Page 29 of A Map to Paradise

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Nicky didn’t let Melanie out of his sight after she and June returned to Max’s place.

Within an hour of their arrival back in Westwood, the radio station updating them on the fire announced the Malibu blaze had at last been contained. Only residents in areas where the fire had fully been extinguished were currently being allowed to survey what the fire had taken from them.

June wanted to leave right then to make sure the house still stood. She’d been quiet on the drive from Palm Springs to Los Angeles, wanting to listen to news stations reporting on the fire. Melanie thought this was due to June’s wanting to distract herself from the ruse they’d just driven away from. But now Melanie could see June was very worried about the house—more than she had been the day before or the one before that, when the fire had been much worse.

“I’ll drive you out to Malibu, June,” she said. “I need to check on the Gilberts’ house and pack a bigger suitcase than this overnight bag. I don’t have the right clothes for Nebraska.”

“I’ll come with you,” Eva said quickly.

Eva turned to Melanie; her gaze was earnest.

Understanding dropped onto Melanie like a solid weight. The firebreak. Those firemen had said they’d be digging a firebreak in June’s backyard.

Digging in June’s backyard.

“Has anyone been here? Called here asking for June?” Melanie said to Eva, meeting that earnest gaze with an intensity of her own.

Eva shook her head, her eyes wide.

“Why would anyone be looking for me here?” June said quickly. “Who could possibly know this is where Max brought me?”

“I can’t just leave Nicky here,” Melanie said to Eva, ignoring June’s questions.

“Nicky can come, too,” Eva said. We cannot let her go alone, Eva mouthed.

“You girls don’t need to come,” June said wearily, reaching for her purse and car keys.

“We want to,” Eva continued. “Nicky and I have been cooped up here too long. June, you need to let us come.”

June swiveled her neck to look at Eva. “I need to?”

Eva opened her mouth and then shut it. Then she looked at Melanie.

“What is going on?” June said tonelessly to Melanie.

Melanie pulled Nicky tighter into her arms. “Come on, Nicky,” she said next as she reached for her own purse. “Let’s go for a ride.”

Melanie ushered June out the door. Eva followed, and as Melanie pulled the door shut, June asked again what was going on.

“You go ahead and get into the back seat, okay?” Melanie said to Nicky. She set him on his feet. Happy to at last be out of the house, her nephew ran to the car parked in the driveway. Melanie turned to June. “I don’t know if you need to know this yet, but maybe you do.”

“Know what?” June asked.

Melanie exhaled deeply. “Firemen told us they were going to dig a firebreak in your backyard.”

June’s eyes widened in absolute shock. “A what ?”

“A firebreak. In the backyard.”

For three long seconds June said and did nothing. “Oh, dear God…,” she finally murmured.

“But it doesn’t mean they found anything, June,” Melanie said. “They told us they were going to dig the firebreak that first day. If they’d found the body we would have heard about it, right? It would have been news. All the law enforcement agencies would have heard about it. The authorities would have come out to Palm Springs. You’d be in jail right now.”

The minute the words were out of Melanie’s mouth, she wished she could reel them back. June looked stricken.

“I shouldn’t have said it like that, June,” she went on. “I’m just thinking maybe you don’t have to worry about it. They can’t have found Elwood’s body. I think we would know. It’s not like you’ve been hiding in a cave somewhere. The police would’ve found you if they were looking. It’s been four days.”

“I think Melanie is probably right, June,” Eva said. “She is probably right.”

When June still said nothing, Melanie scooped the key ring out of June’s hands. “I said I’m driving.”

The drive to central Malibu seemed to take far too long, and when they reached its borders, the first smoldering patches of earth and skeletal landscape were an eerie greeting. The closer Melanie inched the car toward the turnoff for Paradise Circle, the more destruction they saw: buildings with roofs burned clean off, buildings burned only partway, buildings burned to their foundations, and some buildings not burned at all, as though the fire had gone through the seaside community with a pointer and selected what it would devour and what it would not. At the street they needed to take off of the highway, they were stopped at a roadblock by a National Guard patrol armed with rifles and lists of who would be allowed in.

