Double Take (20 page)

Michael and I are on the freeway. It's only midafternoon, but traffic is heavy. The sky is still a perfect, cloudless blue, and it's hard to believe that back home the ground is covered with filthy ice that won't melt until April. My mother always taught me that the world is supposed to be equitable and if it isn't, we have to work tirelessly to make it so. I decide to start a committee to bring bad weather to Southern California.

“What are you planning to do now?” He glances over at me.

“Well, I've got a little money saved up, so I thought I might stay out here for a couple of weeks and sit on the beach, soak up some rays, heal, take a little vacation, hang out at the Blue Palms, which I really like because I can stay up late watching TV without my father telling me to turn it down, and it's really cheap, and I'd kind of like to go to Disneyland, where I've never actually been. Oh,” I say, noticing that he is regarding me with an odd expression, maybe incredulity. “You meant right now?”

“Kind of.”

“I don't know, I haven't had time to think about it. Can't we just cruise for a while?”

“I don't know. Maybe we can.”

For some reason, this makes me feel hopeful.

We are in the Hollywood Hills playing a game called Right-Left. As the name implies, it involves turning right at the first corner, left at the second, and so on. We're winding down tiny hilly streets lined with colorful houses with medieval turrets, Norman arches,
Tudor siding, Byzantine scrollwork, Japanese roofs, thatched roofs, mansard roofs, red Spanish-Colonial-tiled roofs, flat roofs, roofs that come to a point, or many points, houses that look bizarre, or fairytale-like, or so ridiculous you expect them to blush when you gape at them.

“This is my favorite thing to do in the whole world,” I say. “You know, when you play Right-Left back home, you just make a giant diagonal across the grid of the city. But here everything is so twisted and curvy, you never know what's next. I love that, don't you?”

“I don't know. Lately I find I'm drawn to grids.”

“Seriously?”

“I don't like nasty surprises. People getting locked in closets. That kind of thing. Whereas you seem to thrive on them.”

“Do I?”

“You've never looked better. It seems to really agree with you.”

“You're joking, right? My face is still black and blue.”

“Maybe I'm joking.”

I regard his profile as pink and green houses streak past us. “You're mad at me, aren't you.”

“Of course I'm not mad at you.”

“You're not?”

“No.”

“Yeah, you're mad.”

“Why would I be mad?” he says in a pleasant voice. “We live together and it's amazing, even epic, and we have fun, and I love you more than I've ever loved anyone, more than I thought was possible, then you leave town and quit answering my letters. No, I'm not mad.”

My heart is pounding and tears are welling up in my eyes. “You love me.”

“No I don't. That's crazy.” He sounds like he means it.

“Yes you do.”

He doesn't answer.

We climb narrow streets, winding further into the hills. Finally, we reach a flat crest and he pulls the car into a dirt parking lot. The city stretches before us on all sides, and in the distance is the blue void of the ocean. “Isn't this incredible?” My voice catches. “Can we just drive around all day? Can we drive around forever?”

For a moment he doesn't say anything. Then he says, “I've got my parents' Shell credit card.”

“Was that a yes?”

He doesn't answer, but he turns to me and our eyes meet. I gaze into the dark blue of his irises and see myself. The panoramic city swirls around us, and the air is filled with heat and light.

© Ken Love

This book took shape over a very long period, and I want to thank everyone who contributed to it.

Many thanks to everyone who read and commented on it, and especially to Beth Baldwin, Gay Guard, Gila Lewis, Rachel Carpenter, and Gina Schuchman for their feedback and support.

Thanks to the wonderful team at HarperCollins Australia for being such a pleasure to work with: Lucy Bennett, Dianne Blacklock, Gemene Heffernan-Smith, Shona Martyn, Mary Rennie, Anna Valdinger, Vanessa Williams, and Camellia Yildirim.

Thanks to the Hyde Park Classics Facebook group, whose photos and memories have helped bring back our shared past.

Thanks to my family members for being so adorable.

Thanks to all the people who hung around 57
^th
Street back in the day, and especially those whose little snatches of conversation or American flag shirts I might have remembered and been inspired by. And if any of you actually did murder anyone in real life, I don't know anything about it, I swear.

ABBY BARDI
is the author of
The Book of Fred
(Atria 2001) and
The Secret Letters
(HarperCollins
Impulse
2015). She grew up in Chicago, went to college in California, then spent a decade teaching English in Japan and England. She teaches at a college in Maryland and lives in historic Ellicott City with her husband and dog.

Inspiration has struck Julie—all it took was her mother's secret. A moving family story for fans of Liane Moriarty and Anne Tyler.

When thirty-seven-year-old slacker-chef Julie Barlow's mother dies, her elder sister Pam finds a cache of old letters from someone who appears to be their mother's former lover. The date stamped on the letters combined with a difficult relationship with her father leads Julie to conclude that the letters' author was a Native American man named J. Fallingwater who must have been her real father.

Inspired by her new identity, Julie uses her small inheritance to make her dream come true: she opens a restaurant called Falling Water that is an immediate success, and life seems to be looking up. Her sister Norma is pressuring everyone to sell their mother's house, and her brother Ricky is a loveable drunk who has yet to learn responsibility, but the family seems to be turning a corner.

Then tragedy strikes, and Julie and her siblings have to stick together more than ever before. With all the secrets and setbacks, will Julie lose everything she has worked so hard for?

Buy now

Impulse

An imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers

First published in Australia in 2016

by HarperCollins
Publishers
Australia Pty Limited

ABN 36 009 913 517

harpercollins.com.au

Copyright © Abby Bardi 2016

The right of Abby Bardi to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the
Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000
.

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the
Copyright Act 1968
, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

HarperCollins
Publishers

Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia

Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand

A 53, Sector 57, Noida, UP, India

1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF, United Kingdom

2 Bloor Street East, 20th floor, Toronto, Ontario M4W 1A8, Canada

195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007, USA

ISBN 978 1 4607 0720 3 (epub)

Cover design by Michelle Payne, HarperCollins Design Studio

Cover images by shutterstock.com