch.”

“I don’t need your points, hotshot. Give me the ball and I’ll show you old.”

Cale gave him a shit-eating grin and shoved the ball right at his face.

Jud moved fast, twisted around, and went right under his little brother’s long arms to score. “Two to zip! Screw your points.”

They played one-on-one for forty-five minutes straight, faces red, hair stringy, sweat-soaked T-shirts stuck to their skin, legs and arms gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight. At the hour mark, bent eye to eye, they were like two dogs facing off in an alley, both panting so hard neither could speak. Jud had the ball, his face burning up and his eyes stinging from salty sweat. He rasped out the word “water.”

Cale gave him a slight nod. At the same instant they looked at the garden hose. Whoever got there first won the water, and the added luxury of a few extra breaths while he waited for the other one to finish. It was a footrace. Cale stuck out his leg. Jud jumped it, sidestepped quickly, spun, and dove for the hose. He drank for a full two minutes while Cale stood there, hands on his knees, panting.

Sun-warmed water ran through the nozzle and he took a long time to drink, then let the cold water spill over his sweating head until it stopped throbbing. He shook like a wet spaniel and tossed the hose to Cale.

Jud walked over and picked up the ball, dribbling. “You gonna cry uncle?”

“Me?” Cale looked up from the hose and swiped his mouth. “No way. I’m just getting warmed up.”

“Good,” Jud lied and threw the ball right into Cale’s stomach.

For just an instant his little brother looked as if he was going to heave, then they went at it again for another savage half hour. Jud bounced the ball through his brother’s legs and jammed his elbow hard into Cale’s gut. “Ooh, college boy. You’re getting soft.”

“Go to hell, Jud.” Cale’s body slammed him. “Who’s soft, now, doughboy?” They were all over the court, legs and arms, punching and socking, until Cale slapped him in the head with the flat of his hand, stole the ball, then stood there, four feet from Jud, the ball bouncing from palm to palm.

Jud waited for an opening to the metronomic hammer of the ball on the asphalt and their hard breaths, then moved like lightning, stole the ball, laughing though his ribs hurt like hell. He held out the ball. “Come and get it, asshole.”

Cale shot forward. Jud stuck out his foot and his brother skidded across the asphalt. They beat the hell out of each other in the name of basketball. By the time the sun set behind the hills, Cale’s knees were bleeding, and Jud thought he was going to die, legs like rubber, his head killing him, but he wasn’t going to lose. He stared into the crumpled look of concentration on Cale’s angry red face, waiting for the patience Cale didn’t have, and never had. His little brother’s movements were jerky, blind, his motions looking desperate.

In the end, they lay on their backs on the warm ground, panting, hurting, bleeding, staring up at the night sky, which was clear and sharp, with no light of day left behind the hills. Music broke in the distance—drums and electric guitars. A band was playing somewhere downtown. When Jud finally spoke, he said only two words: “You lost.”

Cale raised up and pitched the ball at him.

Jud deflected it with his arm and lay there as the ball rolled away, his arm across his eyes, so tired he didn’t know if he could stand. He sat up with a grunt and rested his arms on his bent knees. “You wouldn’t have lost if you played with some patience. You give yourself away.”

“I know how to play basketball.”

“I’m just telling you how to win.”

Cale wouldn’t look at him.

“I’ll light the barbecue and cook those steaks.” Jud figured that was a peace offering. It was just a basketball game.

“I’m not hungry.” Cale limped to the door and paused in the doorway, looking back, his expression bitter and intense. “I’m not staying home tonight.” He slammed the door shut.

Jud stood up slowly, wobbled slightly. Standing just about killed him. He limped across the driveway to the hose and let the water run over his head for long seconds. The water pressure cut suddenly from the bathroom shower. Inside, he could hear Cale in the shower down the hall and thought about apologizing but stumbled toward the kitchen. He wouldn’t apologize for giving his brother a little advice, or for winning. His swollen face had a date with an ice pack. He wasn’t going anywhere tonight. Hell, he said to himself, I’ll eat both steaks.

CHAPTER 10

Laurel wanted to believe that somewhere in the big wide world was a boy who would love her. Of course, he could easily be in France while she was stuck on the western fringes of another whole continent. Alone, she walked along the crowded island waterfront, music from the live band on the pier drifting away from her, the scent of abalone burgers and caramel corn sweetening the night air. She bought some saltwater taffy and sat down on a bench, under the glow from brightly colored paper lanterns strung overhead. All around her was laughter, chatter, music—life, even if it belonged to other people.

At home, her mother was sitting in her chair reading novels about characters with lives bigger than theirs, or watching TV where nothing but the news was real. Instead of hiding in Seattle, her mother hid here.

Laurel felt as if she had been picked up and planted somewhere far from home. Miserable, she stuffed a piece of taffy in her mouth and watched people in pairs and groups on the sand. When she glanced up at the beach, she spotted an old man walking slowly away from everyone like some kind of lost soul and she wondered what went through the minds and hearts of other lonely people.

