Page 25 of A Map to Paradise
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Nicky had long since nodded off on the sofa cushions June had arranged on the floor of her bedroom, but she felt wide awake.
A sense of finality had fallen over her when she’d driven away from the desert hours earlier with all the props in play inside the bungalow. It was almost as if Elwood had died all over again when she left. The next time she made the trip to Palm Springs it would be because Max had gone out there with the intention of finally speaking to Elwood face-to-face but had found instead the note.
Elwood would die a third time then, and she would have to pretend it was the first.
When June had returned to Malibu, she’d gone first to Melanie’s for borscht that Eva had made for Christmas supper—the invite had been left for her on an entry table just inside her front door. She surprised herself by consuming two bowls. June had tried to eat what she’d made for the pretend early dinner with Elwood, but she had no appetite then. She instead scooped out enough of all the dishes she’d made for two servings each, dumped it all into a shopping bag, and then tossed this into a gas station trash bin on her way back to Los Angeles. The rest of the meal she put into containers and placed in the fridge as staged leftovers for Elwood.
Except for the music playing on the radio and Nicky’s occasional questions, their Christmas supper had been quiet. Melanie and Eva had seemed lost in thought, just as she was. Tomorrow was going to be different for all of them.
Blissfully unaware of any of their concerns, Nicky had been perfectly happy to head next door to June’s after they’d eaten. Not only was he intrigued with the idea of a sleepover, but he adored Algernon, and for some unknown reason the cat seemed to have the same affection for him. Melanie had stayed with him until he fell asleep on the makeshift bed, and then she returned to the Gilbert house to get to bed herself. She and Eva would be rising before the sun to drive over to Eva’s. Eva would sleep in Melanie’s guest room since Nicky wasn’t in it.
June now turned over in her bed and watched the curtains fluttering at her open window. The night was warm, oddly dry, and nearly electric with portent. It was as if the very air in the room crackled with anxiousness.
There was nothing she could do about the impending loss of her source of income, nor was she completely confident Ruthie Brink’s sons would be willing to sell the house to her. She could only hope they would be. Elwood had been generous with those young men; even their grandparents had said so. How could they not return the kindness and let her buy back her home?
Those boys were getting everything else.
They just had to sell to her.
With her savings and the money from the last script, she would surely have enough to make a down payment. All she had to do was find a bank willing to give her a mortgage for the rest.
Which depended on getting her old job back. Or any job.
And she needed to finish that script. She was close. If she could just concentrate on the story and not be distracted by these other pressing matters, she could have it done in a few days, surely.
But what if she couldn’t get it done before MGM asked about it?
What if she couldn’t manage all these things?
Stop imagining the what-ifs, June heard Melanie saying in her ear, but she couldn’t stop. She fell asleep pondering the worst possible outcomes.
And then June was suddenly yanked out of her hard-won slumber by a hard knocking on the front door.
She sat up in bed, her first waking thought that the police had somehow discovered what she’d done and had come for her.
The pounding continued and her next, more lucid thought was that she’d forgotten to give Melanie the keys to her car the night before. Melanie and Eva needed to leave early for Los Angeles.
But then she smelled a whiff of smoke from the open window. Something was on fire.
Good Lord, could it be Melanie’s house? Is that why she was banging on the door?
She sprang from the bed despite the lingering pain in her back to let Melanie and Eva in.
But Max stood on the threshold, not Melanie.
Before she could register this, he stepped onto the entry rug just inside. “Why haven’t you answered the phone? I’ve been calling!” he exclaimed.
“I was having trouble falling asleep last night. I took the phone off the hook,” June sputtered, still unable to grasp the fact that Max was inside her house.
He stepped farther in, past June and toward the staircase. “You and Elwood need to get out of the house. There’s a wildfire headed right in this direction. Can’t you smell it?”
Max had his hand on the banister. He called Elwood’s name.
The acrid odor of burning brush somewhere off in the distance was now wafting in from the open front door. Dawn was arriving with a ghostly pallor. June could barely make sense of either fact: Max with his foot on the first stair calling Elwood’s name, and the harsh stink of torched earth.
“Elwood!” Max yelled, “I’m coming up!”
He ascended the first step.
“He’s not up there.” The three words rushed out of June’s mouth as if The Plan itself were taking charge of the situation.
Max swung around. “Elwood!” he shouted toward the living room, and then he was moving toward it.
“He’s not down here, either, Max. He’s not in the house. He’s in Palm Springs.”
