Nina nodded. “Jennifer Beals, yeah. Love her.”

Casey’s eyes went wide for a moment. What a world.

Nina spotted Jay talking to a very tall blond woman. He seemed to be showing her the ocean from the cliffside.

“See that guy?” Nina said. “The tall one talking to the blond woman? There on the side?”

Casey leaned in. “Yeah.”

“That’s my brother Jay.”

“Oh, OK,” Casey said, nodding.

“So he might be …”

“Might be my brother, too.”

Nina looked at Casey, trying to process how bizarre this conversation was. “Yeah,” she said. “Might be your brother, too.”

Nina looked for Kit and spotted her talking to someone on the far corner of the patio. Nina put her finger up to the window. “The girl in the crop top and Daisy Dukes talking to that skinny guy …”

“Potentially my sister?” Casey asked.

Nina nodded. And then she started looking for Hud. She scanned the area, cataloged every person she could see. She could not find his broad shoulders and barrel chest anywhere. “I’m trying to find my brother Hud, but … Doesn’t look like he’s down there.”

As she kept looking, Nina thought of what would have happened if Hud’s biological mother had never left him in June’s arms. Would he have shown up? At some point? Wanting to meet them? Wanting to know about his father?

Nina imagined feeling like a stranger to him, imagined him feeling like a stranger to her. What a loss that would have been—to have gone her whole life not knowing this person who felt like he owned one third of her heart. To not have been there during Hud’s obsession with Frisbee or to see how excited he was when he got his first camera, to not know Hud’s gentleness, to not know that Hud can’t eat too much vinegar or he starts to sweat. He was hers.

Nina looked at Casey. Did some of the same blood run through their veins? Nina didn’t know. She was not sure if she thought Casey might really be her sister or not. But if Casey was, Nina was already sad for what they had lost.

Casey continued to look out the window, stealing glances at Nina. She was trying to gauge just what, exactly, was going on in Nina’s mind. She was reminded that she did not know the woman whose bedroom she was currently sitting in. She had no basis for trying to guess at her inner thoughts.

“Sorry for crashing your party,” Casey said.

Nina shook her head. “Everyone’s invited. Sounds like you might even belong here.”

Casey gave a downcast smile. And Nina did, too. And their smiles were completely different, nothing alike.

“My mother died, too,” Nina said. “She was the only parent I had. We had. So I … I’m sorry. No one should have to go through that. What you went through.”

Casey looked at Nina and felt like she wanted to melt into her arms. Maybe this had been all she wanted. Just someone who understood, someone to tell her she didn’t have to pretend to be OK.

Nina reached out and took Casey’s hand for just a moment. She squeezed it and then let it go.

And then the two of them—somewhere between strangers and kin—watched the party in silence from the second-floor window.

Midnight

Mick Riva was standing in front of the mirror in his bedroom straightening his tie.

He looked good for fifty and he knew it. His once jet-black hair was now more salt than pepper. His once smooth face now creased at his forehead, eyes, and mouth. His good looks had not faded but instead had grown roots.

He was wearing a black suit and thin black tie—the look he had been known for for decades, the look he had perfected.

Beside him, on his vanity table, was the demo of three songs he’d recorded for his new album. All of them had been softly rejected by his record company. They’d sent a mostly sycophantic note that included the very unsycophantic kicker “We worry these tracks are too ‘classic Mick Riva.’ But what excites us is looking forward: Who is the Mick Riva of the 1980s?”

Just looking at the thing made him mad. How had it come to pass that someone like him—a luminary—was expected to listen to the musings of a twenty-something A & R guy with pierced ears and a preoccupation with synthesizers?

Angie would have fought back and made them release the tracks—and any others he decided to record. But unfortunately, they were no longer together.

Angie, as both his manager and his sixth wife, had always understood that Mick just needed to be allowed to do his thing and the world would come running. It had been working for the past thirty years. Angie always got that.

He wished he could go back in time and warn himself not to cheat on her, or not to let her find out, or maybe, perhaps, not to fall for her back in 1978, when she was just the young new redhead in his manager’s office. Because now he was not quite sure who was supposed to fight his battles for him.

When you fall in love with your manager’s assistant, fire your manager, promote his gorgeous assistant, marry her, and then divorce her, you’re left with no wife or manager.

Which is how Mick got to be fifty years old and living alone with his butler, Sullivan. Just him and Sully in this white-brick and ivy mansion that Angie had picked out and decorated. She had loved the oversized eat-in kitchen. Now Mick refused to let Sully make him dinner because he didn’t want to feel pathetic sitting at the table all by himself. It was a table for six.

The other day he’d had the thought that it would be nice to have a big family, have all of his kids come over for Sunday dinner. They could fill the place up, make it feel alive in there again. He thought about calling them. Nina, Jay, Hud, and Katherine.

They were young adults now. He could understand them, maybe offer them advice, or be useful to them all. Maybe they would like that, too.

He had been considering picking up the phone.

But then he had received a handwritten letter in the mail.

• • •

Despite the fact that there were no invitations for the Riva party, Kit did actually send one invitation every year.

Sometime in mid-August, she would take a piece of notebook paper and write down the date and the time and the address. And then she would write, “You are cordially invited to the Riva party.”

And she would address it to her father.

Mick Riva

380 N Carolwood Drive

Los Angeles, California 90077

 

After decades on the road, he had settled down in a home in Holmby Hills, less than thirty miles from his children. Five years ago, Kit had tracked him down. And since then, every single year, she addressed that envelope the exact same way.

This year was the first year he’d noticed.

• • •

Mick slipped his dress shoes on, grabbed his keys, and walked out the door.

He got in his brand-new black Jaguar and put his foot on the gas. He sped down Sunset Boulevard, toward the ocean, with a handwritten invitation sitting on the passenger’s seat.

It was just after midnight when Wendy Palmer took off her dress and slipped off her underwear. She stood there, bare, in the backyard, just to the side of the Jacuzzi, and then began to slowly step down into the steaming water.

The far corner of the Jacuzzi was in the far corner of the pool, which was in the far corner of the lawn. So only a few people saw her, at first.