9. Los Alamos, Nowhere Near New MexicoForty-Eight Years Ago

Los Alamos, Nowhere Near New Mexico

We head north, driving through the heart of Santa Ynez Valley.

Signs on the side of the highway start to greet us, then vineyards, welcoming us to California's Central Coast. It's untouched wine country: more rustic than Napa Valley or Sonoma, with small-batch vineyards, sweet roadside restaurants, the river flowing west toward the Pacific.

Sam heads up 154, the mostly one-lane highway keeping us locked behind trucks and slow cars, the late afternoon wind. We work our way through, heading past Los Olivos, the signs leading us north toward Los Alamos.

Los Alamos. As soon as I see the signs, I remember it immediately.

Last year, Jack and I were in Northern California for his friend's wedding, and we rented an Airstream and drove down the coast afterward. We camped out every night, Jack making us these incredible dinners around a small campfire. The two of us took long walks on the beach, Jack humoring my eight-hour architectural pilgrimage to the Poly Canyon Structure Labs, another to the Salk Institute.

We spent a lot of time making plans in the loose and unhurried way you get to when you are with the person you love the most. We discussed things as light and easy as Jack joining me for an upcoming Nashville work conference; things more involved like details about a potential winter wedding, both of us agreeing there was nowhere we wanted to have it more than at my mother's house. Eight minutes from where we met in eighth grade.

It was a great trip. The last trip I took before my mother died. The last trip I took while it felt comfortable and uncomplicated to plan anything. And before winding our way down to San Diego, we stopped in Los Alamos to see a chef friend of Jack's who had just moved there from Los Angeles, a happy expat, eager to tap into the Valley's burgeoning restaurant scene.

Now, with the downtown five miles away, Sam turns onto Alisos Canyon Road, a long winding road that takes us past an equine center, stables and vineyards. Sam drives us farther down the road, the numbers going up until we hit Cece's address—and a private driveway that takes us up a mountain pass.

At first, it all seems desolate and dusty, an isolated rural road. But then we are heading deeper up into the mountains, enraptured in the kind of hilly, ridged terrain where the sky hits the empty earth on a brilliant angle, turning everything a soft yellow, turning the world into the gentlest version of itself.

We turn left at the top of the mountain pass and head under a steel arch, toward a small guardhouse, Cece's gorgeous ranch house (all glass and reclaimed wood, enormous steel doors) on the hillside just beyond it. Sam's phone buzzes.

He looks down, pumps the breaks. "Fuck."

"What?"

"Cece just canceled."

"No, really?"

He shakes his head, reading from the phone. "?‘A family situation came up that needs her attention. She sends her apologies.' You've got to be kidding me."

He pauses, and I think he is going to turn around. But then, as if rethinking it, Sam looks straight ahead, puts the car back in drive, and pulls up toward the guardhouse.

"What are you doing?" I whisper as he lowers the window, the guard stepping out. He buttons his sport jacket as he approaches the driver-side window.

"Good evening," he says. "How can I help you?"

Sam pulls out his license, hands it over. "Sam Noone," he says. "Cece is expecting me."

The guard looks at his license, hands it back. "You should have been notified. Ms. Salinger was pulled into a dinner in town."

"Oh, is that so? Not a lot of service up here."

"Apologies for that."

"Thing is, to be honest with you, we just drove quite a long way, and it's a bit of a family emergency. Maybe someone could buzz her and ask if there's a place where we could just park the car and crank up the radio until she gets back from her dinner? We really just need a minute of her time."

"That wouldn't be possible."

Sam smiles at him. "Well, it would be possible."

" Sam . . ." I say.

He turns and looks at me. "What? It's entirely possible."

I put my hand on Sam's arm, leaning across him, making eye contact with the guard, forcing a smile.

"Can we just ask you one thing and we'll get out of your way?" I say. "When you say Cece is having dinner in town, do you mean the town of Los Alamos?"

"That is the town here, yes."

The guard tilts his head and looks at me, like I've asked the dumbest question he's heard in recent memory. Then he points down the driveway, to a turnabout, that will take us back in the direction we came.

"You're going to need to reverse and turn the car around right over there, thanks."

"Sure, sorry to bother you."

He heads back into the guardhouse, Sam turning toward me. "What the hell was that? I was getting somewhere."

"You were getting nowhere, to be clear," I say. "And that was me confirming Los Alamos, because I've been there. It's not a big town, one main strip. There can't be more than four or five restaurants on those few blocks."

