Night Owls (16 page)

“What are you doing for the Fourth?” Jack asked. “You scheduled to work?”

“I don’t think so. It’s already here?”

“Day after tomorrow. My dad will be showing his face at Pier Thirty-Nine for fireworks over the Bay, which, as you know, might be a moving patriotic display or a muddled cloud of pink fog,
depending on the weather.”

“We used to hunt a spot to watch them, but it’s not worth the hassle.”

“Then, how about a movie at my place? Andy and a few other people are coming. It’s been an Independence Day tradition over the last couple of summers, since I always have the house
to myself.”

“Sounds fun.”

“Okay, well, since Nurse Katherine is watching us, I’m going to leave now with half my male pride intact.”

“We should advertise: Lose your machismo at the Adams family home. We’re like the opposite of that skeevy roll-on underarm testosterone treatment.”

“Even having lost my machismo, I can promise it’s not enough to keep me away,” he said as he slipped into Ghost and rolled down a window. “Good night, Bex.”

“Good night, Jack.”

I watched him drive off and waved at Heath, who looked ridiculous on the back of Noah’s motorcycle. Then I headed back up to Mom. It took her all of one minute to end up in my room,
perched on my bed where Jack had sat earlier.

“Okay, what
really
happened?” she said.

“I don’t know. Like I said already, I was showing him my art—”

“Dammit, Bex. Normal people don’t want to look at that stuff. It’s grisly.”

“I know.”

“You used to be so creative. Why don’t you paint anymore?”

“I like doing this, and it’s practical. I’m thinking about my future, which is what you’ve always drilled into me. And it’s not that different from what you do at
work—or what you’re all jumping up and down about Heath going back to school to learn. My art could help save lives one day.”

She grabbed my shoulders and forced me to look at her. “Heath and I aren’t blessed with a gift. If I had your talent, I wouldn’t be stressed out, working graveyard and missing
out on my kids’ lives.”

“But—”

“Art shouldn’t be practical. It should be emotional and expressive. There are other ways to save people’s lives than drawing teaching diagrams for med students. You could do
something bigger. Something that makes people happy—and that makes
you
happy.”

I pushed free from her grip. “I’m not unhappy. I’ve told you that a thousand times. Why don’t you believe me?”

“Because you’re the most stubborn person I know.”

“Tenacious,” I corrected. “It’s a gift.”

She sighed dramatically. We both looked anywhere but at each other until she finally said, “People don’t faint for no reason. Could be an indication of something more serious going
on with Jack’s health, or could’ve been emotionally triggered. Anything he’s stressed about at home?”

Besides his mom’s seizure and having the mayor of San Francisco for a father? Gee, I didn’t know. “He’s definitely going through some serious stuff right now with his
mom.” I couldn’t tell her any details about Jack’s mother—not even the little I knew—because what if Mom said something at work? It might spread all over the ER and
get back to the Vincents or someone in the press. I already spilled Jack’s vandalizing secret to Heath, which was bad enough.

“His mother?” she mused. “Oh, that’s right. There was that break-in.”

“What break-in?”

Mom shrugged absently. “A couple of years ago. It was in the news. Someone broke into the mayor’s house. His wife went to the hospital—injured by the burglar. Maybe Jack was
traumatized. Some people can’t handle seeing blood after witnessing something shocking. Acute stress disorder, it’s called. Over time, it can develop into PTSD.”

First of all, I thought PTSD mainly affected soldiers. And second, I sort of remembered hearing about the break-in, but seeing how Jack’s status as the mayor’s son was only a couple
of hours old to me, I hadn’t really had time to think about it.

Mom sighed. “Why didn’t you tell me about him? Jesus, Bex—the mayor’s kid?”

“I know.” Or, rather, I
didn’t
, but no way was I admitting that now.

“How serious are you two?”

“The smallest amount of serious you can imagine—like, not even a teaspoon. We haven’t even kissed. You’ve gotten further with him than I have, unbuckling his belt. Or he
could be more into Heath than me for all I know.” Okay, that definitely wasn’t true, but minimizing my mother’s curiosity about my romantic life was of the utmost importance to me
at that moment.

“Oh, sweetie,” Mom said. “He’s completely into you. He couldn’t keep his eyes off you during dinner.”

“All hail the power of the Roman orgy shirt,” I said with a smile.

She closed her eyes. “God help me make it through the summer.”

You and me both, Mom.

THE NEXT MORNING, A DAY BEFORE JACK’S MOVIE
party, I got ready to work a full nine-hour shift at the market—a rare thing for me. Nothing
like last-minute holiday grocery shopping. As I was preparing myself to clean up corn silk and heft organic seedless watermelons across the scanner, I checked my email and stilled when the words
Telegraph Wood Studio
appeared in my inbox.

I reread the email several times. I should’ve expected this. Anything connected to my father is always complicated. If I wanted to know more, I guessed I’d have to make an effort.
Taking a BART train to Berkeley wasn’t a huge deal, but it would eat up an entire afternoon, and I’d have to lie to Mom. And was it worth it? Did I really want to pick open a wound
that had already healed and been forgotten? I honestly wasn’t sure. I’d have to think about it.

And I had more important things to worry about, like Jack.

After he left our house, I went online and skimmed a few news articles about the break-in Mom mentioned. They were all vague, mentioning only that Mrs. Vincent was injured and treated at the
hospital and that no one else in the household was hurt. All the articles included the same handful of quotes from the mayor: that his wife was doing fine, that she’d returned home in good
spirits. He requested that the press respect his family’s privacy.

