My dad slid in next to my mom and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “Juliet works for Kent Stevens. Correction: she worked for Kent Stevens until last week, when she took a job with Revolution Pictures. It’s a big production company.”
“One of the biggest,” Alex added helpfully. “They fund their own movies.”
“Exactly,” my father confirmed. “So this girl Juliet—she can’t be more than twenty-seven, by the way—when she left Kent, she didn’t leave empty-handed. She took a copy of Inside Doubt on a flash drive.”
“Isn’t that illegal?” Gemma exclaimed.
Alex shook her head. “Standard Hollywood operating procedure. Sometimes people get jobs because of their flash drives.”
My father continued. “Well, whether it’s illegal or not, Juliet gave it to her boss, and now Revolution wants to meet me on Friday!”
“Friday? People never schedule meetings in the summer on Friday. They must really want your book.” Alex was excited.
Shep hoisted a glass of water in my dad’s direction. “Congratulations, Mr. Shelton—”
“Charlie, Shep. Call me Charlie,” my dad said, grinning.
“To Charlie,” Shep continued. “We’ll see him at the Oscars!”
“Hear! Hear!” My mother clinked glasses with my father. “I think you kids call this PDA.” She kissed my dad warmly, full of love and pride. “It’s wonderful, Charlie. I’m proud of you.”
I was proud of my dad, too. When my mother had that falling out with Kent Stevens, part of the collateral damage was that Kent had dropped his film option on my dad’s upcoming mystery novel. My dad had been crushed.
As my family celebrated, I pondered the implication. I’d told my family that I had faith we ought to stay here—that there was some kind of reason for our being here. Maybe, just maybe, this thing with my dad’s book was the reason. Maybe, as happens so often, we were worrying about all the wrong things.
Chad came back and got the good news from our dad. He was genuinely happy. Gemma gently needled my dad about writing a role into the movie for her.
“They haven’t optioned it, they haven’t made me the screenwriter, and they haven’t said they’re making any movie.” My dad tried to lower expectations.
“Green-lit, Charlie,” Alex told him with a smile. “The Hollywood term for saying the movie will be made is ‘green-lit.’ ”
“Thank you,” my dad said. “I will make you my Los Angeles vocabulary coach.”
Everyone laughed. Then it was time for dessert. As I served ice cream and berries, my mom and Shep moved off toward the sitting area at the far end of the deck. Alex and I went to the hot tub area but didn’t strip down for a dip. Instead, we rolled out a couple of wicker yoga mats and looked out at the setting sun. As usual, I waited for the green flash. As usual, it didn’t happen. But I did spot Venus as an evening star and pointed it out to Alex.
“How do you know about astronomy? Wait. Don’t tell me. There’s nothing else to do in Minnesota but stargaze,” Alex said, raising her eyebrows.
I held up three fingers in the scout salute. “Girl Scout camp. Five summers.”
“You’re kidding! I’ve never met a Girl Scout.”
I laughed. She made Girl Scouts sound like an exotic species. I guess in Beverly Hills, it was.
“You didn’t know anyone who said grace, either. For a worldly girl, there’s a lot you don’t know.” I rolled over and rested my head in the palm of one hand.
She held up a single finger. “Ah. But I do know where to take you shopping. When are you going to fill out those job applications?”
“Tomorrow. After Brett takes me wherever he’s taking me.”
I’d told her about Brett’s promised three-thirty-in-the-morning pickup. Alex laughed. “Actually, after your date, you’re going to come right back here, take a nap … and dream about Brett. Probably with no clothes on. I swear, sometimes I wish I were still a virgin so I could actually like the guy who was my first. But I’m not lucky like you are.”
I blushed. Not at the thought of losing my virginity to Brett, but at the thought that there was no way I could lose my virginity to Brett, even if I wanted to.
Alex mistook my embarrassed blush for an excited flush. “Check it out! Even a Wait/Great organizer can be hot for a guy.”
Could I tell her? I should tell her. I should try. Right here, right now.
“Alex?”
“Yeah?”