"And?"

"And I'm guessing, if we want to find someone eating dinner there, it won't be impossible."

Sam starts backing up, his arm on my seat's back, his eyes on the rear window.

"That's your plan?"

"Well, my preferred plan is for you to drive us straight back to LAX because apparently Cece Salinger has no intention of speaking to us, but I figured you'd think this is better than nothing."

"She could be eating at someone's house. She could be in her house and the guard's lying entirely."

"True," I say. "You want to head back to LAX, then?"

I don't need to toggle through my calendar, or study my notes file, to know what I'll find there. I have hours of weekend work to get done tomorrow in preparation for a busy week. I have a pitch to ready for a large commission—a drug rehabilitation clinic in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I have Jack. Jack whose love and worry I can feel, even from this far away.

Sam heads back down the mountain pass, stealing a glance in my direction. "Okay but I want you to admit it…"

"Admit what?"

He turns back onto the main road, heads in the direction of the downtown. "We were never going home tonight."

Downtown Los Alamos is similar to how I remember it.

The entire business district is essentially one long strip running the length of Bell Street: quiet, gentle, and yet it has a surprising energy. People head in and out of restaurants. Families eat nighttime ice cream on benches. A lone guitarist plays Bob Dylan, the sound rising along the lantern-lit main drag.

There are several establishments already closed for the day—a bakery, a lunch spot—but Sam pulls into a parking spot in front of Charlie's Restaurant, a line of eager diners waiting outside the front door.

We pop out of the car and head inside, scanning the full restaurant and the side patio. From Sam's face, I can see that none of them are Cece.

We head down the street on foot, stopping in Full of Life Flatbread, a pizza restaurant that smells so good my stomach rolls, a small wine bar across the street from it. And, a few doors down from there, Babi's Beer Emporium.

No Cece, not anywhere.

"Well, this is working out great," Sam says.

"Patience," I say.

We cross Centennial Street, the open establishments getting fewer and farther between, when I see a small restaurant on the corner. Bell's Restaurant. It's lovely—with a garden in the back, a wide blue door, a window in the middle of it showing off the elegant interiors: antique tables and Windsor chairs, an open kitchen complete with copper pots and wine bottles and plants.

I'm peeking through the window when Sam bangs on it.

"Holy shit," he says.

"Your fist was like an inch from my face."

"That's her."

He points to a woman sitting at the corner table, closest to the kitchen. She is typing on her laptop—two people sitting across from her, their backs to us.

She is stop-and-stare gorgeous with this sleek silver hair, large eyes contained behind thick black glasses—and so impossibly elegant in a white button-down shirt and jeans, cowboy boots. She looks less like a hotel mogul and more like a Ralph Lauren model.

She wraps her hair around one of her shoulders, continues keying her laptop.

"Let's do this," Sam says.

Then he pulls the blue door open. And we walk past the entry table, flush with flowers and books, and head straight to her table.

She must feel us looking at her. Because she looks up as we approach and then she sees Sam. A look of recognition comes over her face.

"Hey, Cece."

"Sam…"

Then she turns and meets my eyes, looking me up and down.

"I'll be damned," she says. "The daughter."

"Did we get our signals crossed?" Sam asks. "We thought we were meeting you up at the house."

Instead of answering him, she keeps her eyes focused on me, in a way that feels a bit too familiar. I hold her gaze, Sam motioning toward the table.

"Okay for us to sit?" he says.

"It's not really the best time, Sam. We have a bit of a fire drill at work."

"Really? Because your office said it was a family matter."

She turns and gives him a smile, like she is enjoying this—her discrepancies, his discomfort. Or maybe what she's enjoying is that my brother is calling her out.

"Sometimes it's everything at once, isn't it?"

"Sometimes," he says. "We can be fast."

She rubs her hands together, as if considering how she wants to handle this. Then she turns to her colleagues.

"Can you give us a few minutes?"

They stand up to leave and Sam and I each take a seat across from her. Cece reaches for the wine bottle in the middle of the table. She uncorks it herself, a waiter appearing with fresh glasses, Cece pouring for each of us.

She slides one of the glasses toward me. "You know… we almost met last year, you and I," she says.

"Is that right?"

She nods. "It is. I'm a big fan of your work. I know quite a bit about you."

I don't respond, trying to stay neutral, when what I want to say is Really? Because my father told me nothing about you.