“I am renting the house at the top of Paradise Circle,” Melanie told the guardsman when he leaned in to inquire about the occupants of the car. “I’ve been living there since July.”

“Only homeowners are allowed up,” he said.

“Well, this is June Blankenship.” Melanie motioned to June sitting next to her. “Look on your list. I am sure Blankenship is on your list.”

The man consulted his clipboard. “Blankenship. Blankenship. Elwood Blankenship.” He turned his attention to June. “You Mrs. Blankenship?”

June swallowed. “I am.”

It wasn’t a lie.

“Can I see some ID?”

June lifted her purse onto her lap and fished out her wallet. Her hand was shaking as she opened it to where her California driver’s license lay framed behind a sleeve of clear plastic.

Melanie took it and handed it to the man.

He looked at it, looked at June, and handed it back.

“All right. You’re allowed to view your home only. Understand? No getting out of the car. It’s not safe to go traipsing about. You need to be back here in ten minutes. And I’m sorry for your loss.”

Melanie felt June startle in the seat and heard her gasp.

“What was that?” Melanie said.

“I said I was sorry for her loss.”

“Loss?” Melanie echoed.

“Her house. It’s a loss. You didn’t know? The new list came out an hour ago. The Blankenship house is a loss. I’m sorry.”

Melanie could not bring herself to look at June sitting next to her. “Oh, my. No. She didn’t know.”

“Remember what I said. Stay in your vehicle. Ten minutes.”

“Right. Thank you.”

The guardsman moved the barricade and Melanie drove forward several hundred yards before she turned to look at June. Behind her she could hear Eva sniffling.

“June?” Melanie glanced at the half-blackened road ahead and then back at June.

June’s face was jarringly void of expression. “It was all for nothing,” she muttered, seemingly only to herself. “I did that horrible thing to Elwood for nothing. For nothing.”

“June!” Melanie persisted. “Look at me.”

But June did not. “I stuffed him into a ball gown bag, zipped him up, and dragged him down the stairs like an ugly old rug I didn’t want anymore.”

“It wasn’t like that!” Eva exclaimed from the back seat.

“A ball?” Nicky said. “I don’t see a ball.”

They passed a trio of pepper trees that bordered a large fenced-in lot. Two of the trees’ feathery bark looked like ebony, their stripped branches lifting themselves to the sky, empty. The third still had its tiny green leaves on one side.

“I want the ball,” Nicky repeated.

“There is no ball, Nicky,” Melanie said, and then said June’s name again.

But June went on. “I dug up his roses. I got blisters on my hands from digging the grave. It took so long. I kept thinking, ‘Surely now it’s deep enough.’ But it wasn’t and I had to keep digging. And then when it finally was deep enough. I rolled him into it. Like he was garbage. He’s not even face up. He’s on his side. I tried to roll him over and I couldn’t. I couldn’t…”

“Don’t do this, June!” Eva said. “Do not remember it like this!”

“But this is what I did. This is what I did to him. And it was for nothing. The house is gone. Everything is gone. The script is gone. It was all for nothing.”

“June!” Melanie shouted and then immediately lowered her voice. She could see through the rearview mirror that Nicky was staring at the back of her head. “This kind of talk is not helpful. You didn’t do it for nothing. It wasn’t for nothing. So stop this. And he was going to be buried in dirt anyway. Dirt is dirt. You picked a good spot.”

“A beautiful spot,” Eva interjected.

“Listen,” Melanie said. “Elwood loved those roses. If he’s looking down on you right now he’s probably wishing you would just remember how much he did love them.”

June was silent as these words swirled about them in the car.

They were passing houses that had partially burned, some that looked perfectly fine, and a few scattered lots where there was no house at all, just an ash-strewn foundation. And then they were taking the last curve, the last turn before the street ended. Trees on either side were robbed of their top leaves and branches. The Gilberts’ house came into view first. It appeared untouched.

And then June’s.

It was hard to tell there had been a house. The brick fireplace still stood, blackened but erect, and the stove in the kitchen had made a last stand. But the walls were gone, the second story was gone. In their place was ash and soot and black rubble. In the backyard, the patio was a pile of cinders but miraculously three of the dozen rosebushes still stood, almost calling out audibly to be noticed.