“There’s something you should know about Brett and me. Actually—”
“Hey, you two!”
Shep picked that moment to bound over to us. He had the biggest grin I’d ever seen on his face. Seriously. He looked about fifteen. “Alex, I just had a great conversation with Marsha. Natalie, your mother is amazing.”
I hear that a lot. When my mom used to be on the radio back in Minnesota, everyone would listen to her shows and then tell me the next day how great she was. I liked that, but I never knew what to say. What I’d settled on was “Yeah, she’s pretty cool.”
I went to my trope. “Yeah. She’s pretty cool.”
“I’ll say,” Shep declared. “She just gave me a whole new way to look at God.”
“Shep …” Alex’s voice carried a note of warning.
“No, no. This isn’t like that Foursquare thing I did in high school. This is real.” Shep gazed at his sister with shining eyes. “I want you to come with me to Nat’s church.”
Uh-oh. Alex hated churches. She’d told me so in no uncertain terms.
“The evening’s over,” she said to me now. I could see how pissed off she was at her brother beneath her polite words. “Thank you for inviting us. Shep, let’s say goodbye to Marsha and Charlie. Natalie? Have fun with Brett tomorrow.”
She leaned over and kissed my cheek. Then she hopped up, grabbed her purse, and walked away.
CHAPTER NINE
“I thought you told me you liked roller coasters,” Brett said as he whipped the Shelby Ford around a hairpin turn. The centrifugal force of the turn pushed me against the passenger door.
“I do. Just not at four o’clock in the morning!” The road straightened out; I sat up again and tightened my seat belt.
“It’s not four in the morning. It’s four-oh-one. Hold on. Switchbacks coming.”
There was a leather strap hanging from the Shelby’s ceiling, and I literally did hold on as the sports car ripped through a series of S-turns that felt more like a DNA double helix than a road. I’ll say this, though: while I would never, ever want to own a racing car, I’d never felt a vehicle hug a road like this one.
“How much farther?” I managed to say as the Angeles Crest Highway straightened out again.
“Ten minutes. I promise you that the destination is worth it.”
“Can you finally tell me where we’re going?” A road sign promised more twists and turns; I gripped the strap more tightly.
Brett laughed and slowed just a bit as he headed into a curve to the right. “This is Los Angeles. I’m taking you to see some stars.”
“At the top of a mountain?” I was skeptical.
“Ye of little faith. Hold on.”
Thirty-five minutes earlier, Brett had picked me up at Ricardo’s mansion. I’d set my alarm for three-fifteen and dressed comfortably but warmly. Jeans, a long-sleeve T-shirt, and a hoodie sweatshirt. He had two big cups of steaming coffee in the car. I guessed we were going to the ocean for sunrise on the beach.
To my surprise, Brett didn’t head west. Instead, he got on one of the freeways heading north, and exited at a sign for the Angeles Crest highway into the San Bernardino Mountains. With zero traffic, we gained altitude in a hurry. The lights of the San Fernando Valley below looked like a science fiction mother ship.
“This whole area burned a few summers ago,” Brett told me. “Huge fire called the Station Fire. Choked the city in smoke.”
I looked out into the darkness. “I think I saw that on TV. That was here?”
Brett nodded
. “When we head down after sunrise, you’ll see the burn area. Goes on for miles. How’s the coffee?”
“Spectacular. But I don’t dare drink it!”
“In a few minutes, the road flattens out. You want to take her the rest of the way?”
Brett tapped the steering wheel. The implication was clear. If I wanted to drive, the car was mine.
“I can’t. Not with you as a passenger.”
Brett laughed. “You are the best good girl in human history. Who’s going to give you a ticket up here? A bear?”
“It’s the law,” I pointed out as we entered a long straightaway.
The sports car headlights cut through the inky darkness. No streetlights, no nothing. Where was he taking me?
“Obey all the rules? You’re gonna miss all the fun. Of course, that’s one of the reasons I like you so much. Hey, check out the sound system.”
He reached for the center console. I expected some serious rock and roll, but once again Brett proved to be a guy of surprises. Intricate baroque harpsichord music washed over us.