Max spun around to face her. “He’s what ?”
“He’s at the bungalow. In Palm Springs.”
For a full three seconds Max said nothing. “Since when?” He sounded angry, rather than relieved, to hear Elwood had at last left the house.
“Since yesterday. He wanted to finish the trip he’d started with Ruthie all those years ago. He thought Christmas was a good day to do it. I agreed. So I took him.”
The Plan continued to roll off her tongue as if she’d rehearsed it only seconds before.
“And you just left him there?” Max said, incredulous.
“I didn’t just leave him. I came home after our dinner because he asked me to. He wanted to have the bungalow to himself for a few days. It’s his place, Max.”
Max stared at her, eyebrows pinched into consternation. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“And tell you what?”
He huffed in obvious exasperation. “That he’d finally left the house!”
“Because he told me not to. You should leave him be, Max. He wanted some time alone to think and work.”
“But he left this house ! Don’t you think I should have been told?”
At that moment, Nicky appeared from within the kitchen, sleep in his eyes and one of June’s crocheted afghans in his arms.
“Who the hell is that?” Max exclaimed.
“That is Nicky my houseguest and I’ll thank you to watch your language, Max.”
Max gaped at her, his wordless stare a command for more information.
“He’s Melanie’s nephew. He spent the night here if you must know.”
Max took this fact in and then shook his head when it didn’t mesh with the other revelation of the last few minutes. “You need to grab anything important, get in your car, and get out of Malibu. The first fire has already spawned a second one.”
“I don’t have my car. I loaned it to Melanie. I need to wait until she gets back with it.”
“Oh, for the love of God,” Max said. “You cannot wait until she gets back. You’re leaving now with me. Where’s the cat?”
“I can’t leave now. She and Eva are probably on their way back. Or will be.”
“And I’m saying you absolutely are leaving right now. I’m not stranding you and that boy here without a car. Have you not been listening to me? There’s a major wildfire headed this way.”
“But they won’t know where I am!”
“Leave them a note!”
Nicky began to cry. “I want my daddy!” he wailed.
“Now look what you’ve done.” June scrambled over to the child and put an arm around him.
“We are not discussing this, June. You and this kid are leaving with me. Right now. Grab some clothes. Grab whatever is the kid’s. I’ll find the cat. We need to leave.”
June turned to the little boy. “We are going to go with my friend Max in his car. It’s a nice car. It’s red and fast. Let’s get your Christmas presents from my room. We’ll leave Auntie Melanie a note. She will come to Max’s, too, okay?”
Nicky nodded, pacified, it seemed, at the thought of driving away in a fast red car.
June followed Nicky back to her bedroom and scooped his new toys into a fabric shopping bag. She wasn’t sure what to grab for herself. Wildfires in or near Malibu weren’t altogether uncommon. She knew that Malibu had been threatened by fire in the past—many times—and that on more than one occasion a blaze had waltzed in on a dry Santa Ana wind and destroyed whatever lay in its path. Elwood had once told her that in the last three decades more than thirty wildfires had broken out in the brush canyons near Malibu. Living in Southern California meant living with the threat of wildfires, and she’d lived all her life in Southern California.
June tossed into an overnight bag her jewelry box, Frank’s Purple Heart, and a few pieces of clothing, and also grabbed her purse and the emergency cash she kept in her lingerie drawer. On a notepad in the kitchen on which she usually wrote her grocery list she scribbled a hasty note for Melanie with Max’s address. On their way to the front door, she placed into her bag the framed photographs that Eva had days ago replaced on the hi-fi.
June taped the note to the front door with one hand and held on to the wriggling cat with the other.
Then she and Nicky and Algernon climbed into Max’s little MG—Nicky on her lap and a disgruntled Algernon on his.
“I stayed last night with a friend in Santa Monica but I’m getting us back to LA. As soon as you’re safe at my place, I’m going to drive out to the desert to see Elwood.” Max put the car into gear as the angry cat growled at him. “I don’t care if he asked for privacy. I need to discuss things with him and I’m tired of waiting.”
“All right,” June said slowly, picturing in her mind Max arriving at the bungalow in a few hours, knocking on the door, getting no answer, finding a way inside, discovering the note. Dashing back out to his car…
The Plan was unfolding far faster than she thought it would.
There was no going back now.
Although that had been true for three weeks, hadn’t it? Since the moment she dug a grave in the backyard and rolled the man she’d loved into it.
She wrapped her arms tight around Nicky and the cat as Max sped away into the smoky sunrise.