Page 25 of Malibu Rising

June continued to watch Carol walk away while the two baby boys in June’s arms started crying—in alternating tracks, as if refusing to be in unison.

Carol backed out of the drive. Her clearly brand-new Ford Fairlane was crammed to the roof with suitcases and bags. If June had any doubt, the image of a packed car made it clear that this was not a game. This woman was leaving Los Angeles, leaving her son in June’s arms, leaving him for June to raise. Her back was turned, quite literally, to her flesh and blood.

June watched Carol drive off, until the car disappeared behind the curve of the mountains. She kept looking awhile longer, willing the woman to turn around, to change her mind. When the car did not reappear, June’s heart sank.

June shut the door with her foot and guided Nina to the television. She tuned it to a rerun ofMy Friend Flickain the hope that Nina would sit there quietly and watch. Nina did exactly as she was told. Even before the age of two, she knew how to read a room.

June laid Jay down in his crib and let him cry as she unwrapped Hudson from his swaddle.

Hudson was small and puny, with long limbs he had not grown into, could not yet control. He was red and screaming, as if already angry. He knew he’d been abandoned, June was sure of it. He cried so hard and so loud for so long—so very, very long—that June thought she might lose her mind. His cry just kept repeating over and over like an alarm that never ceased. Tears started falling down his newborn face. A boy without a mother.

“You have to stop,” June whispered to him, desperate and aching. “Sweet boy, you have to stop. You have to stop. You have to stop. Please, little baby, please, please, please. For me.”

And for the first time since they began this peculiar and unwelcome journey, Hudson Riva looked June right in the eye, as if realizing suddenly that he wasn’t alone.

It was then, June holding this strange boy in her hands—staring at him, trying to process just what exactly was happening to them both—that she understood everything was far more simple than she was making it.

This boy needed someone to love him. And she could do that. That would be a very easy thing for her to do.

She pulled him close to her, as close as she could, as close as she’d held her own babies the days they were born. She held him tight and she put her cheek to his head and she could feel him start to calm. And then, even before he was silent, June had already made up her mind.

“I will love you,” June told him. And she did.

• • •

Evening came around and June took the chicken out of the oven and steamed the broccoli and fed Nina dinner. She rocked the boys, gave Nina a bath, and put all three of them to bed—a process that took a full two and a half hours.

And as she performed each one of these tasks, June was forming her plan.I will kill him,she thought as she washed Nina’s hair.I will kill him,she thought as she changed Jay’s diaper.I will kill him,she thought as she gave Hudson a bottle.But first I will lock him out of the goddamn house.

When the kids were asleep—Nina in her bed and the two boys sharing a crib—June poured herself a shot of vodka and threw it back. Then she poured herself one more. Finally, she called a twenty-four-hour locksmith out of the yellow pages.

She did not want Mick to step one foot in their house, did not want him to ever again sleep in their king-sized bed, or brush his teeth in one of their master bathroom sinks.

When the locksmith—a Mr. Dunbar, sixty years old in a black T-shirt and dungarees with yellowing blue eyes and wrinkles so deep, you could lose your change in them—got there, June hit her first roadblock.

“I can’t change the locks without an agreement from the master of the house,” Mr. Dunbar said. He frowned at June, as if she should know better.

“Please,” June said. “For my family.”

“Sorry, ma’am, I can’t change the locks if the house isn’t yours.”

“The house is mine,” she said.

“Well, notonlyyours,” he said, and June guessed his own wife might have locked him out of the house a time or two.

June continued to plead to no avail but the truth was, she was only a little surprised. She was a woman, after all. Living in a world created by men. And she had long known that assholes protect their own. They are faithful to no one but surprisingly protective of each other.

“Good luck to you, Mrs. Riva. I’m sure it will all work out,” hesaid as he left, having done nothing but extort a fee for being dragged out of his bed.

So June used the only tool she had at her disposal: a dining room chair. She lodged it underneath the knob of the front door and then sat on it. And for the first time in her life, she wished she were heavier. She wished she were broad and tall and stout. Hefty and mighty. How silly of her to have worked so hard to stay trim and small this whole time.

When Mick came home at 1:00A.M., after recording—his collar undone, his eyes vaguely bloodshot—he found that the door would open a crack but budge no further.

“June?” he said, into the thin space between the door and the frame.

“The thing that upsets me the most,” June said, plainly, “is that I think I knew it, already. That you weren’t being faithful. But I put it out of my head because I trusted what you said more than I trusted myself.”

“Honey, what are you talking about?”

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