In the distance, he could see the coastline. Point Reyes National Seashore.
He turned his head left and scanned the blue horizon as the Monterey skipped across a series of small swells. He’d spotted whales out here before, their barnacled bodies rolling gently through the surface, blowholes misting the warm Pacific air.
You gotta call her. You gotta find out what the hell happened.
He steered the Monterey through a wide turn, past Point Reyes, and set a course for the marina.
The SXz headquarters were surprisingly small for so global a brand. With buildings of burnished metal and glass and modern in every conceivable sense, the campus crouched in a leafy corner of a Silicon Valley business park. Damian’s Bugatti roared off the highway and into the parking lot, circling round back and dipping into the underground parking deck.
Just as the doors of his private elevator parted and he stepped into his office, his cell phone dinged. A text.
He checked it. Hayden.
Damian rounded his desk and tossed his cell on it. He plopped into his chair and exhaled loudly. He’d get to Hayden in a bit. If it had been something important, his partner would’ve indicated. Damian’s first order of business would be to call Gigi and set things straight between them.
He picked up his phone and rang her contact.
Nothing.
When her voicemail picked up, Damian almost said something, then decided against it. He thumbed the Off button and tossed the phone on his desk.
Well, damn.
He leaned forward and turned on his computer.
Why are you avoiding me, Gigi?
His phone dinged again. He tilted the screen into view. Michelle. Call me when you get a sec, she texted.
On his monitor, he moved the cursor to his email and clicked it open. He picked up his phone and called Michelle, who picked up immediately.
“What up, homie?” she asked.
“I can’t call it, yo.” For reasons that neither could now remember, Michelle and Damian routinely greeted each other with rap lingo. “Whatcha got for me?”
As Michelle ran down her list, Damian checked his email absently.
Suddenly, he sat up and turned away from his computer monitor.
“Who?” he asked. His eyes were wide. “Is that all they said?” Damian reached for a pad and pen. “Gimme that number.”
Two hours later, Damian was standing at his office window, gazing out over the sloping green landscape, when it came to him.
Of course.
One of the many advantages of being both a Stanford graduate and a billionaire is that you have a circle of acquaintances that encompasses pretty much every profession on the planet.
Damian thumbed through his phone contacts till he found the one he needed.
The ring tone sounded three times and a perky-sounding female voice answered, “Stanford University Research Center, how may I direct your call?”
“Teri Landi, please. Tell her it’s Damian Black.”
Chapter 22
Home
I-40 East split the country horizontally. Passing through the unending flatness of northern Texas and Oklahoma, Gigi filled her time with competing scenarios of her return home. Her departure five years earlier had been, she now realized with adult clarity, a rash act of immaturity and spite. Her childhood had been difficult, yes, but not because of abuse or neglect. Her parents were, for all their other failings, good and decent and loving people. But they simply never understood her. And the more they tried and failed, the more frustrated they and Gigi became.
She had been, as she called it, an “oops baby.” Not unwanted, but unplanned. Her parents’ financial situation had always been precarious and often dire, with her mother mostly unemployed and her father pulling shifts at Oliver Timber Company. Government assistance had helped, but not much, and Gigi would later decide that the benefit of the assistance was never enough to outweigh the embarrassment of having received it. She decided early on that, once on her own, she would never find herself in a place of need. That she would be self-sufficient.
So she hit the books hard and excelled. Her parents were proud, but rarely said so, feeling—as did Gigi—the growing estrangement. A chasm had opened between them, Gigi on one side and her parents on the other. They recognized her as their own—How could they not? Gigi was the spitting image of her father—but regarded her as something of a mystery, a changeling who was theirs but somehow not.
In first grade, she was reading sixth grade science books. When her teacher, Ms. Taylor, informed Gigi’s parents of this during a parent-teacher night at her school, instead of elation and pride, her parents responded with concern. “Is she s’posed to be doin’ that?” her mother had asked, as if it were a disciplinary problem.
By third grade, the school had moved her to the AG track of courses: “academically gifted,” it was called, though when she got older, she joked that AG actually stood for “awfully goofy.” Her striking good looks had kept her from being the brunt of nerd jokes and teasing that plagued less fortunate bookworms, and in time, her fellow students rebranded AG from “academically gifted” to “aesthetically gifted.”
In junior high, she was captain of the Beta Club, and in high school, she led the local chapter of the National Honor Society. A wiz at anything math- and computer-related, Gigi amused herself by programming new video games based on classic ones. She named her “Donkey Kong” reboot “Mule Muffin,” despite it not making much sense.
By high school, she was slender and pretty and was urged to try out for cheerleading, a notion she’d found particularly ridiculous. She had adopted much of her ironic stance from late night comedians; and for Gigi, the thought of standing before a large crowd and shouting, unironically, “Firecracker-firecracker-boom-boom-boom!” while shaking blue and white pom-poms was too appalling and cringe-inducing to be entertained.
No, she was a nerd and content to be one.