Another loner stood away from the crowd, facing the water, hands in the back pockets of his jeans, hip cocked, broad shoulders, and narrow waist—a classic masculine triangle. His height and sandy hair were all too familiar. He’d looked the same yesterday when he was standing at the boat rail before she told him she was seventeen.

This was her chance to set everything right. She would ask how he was feeling—as if nothing he could say would faze her—and say, “I haven’t seen someone drop that fast since Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston.” Here was her opportunity to be witty, sophisticated, and worldly to someone who thought she wasn’t. He wore an aqua blue polo shirt and she followed it through the crowd, but his steps were longer than hers and soon she had to run to catch up. She reached out and grabbed his arm. “Hey, there.”

He turned and looked down at her.

Oh, God … It’s not him. For an awkward, horrified instant she stood there. “I’m sorry. I made a mistake. I thought you were someone else.”

“Lucky guy,” he said.

“No. Not really.” She started to turn away.

“Wait, don’t go.” He held his hands out, palms up. “I can be anyone you want me to be. Or if it’s my lucky night maybe you’ll take me instead of someone else. I’m quite the catch by the way—my name’s Cale Banning.”

“Cale?” she repeated dumbly, his flirting so unexpected. She sounded like an idiot, which was probably the real reason she had no dates.

“Yeah.” He shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. “Like the vegetable, only with a C.”

She laughed. “You’re not going to believe this.”

“Why? Are you Cale, too?”

“No.”

“Cabbage?”

“No.”

“Eggplant?”

She shook her head.

“Broccoli.”

“I’m Laurel …”

“… like the tree,” they both said together.

“Laurel Peyton,” she added.

“Well, Laurel-Like-the-Tree Peyton.” He took her hand. “Is this my lucky night?”

She melted right there. In a long, awkward silence, he studied her with sharp focus and made her wonder what he saw when he looked at her. Did she look empty and lost and clinging to his words?

“Since you didn’t say no, come on.” He pulled her with him.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Over there.” He nodded somewhere but she couldn’t see because of the crowd.

“Wait. Please.”

He stopped. “Don’t ruin my night and say no now.”

“I can’t see over this crowd. Where is ‘there’?”

“You don’t trust me.” He was teasing her.

“I don’t know you. And I don’t trust you.”

“Smart girl.” He grinned and suddenly trust was no longer an issue. “Close your eyes, Laurel-Like-the-Tree Peyton, and just take ten more steps with me. We’re on the beach with a few hundred other people, so you’re safe. Just ten steps. Give me your hands.”

“I can’t believe I’m doing this.” She held out her hands and closed her eyes. His fingers were callused, and with her hands in his she felt light inside, a balloon someone had to anchor to keep from floating away.

He pulled her gently along. “You’re cheating, girl. Keep your eyes closed.”

“I’m not cheating.”

“Just making sure.” He took her hand again. “Okay, here we go. One, two, three …” He pulled her faster. “Four, six, eight, ten.”

“Wait!” She dug in her heels, laughing. “Now who’s cheating?”

“I’m counting, not cheating. Close your eyes.”

She crossed her arms. “You call two, four, six, eight counting? Where did you say you went to school?”

“I didn’t.”

“Oh, that explains it. You didn’t go to school.” With every comeback, she laughed a little more, their banter the spun gold of a seminal moment, words she thought she would still remember in fifty years.

“I’m a senior at Loyola.”

“Is that how they teach you to count after almost four years at a university? You should ask for your tuition back.”

“No, that’s how basketball players count. We count in goals—twos and threes.”

“Basketball. You’re so tall. I should have guessed.”

He laughed. “If you are tall, then you must be a basketball player? That’s discriminatory.”

“Oh. I see now. Loyola? You’re headed for law school.”

“No.”

“Well, we both know you sure aren’t a math major.”

“Let me count for you again. Two kidneys. Two lungs. Two hundred and six bones. I’m premed. We’re here. Now you can open your eyes.”

His face was the first thing she saw. She felt something odd looking at him, the actual weight of air on her exposed skin, hypersensitive, hypersensual.

He put his hands on her shoulders, turned her, but kept his hands there. “This is where I was taking you.”

She had to lean back to look up at him. “Me and my two hundred and six bones?”

“You and your two hundred and six bones.”

Just inches apart, they stood near the edge of the pier, where couples danced to live music. She was acutely aware of his hands on her shoulders; it felt as if it were the most natural thing in the world for them to stand together that way. One minute she had been alone, and the next a stranger was quickly changing into something more. Odd, how in a mere heartbeat life could change. She closed her eyes and gently swayed to the music, then remembered this same wonderful feeling from the boat yesterday.

“I’m seventeen,” she blurted out.

He didn’t say anything.

“I thought you should know. I’ll be eighteen soon.” She turned toward him then, and his hands fell away. In the absence of his touch, she felt exposed.

His expression was unreadable. “But you’re seventeen now.”

She nodded, waiting for him to say “Nice knowing you kid.”

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