Nothing was particularly interesting . . . until I clicked on a local blog run by the opposing political party, which not only theorized that there was something more to the break-in that the
mayor’s office was trying to keep quiet, but also mentioned that the mayor’s teenage daughter had been sent overseas to boarding school in Europe.

Jack had a sister.

Why hadn’t he mentioned her? I wondered if they were close or if he ever saw her. But if I asked him about it, then he’d know I’d been stalking him online. Not cool.

I started poking around in the comments section to see if there was any mention of either the sister or his mom’s schizophrenia, but reading the first few nasty remarks not only pissed me
off, it also made me feel guilty for snooping into his family’s life. Like they were disposable celebrities and not real people. So I decided that if I was going to learn anything more about
the break-in and Jack’s mom and his faraway sister, I’d avoid the toxic gossip online and just wait to hear it from Jack himself.

The next afternoon, Mom left for her holiday-pay shift at the hospital, and for once I didn’t have to concoct some elaborate story about where I’d be. She was completely fine with
my going to Jack’s house, and even said, “Maybe you’ll make friends with some of the other youths.”
Youths.
Like it was some sort of church group.

It definitely wasn’t.

Jack had offered to pick me up at seven, but Mom was still getting ready for work, and I didn’t want her to give him the third degree about the fainting thing. Besides, just because he had
a car didn’t mean he was obligated to chauffeur me around town. That’s what I told him, but after standing for the better part of an hour on a packed train, I regretted it. Holidays
plus mass transit equals disaster.

Jack texted me directions to his house. It wasn’t a long walk from the Muni stop, but I was already an hour late, it was all uphill, and I’d stupidly worn my tall gray boots over my
jeans in an attempt to fake coolness for his rich friends. Huge mistake. Blisters would haunt me later. But after several minutes of schlepping past million-dollar homes, I finally spotted Ghost.
The vintage Corvette was parked in front of a three-story wood-shingled house tucked away on a side street.

Like everything else on the block, the house was jammed right up next to its neighbors and at first glance didn’t have much curb appeal, with nothing to show but a two-car garage and a
fancy copper street number. Lilac vines dripped like frosting over the garage, where a semiprivate entrance hinted at the wealth within. To get there, you had to enter an arched redwood gate and go
up a steep flight of steps. You also had to pass under two Big Brother security cameras. Did his dad have Secret Service around here, too? Or was that only for DC politicians? I really had no clue,
but the cameras weirded me out.

I texted Jack:
Do I need clearance to enter this place or what?

A few seconds later, rubber soles slapped against stone, the gate swung open, and there he stood, filling up the redwood arch: pompadour, black boots, black snap-front shirt with silver koi over
the front pockets, and, heaven help me, that 4-H belt buckle.

His slow gaze swept from my boots (the blisters were a small price to pay) all the way up my tasteful (yet boob-flattering) shirt to my face. “Happy Fourth,” he finally said.
“Or is that ‘Merry Fourth’? What’s the standard Independence Day greeting?”

“I think you’re supposed to salute the flag while imitating the mournful call of a bald eagle.”

“Is that like using a turkey whistle at Thanksgiving?”

“Exactly the same.”

He stepped closer. “I can’t believe you’re actually here.”

“You’re not going to faint on me again, are you?”

“Am I ever going to live that down?”

I shook my head.

“I figured as much,” he said with a smile. “You’re in color.”

“I am?”

“Red,” he said, pointing to my head.

Breaking my long-running cycle of grayscale fashion, I’d tied a red bandanna around my head à la Rosie the Riveter (“We Can Do It!”) and gone with one loose fishtail
braid that I’d wound up and pinned underneath. “Holidays bring out my daring side.”

“Good to know,” he said with a teasing smile. “Come on. We’re back here.”

AS I WALKED UNDER THE ARCH, I GLANCED UP AT THE
camera and felt his fingers slide around mine. “Hi,” he said in a softer voice. God, he
smelled nice, all woodsy and clean.

Someone yelled out from behind the house. “Keep your pants on,” he called back. Up-tempo guitar-and-drum music grew louder as we walked side by side down a stone path between his
house and a crazy high wooden privacy fence. Tree branches from the neighbor’s yard curved over the fence to create a shaded green canopy, and the farther back we went, the darker and more
heavily wooded it became.

There were zero trees on my block. In fact, about two yards of dirt and broken cement patio sat between the back of my house and the one behind it.

But not the Vincents’.

Within the castled defense of their soaring privacy wall, a series of terraced decks rose from the wooded property, separating Jack’s house from those of the surrounding neighbors. We
stood on the most expansive deck, which started at the back door and fanned out to other, smaller decks—one behind a waist-high stone wall and another that sat behind a small guesthouse in
the corner. Modern stairs zigzagged to a fourth, loftlike deck above us, where a bridge led to a door on the second story.

“Is M. C. Escher your architect?” I asked.

“My dad built all this when he won the first election.”

“Are there cameras back here, too?”

“Only over the back door,” he said. “But the house is off-limits tonight. Surprise—my dad doesn’t want unsupervised party guests trampling his polished wood
floors. Though I don’t spend a ton of time in the house anymore. I moved into the guesthouse last year.” He gestured toward the small building in the corner of the yard. “My
parents used to have people stay over a lot, but not anymore.”

Before the conversation got too sad, I said, “The guesthouse is private, which is cool. And now I see how you’re sneaking out for your midnight expeditions. Except for the
cameras.”