Neither of her parents were educated, and it was Gigi’s scholastic excellence that seemed to unnerve them the most. At the time, Gigi couldn’t understand their awkwardness around her; now, however, cruising 75 miles per hour through the Texas panhandle, Gigi could see for the first time what they were seeing: a daughter who would eventually leave them for the wider world.
Gigi checked her gas gauge. She’d be good for another couple of hours.
How will they react when they see me? How will I react when I see them? Will there be hugs and “I-Love-Yous” all around? Will there be weird silences?
In the middle of this concern over her parents’ reaction to her delayed re-appearance, Gigi’s thoughts were suddenly occupied by someone else: Damian.
Oh, God, she thought. How would he have reacted had we ended up together and he met my family? Whatever Damian Black was, Gigi considered her parents the exact opposite. Who would’ve been more appalled, she wondered, Damian or my parents?
A few days later, she was winding through the Smoky Mountains, crossing from Tennessee into North Carolina. The awareness that she was now only four or five hours away from home crept over her like a shadow, and she was suddenly seized by the thought of Damian, and wanted him near.
She stopped in Asheville for lunch at a small café. She ordered a veggie wrap, a small bowl of soup, and a glass of sweet tea. As she sat at her table waiting for the order to arrive, she glanced around the café. You’re the only person in this place who’s sitting alone. God, you’re pathetic.
The hipster waiter—Gigi would never understand those long lumberjack beards, not even if she lived to be a hundred—finally brought her order. As she ate, she thought seriously about her current singleness and what it meant. Will it always be this way? She took a sip of tea and corrected herself. No, will you always be this way? For it was becoming increasingly clear to Gigi that her problem was—and in fact had always been—primarily herself.
As she passed through Greensboro, she thought about the fact that a single interstate highway connected
North Carolina and California across a distance of some 3,000 miles. It seemed significant to Gigi, though she couldn’t quite explain why.
Cedar Falls had not changed in the five years she’d been gone—at least nothing was obviously different. She crossed Deep River—a name that almost certainly had been given in jest, for the river would barely wet the ankles of a small child and was strewn with large rocks that sat obstinate and brown in the hot sun.
Gigi pulled slowly off the road and onto her parents’ gravel driveway and rolled down to the tiny house. The small front yard was overgrown and weedy. A patch of woods bordered the left side of the house; a small pasture bordered the right.
Her heart thudded in her chest and threatened to burst through it.
I don’t know if I can do this.
Oh, yes you can. You have to.
As Gigi opened her car door and stood up, she saw a shadow move behind the front screen door of her parents’ house. Like a ghost materializing before her, Gigi’s father became visible in the doorway. The features of his face were obscured by distance and shadow, but she saw that he’d raised a hand in greeting.
Chapter 23
Reckoning
Like Cedar Falls, the interior of her parents’ house had remained, for the most part, unchanged. The only noticeable difference was a general dustiness that hadn’t been there before. Gigi suddenly had an absurd thought: This house looks clinically depressed.
“I’ll put some coffee on,” her mother said, and disappeared around the corner into the tiny kitchen.
Gigi and her father were alone.
The den was unadorned and square and dominated by a small woodstove that had an S-shaped pipe connecting to the wall behind it. During the winters of her childhood, Gigi’s father would keep the woodstove roaring and her mother would set a pot of water on top of it to boil for cooking.
Her father, to her surprise, didn’t look so bad. Slightly thinner and tired, but by no means ailing. He’d always been a worker, making extra money on the side cleaning horse stalls at Shuler Farms when he wasn’t working at Oliver Timber. The labor had kept him fit. Sitting across from him now, had Gigi not already been informed of her father’s condition, she’d have never guessed it.
Her mother returned with a small cup of coffee and handed it to Gigi. “We have some cream if you want it, but we’re out of sugar. I didn’t notice till just now or else I’d have run and got some.”
“No, no, that’s okay, Momma, that’s okay. This is fine just like this.” Gigi brought the cup to her lips and blew on the coffee before taking a sip. “Mmm, that’s good,” she said.
A silence settled on the room.
Her parents were sitting next to each other on the sofa. Gigi was in a chair at the end of the wooden coffee table.
The silence was terribly awkward, but Gigi realized she didn’t mind it. This is where you need to be, she thought. Right here.
She decided to bite the bullet. “Tell me what the doctor said. Is he scheduling you for any treatments or anything?”
“Well, he says he’s gonna start me on the chemo and maybe the…the…” He frowned and turned to Gigi’s mother.
“The radiation,” she said.
“Right, the radiation. Says we’re gonna try to fight it that way.”
The sound of the word fight on her father’s lips filled Gigi with sadness. He’d said it with so little conviction.
“Daddy, I …”
“Your momma and me want you to know we heard about all the work you’re doin’ out there in California and all, and we just…” He was no longer looking at her. His gaze had lowered to a spot between his feet. “We just…” His expression crumbled, and he began to weep openly.