“You like?” he asked.
“I love!”
“ ’Cause I can always put on Justin Bieber.”
I slapped him gently. “And I can always dump this coffee in your lap.”
“You can, but you won’t. Now I’m going to ask you to close your eyes. I want our destination to be a complete surprise. Can you do that for me?”
I grinned at him. “Just like you can put on Justin.”
When he mock-scowled, I screwed my eyes shut and kept them that way for several minutes. Eventually, I felt the Shelby slow and the roadway turn to gravel under our wheels.
Finally, we stopped.
“We’re here,” Brett announced. “Open your eyes.”
What greeted me was the last thing I’d expected. We were the only car in a large dimly lit parking lot.
“Where’s ‘here’?” I asked.
Brett’s answer was to step out of the Shelby. I hopped out, too, and as my eyes adjusted to the dark, I looked around. To my left was a huge dome. To my right, another dome, somewhat less big. I saw the silhouettes of other strange structures, pointing to the sky at wide-spaced intervals.
Suddenly, I knew what this was, even if I didn’t know its name.
“It’s an observatory! When you said we were going to see stars? I didn’t know you meant literally!”
Brett came to me and took my arm. I liked that. A lot.
“Welcome to the Mount Wilson Observatory.” He had the perfect clipped delivery of a veteran tour guide. “For decades, Mount Wilson was the world’s most important astronomical observatory. Even now, discoveries made here are changing the way mankind sees the universe.”
His voice turned normal again. “Pretty damn cool, if you ask me.”
“It is cool.” I took it all in. “But isn’t it closed now? Are we breaking the law by—”
“Brett! Welcome back!” A male voice rang out in the darkness. I heard footfalls and saw the beam of a bright flashlight play on an asphalt path.
Brett cupped his hands around his mouth. “Morten? Hey! We’re over here.”
A split second later, the flashlight illuminated the Shelby and then us. Soon a tall blond man in wire-rimmed glasses and blue coveralls was before us, his long hair in a ponytail. He had a warm smile and spoke a mile a minute with a Scandinavian accent.
“Brett! It’s so good to see you again!” It sounded like one long word.
“It’s great to be back, Morten.” With impeccable manners, Brett turned to me. “Natalie, I want you to meet my friend Morten Langhoff. Chief astronomer of the world-renowned Mount Wilson Observatory. Morten, this is Natalie Shelton. Chief coolest girl in our solar system. Or any solar system, for that matter.”
Morten extended his hand to me. It was surprisingly callused for a scientist’s hand.
“It’s great to meet you, Natalie,” Morten said. “You’re lucky. It’s a moonless night, we’ve got clear skies, and Saturn is overhead. The sixty-incher is ready for action. You’re in for a treat.”
“I’ve never looked at the sky through anything bigger than a pair of binoculars,” I admitted.
Morten laughed. “Then come on,” he urged. “Before sunrise. The hundred-incher is under repair, but I think you’re still going to be impressed.”
As we walked along a path toward the smaller—“smaller” being a relative term; they were both mammoth—dome, Morten gave me a quick history of Mount Wilson. It was there that astronomers had done the observations and calculations to prove that the universe as we knew it was still expanding. Yes. They figured out the big bang.
“I told you, Morten. Natalie’s mother is a minister,” Brett reminded him.
“Then I wonder what she thinks of the big bang,” the scientist responded.
“When my brother slams the door? She hates it.” My answer was so deadpan that both guys hesitated, then cracked up.
We stepped into the sixty-inch telescope’s dome. It was breathtaking inside—scientific equipment everywhere, with the huge telescope in the middle. Morten explained how a sixty-inch mirror at the telescope’s base gathered dim light from the stars and focused it in the eyepiece. To view a stellar object, Morten typed a set of sky coordinates into a computer. The computer then moved the telescope to the right position and set up an opening in the dome so it let in good light and shut out bad light, if that makes any sense.
After a few adjustments, Morten led me to the eyepiece. “Saturn,” he told me. “Enjoy.”
