“I’m not sleeping with him, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Lara said. “I prefer men who don’t spend four hours a day sunbathing with a foil reflector.”

Relief came to Jay like ice on a burn.

“He’s depressed because his even-more-orange girlfriend dumped him,” Lara continued. “Somebody at your party’s gotta have a thing for pretty boys, right? Can we pawn him off on someone?”

Jay smiled. “I think we will have a lot of options for getting Chad laid.”

Lara folded the napkin with the address and put it in her apron pocket. “Guess I’m going to a party tonight.”

Jay smiled, pleased. There it was. What he came for. When he left, he forgot to take the cake.

1959

June had been due with Jay on August 17, 1959. Smack in the middle of Mick’s tour for his debut album, Mick Riva: Main Man.

June and Mick had fought about the tour dates all through her first trimester. June had insisted Mick reschedule the second half of the tour. Mick had insisted what she was asking was virtually impossible.

“This is my chance,” Mick told her one afternoon as they stood out on the patio, watching the tide pull away. Nina was napping and they were trying to keep their voices down. “You don’t get to just reschedule your chance.”

“This is your child,” June said. “You cannot reschedule your child.”

“I’m not asking to reschedule my child, Junie, for crying out loud. I’m asking for you to understand what’s at stake here. What I’m building for our kids. What I’m building for this whole family. I can’t do all of this alone. I need your help. If I’m going to go out there and be great, I need you to be here, keeping things together, being strong. This life we want …” Mick sighed and calmed down. “It requires things from you, too.”

June sat down, resigned. This reasoning made sense to her, as much as she hated it. And so somewhere in the time that Jay went from the size of a lime to the size of a grapefruit, they found a compromise.

Mick could perform wherever he wanted, whenever he wanted, but when June called him home, he had to come.

They shook on it one night when they were going to bed and as they did, Mick pulled June’s arm toward him and pulled her on top of him. She laughed as he kissed her neck.

When Mick took off for his Vegas shows four days before June’s due date, he promised to head home the moment she called to say she was in labor. “And I’ll be home as soon as I can,” he said as he kissed Nina’s forehead and June’s cheek. He put a hand on June’s belly and then made his way out the door.

But when the time came—June’s mother called him an hour and ten minutes before his Saturday night show began—Mick didn’t run to the airport like he’d promised. He hung up the phone and stood there, backstage in his suit and tie, staring at the bulbs around the mirror.

It was his last Vegas stop on the tour. And impressing the guys at the Sands meant a lot of things. It meant he could get booked out for whole months at a time, which would mean some financial stability. This was his last booking for two weeks. Two weeks! Just like Junie had asked.

Think of all that time he’d have to be home. Junie and the kids would have him all to themselves. He’d pay full attention to their every waking need.

And so, he turned away from the mirror, straightened his tie, and finished his sound check.

June’s second labor developed with lightning speed, her body kicking into gear, remembering with precision exactly what it had done only a little over a year before.

Mick was in an impeccable black suit, leaning over and winking at a young woman in the front row, at the very moment that his first son, three hundred miles away, cried at the shock of the world.

Mick arrived back in L.A. seven hours after Jeremy Michael Riva was born. And Mick could see, just looking at June in her hospital bed, that she was angry.

“You have a lot to explain,” his mother-in-law said, the moment Mick came through the door. She began grabbing her things. She shook her head at him. “I’ll let you get to it,” she said as she took Nina with her and exited the room.

Mick looked at June, his eyes resting on the baby swaddled tightly in her arms. He could see only the tiny tip of his son’s head and marveled at the dark swirl of hair.

“You were supposed to be here before,” June said. “Not half a day later. What is the matter with you?”

“I know, honey, I know,” Mick said. “But can I hold him? Now?”

June nodded and Mick swooped in, ready to take him. The boy was light in his arms and the sight of Jay’s fresh face stunned Mick silent for a brief moment. “My son, my son, my son,” he finally said, with a level of pride and warmth that melted June’s tired heart. “Thank you for my boy, Junie. I’m sorry I couldn’t be here. But look what you have done,” he said. “Our beautiful family. I owe it all to you.”

June smiled and took it all in. She looked at her glamorous husband and thought of her darling daughter out in the hall and reached out and touched her beautiful new baby boy. She felt that she had so many of the things she had ever wanted.

And so she let them go, the things she did not have.

A few weeks after they brought Jay home, as June was brushing her teeth, Mick kissed her on the cheek and told her he had a surprise. He had recorded the song he’d written for her. “Warm June” was going to be the first single off of his second album.

She spit out her toothpaste and smiled. “Really?” she said. “‘Warm June’?”

Mick nodded. “Everyone in the country is going to know your name,” he said.

June liked that idea. She also liked the idea that everyone would know he loved her. That he was spoken for.

Because June was starting to suspect Mick wasn’t keeping to himself on the road.

11:00 A.M.

Kit was sitting in the driveway, waiting for Jay. She checked her watch again. He’d been gone for almost an hour. Who took an hour to get gas?

Her hair was wet and combed, grazing her bare shoulders. She was wearing an old dress of Nina’s, seersucker and strapless.

Kit wasn’t really into dresses but she’d seen it hanging in the closet and decided to try it on. It was comfortable and cool and she thought maybe she liked how she looked in it. She wasn’t sure.

Jay pulled up to the cottage like a man who’d only twenty seconds ago stopped speeding.

“What took you so long?” Kit asked.

“Since when do you wear dresses?” he said, the second he saw her.

“Ugh,” Kit said, frowning. How were you supposed to change—in ways both big and small—when your family was always there to remind you of exactly the person you apparently signed an ironclad contract to be? She turned around and started walking through the garage.

“Where are you going?” Jay called out.

“To change my clothes, you asshole.”

Once inside, she pulled off the dress, leaving it there on the wood floor. She slipped into jeans, put her arms through a T-shirt.

“Nice job pretending you were getting gas,” Kit said, as she hopped in the car. She leaned over the center console to confirm her suspicions. The tank was still half full.