Gigi put her cup on the coffee table and rushed to her father on the sofa. She wrapped her arms around his neck and cried, “I’m so sorry, Daddy, I never should’ve left you two like that…I’m just so sorry…”
Her mother leaned over and hugged them both.
But then her mother turned and, with a quizzical expression, stood up.
Gigi noticed and wiped her eyes. “Momma? What’s wrong?”
“Do you hear that?”
All three were silent.
Distant, but rapidly growing closer, was the unmistakable sound of a helicopter.
In a matter of seconds, the sound was deafening, passing directly over the house and rattling the windows.
“Oh, my God,” Gigi shouted over the roar, “is it crashing?”
She ran to the screen door and peered out. What she saw made no sense: wind from the helicopter’s rotors was whipping leaves and twigs and debris around the front yard and pressing flat the overgrown grass. The helicopter shifted right and lowered itself into the pasture next to the house.
Gigi’s father and mother stood behind her in the doorway. “What in God’s name?” her father shouted. “Are they havin’ engine trouble?”
It was at this point that Gigi noticed the universal medical symbol emblazoned on the door of the helicopter—a door that now opened.
A young woman wearing EMS insignia hopped out, lowered her head, and ran toward the house.
I’ve lost my marbles, Gigi thought. This is the weirdest damn sight I’ve ever seen.
The young EMS woman ran up to the front door and looked at Gigi. She shouted, “Are you Georgina Stevens?”
She would later laugh at the fact that hearing the woman call her Georgina struck her as somehow stranger than seeing the woman hop from a helicopter that had just landed, however improbably, on her parents’ property.
“I go by…” She stopped herself. “Yes, I’m Georgina Stevens. Who the hell are you and why have you landed a helicopter in my parents’ yard?”
“Ma’am, I need permission—” The woman stopped, coughed, and tried yelling louder. The helicopter’s rotors sounded like a hundred machine guns firing in unison. “Ma’am, I need permission to airlift—” She pointed to Gigi’s father. “Is this your father, Frank Stevens?”
Gigi nodded, complete and utter bafflement on her face.
“Ma’am, I need permission to airlift your father to Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte.”
Gigi looked at her father. Her father looked at her mother. Her mother looked at Gigi. Not one of them had any idea what the fuck was going on.
Gigi shouted at the EMS woman, “Who the hell are you? And who the hell sent you?”
The woman tried to smile in the gale force wind being whipped by the rotor blades. She forced a hand down into the side pocket of her cargo pants. She pulled out a small beige envelope and handed it to Gigi, who gripped it tightly and tore it open. It contained a notecard. Gigi carefully opened the card and read the three hand-written words scribbled on it:
Is good, no?
Gigi’s mouth and hand opened simultaneously, and the card immediately darted up and away, carried by the swirling winds of the helicopter’s blades.
Chapter 24
Rescue
It had taken some convincing to get her father into the helicopter. “I know it all seems weird,” she’d told him, “but trust me, it’ll be worth it. I love you, Daddy.” She’d hugged him tightly.
The helicopter hadn’t had room for all three of them. “Just go on and take him,” Gigi had shouted at the EMS woman. “We’ll be there in a couple of hours.”
She and her mother had watched the helicopter rise into the air, hover a second or two, then pull away and head south over the treeline that bordered the pasture. They’d stood there in silence for a moment. Then her mother had turned to Gigi with a look of amused befuddlement. “Well, I must say that today ain’t goin’ nothin’ like I’d pictured it would.”
They’d both started laughing.
“No,” Gigi said, “I guess I’ve never been like the other girls.”
The medical center was a two-hour drive from her parents’ place. Gigi unloaded some of her belongings from the Kia and put them in the house. Then she and her mother got in, looked
at each other, and took off down the highway.
It was awkward at first. Gigi was okay with that. It would have been unrealistic to expect a lot of chatter after a five-year absence—especially an absence undertaken with such hostility. And it’s not like their home life had ever been a garden of conversation.
But Gigi was happy. Excited, confused, but happy. The note from Damian had explained nothing, really, except that he was in charge, and that the situation was under control. She still didn’t understand the helicopter, the airlift to Carolinas Medical Center, or what Damian might possibly have planned. But for the first time she could remember, she felt eager and content to trust.
“So tell me what all’s goin’ on with this man friend of yours,” her mother said.
Man friend. Gigi loved how her mother put that.
“Well, Momma, you’re gonna have a hard time believing this, but…”
How do I tell her he’s a billionaire? Will she even believe me?
Gigi decided to bite the bullet. “Momma, he’s a billionaire.”
Her mother turned from the passenger side and gave a sweet but slightly quizzical look. “I’m sorry, honey, but I missed that last part. Did you say he’s an engineer?”
“No, Momma, I said he’s a billionaire.”
Gigi let it dangle there for a minute. Her mother said nothing, but Gigi could feel her staring. It suddenly occurred to her that her mother might very well think she was pulling her leg, having a little fun at her expense.
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