And there was no firebreak. No part of the backyard had been dug up at all. What used to be the backyard was flat except for the three remaining rosebushes, singed but standing.

The firemen must not have been able to dig the firebreak before abandoning the cul-de-sac as the fire approached.

Or maybe they’d been radioed to attend to another area under greater threat and they never made it back here.

The reason didn’t matter.

What mattered was Elwood was still in his favorite place in all the world. And three of his beloved bushes had survived to mark it.

Nicky was anxious to get out of the car and he grumbled when Melanie told him he had to stay where he was.

June stared, unblinking, at the ruin outside the passenger-side window. “What will I do now? I left the script in the house. I have nothing now. Nothing. I don’t know where I’ll go.”

“Look. One thing at a time, June. As soon as power is restored, you can stay at my place, okay?” Melanie said. “I won’t be there for a couple weeks at least. You and Eva can both stay there for right now. It’s not like Carson is going to find out. Not for a while, anyway. If he even bothers to check to see if I am all right, I’ll have Irving tell him I’m fine.”

“And after that? And how can I leave Elwood here? Like this?”

“Well…” Melanie’s voice trailed off. There was Eva’s way…

“You should buy it anyway,” Eva said from the back seat.

Of course. The answer was easy. Melanie wished she’d said it first rather than imagining for a terrible moment Eva’s solution.

“Eva’s right,” Melanie said. “Buy the lot, June. Elwood had this place insured, right? Those boys will get the insurance money for the house as part of the estate. Offer to buy the lot from them. They’re not going to want it anyway. Look at it. Just buy it. Then you can…”

June finished Melanie’s thought. “Protect it.”

“Care for it,” Eva added.

For a moment June said nothing, then she put her hand on the car door handle. “I need a minute. I won’t break any other rules, I promise.” She opened the door, got out of the car, and began walking toward the edge of the ruin.

Nicky asked when they were leaving.

“Very soon, hon,” Melanie said.

The two women watched in silence as June stood at the rim of the remains of Elwood’s house. Watched as she gazed at the three rosebushes beyond that were boldly extending their branches to the sun.

June looked old and worn and defeated, standing there with her back to them.

But no time machine in the world could have prevented this, Melanie thought. Not this. You can’t go back in time and stop a fire from coming.

Honestly, what could a person actually stop from happening?

Even the strongest of hopes were still as delicate as paper outside the confines of the heart. Choosing to do something differently if she could crawl inside a time machine still meant she’d have to wait to see if messing with the past had been worth it.

And what would happen to the lessons learned from a past she’d erased? Would she get to keep them? Would she be willing to lose them if she couldn’t?

If she could go back to the moment she agreed to become more than Carson’s costar and decline to do so, would she find herself just wishing for another time machine somewhere farther down the road?

Would the rest of her life just be one constant stretch of regrets and disastrous attempts at do-overs?

What was the good in that? A time machine would be a portal to hell if that’s what would happen.

Which meant…the past had to amount to more than just the spent years of that one life each person gets. Something weightier.

Maybe the past’s allure wasn’t that it could be changed if time machines were real but that it begged to be remembered. Maybe it was the ability to hold on to all those years—to remember where she’d been, the choices she’d made, the paths she’d chosen—that made the future something she was capable of stepping into.

Maybe it was the only thing that did.

“Do you think June will be all right?” Eva asked, as though reading Melanie’s thoughts.

“I don’t know. I guess that depends on her.”

“Melanie?” Eva asked a moment later. “Would you mind very much taking me to Yvonne’s after this?”

Melanie swung her head around from the front seat to face Eva. “What for?”

“I don’t want to live like this. Like she has been living. Is still living.” Eva nodded toward June. “She lives now with the fear of being discovered, every day. I have, too, for so many years. I do not want to live that way anymore. I don’t want to live afraid. I want to talk to those men. If I must face what I have done to not be afraid anymore, then I will.”

Melanie regarded her. “If you’re sure.”

“I am sure.”