I looked through the eyepiece.
Oh. My. God.
The planet Saturn was the most astonishing thing I’d ever seen in my life. The rings were gigantic; the colored striated band on the planet’s surface seemed painted by a master. I counted moons. One. Two. Three.
“Do you see the moons, Nat?” Brett’s voice was soft and wondrous, almost as if he could see what I was seeing.
“Yes!”
“There are at least sixty,” Morten explained. “And more than fifty of them have names.”
I could have stayed at the eyepiece for an hour, but I knew sunrise was coming. I motioned to Brett. “Your turn.”
Brett moved to the telescope and peered through the eyepiece intently, which gave me a chance to peer at him intently. He wasn’t wearing anything special—just jeans, a T-shirt, a Mark Zuckerberg–style sweatshirt, and tennis shoes. I will say that the rear view of Brett, looking through the eyepiece at Saturn, was pretty heavenly itself.
Brett looked for a long time—long enough for Morten to excuse himself to use the restroom—which meant I got to look for a long time. “Magnificent,” he said when he finally looked up.
“I know.”
“Not Saturn. You.”
Aww.
“Come on.” He took my right hand. “I have something to show you.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for Morten?”
Brett shook his head. “He’ll catch up. Trust me.”
He led me back outside. I expected to see just the observatory grounds in the murky predawn light. Instead, not ten feet from the entrance, there were a floodlit round table covered with a white tablecloth and two upholstered chairs. On the table were a pot of coffee, a pitcher of orange juice, and a basket full of fresh-baked croissants.
Morten stepped out of the shadows, still in his coveralls, but with a towel over his arm like a waiter in a movie set in Paris.
“Mademoiselle, monsieur, breakfast for two.” He motioned to the table. “Enjoy, you guys. I’m going back to work.”
“Morten, wait!” I called. There was something I wanted to ask him.
“Yes?”
“First, thank you for being here tonight … or, uh, this morning.”
He bowed slightly. “My pleasure.”
I felt a little foolish asking him the question. “Have you … have you ever seen the green flash?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Have you?”
I shook my he
ad. “Never.”
“Could you two astronomical types tell me what you’re talking about?” Brett interjected.
Morten gave Brett a better short summary of the green flash than I could muster at that hour. How high-frequency green light curves around the earth more slowly than low-frequency red or orange light. “When the sun sets, Brett? Sometimes—very rarely, actually—you can see a split second of this green light before the sun disappears.”
“How rare is it?” Brett asked.
“I’ve never seen it,” Morten admitted. “But it is documented. And now, I leave you two to breakfast.” With a quick wink at us, he trotted back inside.
“An astronomer-waiter,” I quipped as I sat in the chair Brett had chivalrously pulled away from the table for me. “Okay. Now spill. How’d you pull this off?”
“My parents give a ton of money to support this place. Newton’s Million-Dollar Law of Astrophysics: many zeros merit special treatment. More coffee?”
Without waiting for my response, he poured me a cup. It steamed in the cool air. Then he poured some for himself and buttered two croissants—one for him, one for me.
Then we talked. Really talked. Talked in that way of two people who really like each other, when one of them has put together the most unique date in human history, and the other is dazzled. The dazzled one would be me.
He talked about how acting wasn’t what he wanted to do with his life, as good as he was at it. He hoped to go to medical school someday.
“A grandmother of mine? She died of cancer when I was a kid,” he confided. “I felt so helpless. If I was a doctor, I wouldn’t be so helpless. What about you? You want to be a minister, like your mother?”
I almost choked. “God, no!”
He laughed. “That was emphatic.”
I wiped some stray coffee drops from my lips, then took a more dignified sip. “If your mother was a minister—or a rabbi, I guess … are there even female rabbis?—you would know what I’m talking about.”
Brett nodded thoughtfully. “There are female rabbis. I guess I see what you’re saying. You’ve seen it from the inside.”
“I have. It isn’t pretty.”
“So what are you thinking about? For your life, I mean?”
Little Lies Page 7