She missed the Tercel. She’d paid to have it freighted home for her brother to use, and the thought of that turquoise beast with its custom Hemi engine driving around Dayton never failed to make her smile.
The winding road led up and away from the Pacific Coast Highway, and the landscape turned immediately to low gray desert. This is what the Hollywood Hills will look like after all the people are gone, she thought. After all the vines and earthquakes destroy the gaudy houses and the coyotes reclaim it all.
She looked at her GPS and saw that the “hidden driveway” promised in the brochures for Malibu’s most exclusive rehab facility was just a mile ahead. Gaynor had warned her that she’d probably overshoot it on her first visit, and if she did she’d have to drive all the way to the top of the canyon before she could turn around and make her way back to the driveway.
She had requested to visit Seamus earlier, but his sober coach had nixed all visitors for the first month. Even Bluey had been unable to gain access, and only Seamus’s agent had seen him. Nicola heard that visit had been angry and brief, since it concerned Seamus being fired from the blockbuster in Ojai. Agents don’t like losing money.
As she approached the driveway she deliberately accelerated. She drove by the heavy, nondescript wooden gate, and continued all the way to the top of the canyon. At the crest, she pulled her car into a turnout and got out.
She was standing on a cliff that dropped hundreds of feet below her to forestland, that low Malibu scrub that covered the jagged rolling hills along the coast. She could see the ocean stretching out below her all the way to Australia. The mist was light and crisp and she could see Catalina outlined against the horizon.
If she looked a little ways north, she saw the kelp forests, and thought back to her first date with Seamus, the exhilaration of jumping from the roof of the yacht into the emerald Pacific, with Seamus holding her hand. As fucked up as things had gotten with him, it was impossible to deny that moment and its perfect happiness.
She surveyed the canyon for the rehab facility, but its location was as inscrutable as promised. It was deep inside its own canyon, unable to be seen from anywhere nearby.
Out of habit, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and was relieved to see that she had no service. She watched a pair of hawks riding the thermals. She slid her phone back into her jeans and reached her arms up to the sun, taking a deep breath.
“Okay, chickenshit,” she whispered to herself. “Let’s go do this.”
* * *
After clearing three security gates, Nicola was surprised to see that the facility had valets parking cars. As she slid her new Audi into the valet queue, she had another pang of missing the poor old Tercel. Now she was just another Hollywood publicist pulling into a valet line in an Audi.
The valet did not make eye contact as she got out of her car. He handed her the ticket and drove her car twenty feet into a parking spot.
“Because I could never have done that myself.” Nicola turned and looked at the building, a sprawling California bungalow surrounded by forests of succulents. The fences around the property were shrouded in massive hot-pink bougainvillea, and Nicola realized that the preponderance of spiky plants was just a pretty way of enforcing prison walls.
Nicola opened the leadlight door and stepped inside a regular living room. No desks. No nurses. She was surprised.
A woman in her late fifties with long gray hair walked up to her. “Ms. Wallace?” she asked.
“Yes, but please call me Nic,” Nicola said, and the woman hugged her.
“Welcome,” she said softly. “I’m Nina. Do you have any questions before I take you out to see our boy?”
“Not really,” Nicola said. “I read your e-mail; I know how he’s doing and I know what we can and can’t talk about. Is there anything else that I need to know?”
“There’s been progress,” Nina began quietly. “He hasn’t been a fan of the process, but in the week since he heard you were going to visit, he has been improving rapidly. We’re not sure if that’s a part of his new sobriety, or if it’s because he likes you.”
“Hopefully the former, huh?” Nicola said with a weak smile.
“Yes, of course,” Nina said. “If you’re ready to go, he’s waiting for you outside.”
Adirondack chairs were strewn across an obscenely green lawn, and at the back of the yard an azure pool nestled into a small canyon. Behind that, another wall of blinding-pink bougainvillea made sure nobody got out. She saw Seamus sitting in a red chair, drinking a glass of water and fussing nervously with his T-shirt hem. She pushed the door open.