"I was very impressed with your build-out on Joanna Harrington's property in Taos," she said. "She's an old friend."

Joanna Harrington owns a large family ranch just outside of Taos, New Mexico. I helped her reimagine the property as a community-focused equestrian center.

"I was so impressed with your work for Joanna that when I moved here, I wanted to hire you to do my house," Cece continues. "I even had Joanna inquire about your availability. You had none apparently."

She offers a smile.

"Sorry about that."

"Don't be. When I mentioned it to your father, he put the kibosh on all that anyway. You know how he was about holding firm to his boundaries."

Holding firm to his boundaries. That was certainly one way to put it. And yet, I feel as though she is baiting me—isn't she baiting me a little? Isn't that the purpose of this anecdote? She wants me to know what she understands about my father, disarming me with that familiarity. With their familiarity.

"Sam hasn't actually filled me in on all of this," I say. "How do you and my father know each other?"

"I grew up not too far from him. We went to school together," she says. "I'm close with your uncle Joe too."

Too.

She looks back and forth between us. "I feel like I owe you guys an apology for the runaround tonight," she says. "To be honest with you, your uncle Joe called and I decided it was best not to get in the middle of anything."

"We weren't aware that there were opposite sides," Sam says. "So thank you for that further clarification—"

"I wouldn't say opposite sides."

"What would you say?" Sam asks.

"For starters, I'd say that it's a little hard to even look at you, Sam," she says. "Too much like your father."

Sam flinches. And I recognize it immediately on his face, how it feels to hear that, now that our father's gone. That twist of pride and sadness—the grief switch being turned on. It's exactly what happens to me when someone comments on how much I remind them of my mother.

I jump in, feeling something that surprises me—something like protectiveness.

"Look, Cece, we don't want to take up your time—"

"You just want to take up my time?"

I force a smile. "We found documentation at Windbreak that suggested our father was going to sell you the company," I say.

She takes a sip of her wine. "Until he wasn't."

"My understanding was that he had no intention of ever selling the company," Sam says. "We're just looking for any insight into what changed there?"

"Well, I'm not sure I can be all that helpful on that front. I would never aim to guess what motivated your father to do anything. But it was my understanding from what I was told that he was done running the company and I happened to reach out at the right moment. After reaching out at many wrong moments."

"So why did the sale fall apart?" Sam asks.

"I assumed it was that he decided to leave it to you and your brother."

"He said that?"

"He didn't say much of anything to me, quite honestly. I mostly dealt with your uncle Joe."

"Why was that?" I ask.

She turns back to me. "How do you mean?"

"If you and our father go so way back—"

"We all go way back. And Joe and I are quite close. Our kids grew up together. My husband still has a house down the street from him. Ex-husband, I should say… Still getting used to that."

Ex-husband. I try to keep my face neutral, but I clock that. Apparently, Sam does too. I see him look at me out of the corner of his eye.

"It was recent?" he says.

"What was recent?"

"Your separation."

"Which time?"

She smiles at him, as if she knows what he is trying to factor in. Did the end of her relationship fit into this? Did it have anything to do with the end of our father's most recent marriage?

"You must have been curious, though," I say.

"Excuse me?"

"From what my brother here tells me, you and my father were pretty far down the line on the sale," I say. "A vague idea as to why it fell apart was enough for you to let it go?"

She takes me in, clearly not liking the question. Maybe because it's coming from me and maybe because she doesn't want to answer, whoever it's coming from.

"In my experience, when someone pulls away, they don't usually know why. And I try to avoid unreliable narrators."

She picks up the wine bottle, pours herself and Sam what's left. "I'm going to need to invite my associates back in soon, so do you want to tell me why you're really here before I do?"

Sam starts to speak, but Cece stops him.

"Not you." She points the wine bottle in my direction. "You."

"Sorry?"

"From what your father has told me about you, his company is the last thing you would drive ninety miles to hear about. So while I appreciate the guessing game as to why he chose to pull out of our agreement at the eleventh hour, I'd like to know what's going on here."

"We have some concerns about our father's fall," I say. "About the night he died."

"What does that mean?"

" Nora, " Sam says.

Cece puts up her hand to quiet Sam.

"What does that mean?"

I don't look at Sam. I don't let him stop me. "We're trying to figure out if maybe he wasn't alone that night."

She looks confused until it must click, something washing over her face. Something like fear. Or is it anger?

"You think that someone hurt him?"

Sam puts his hands up. "No. Absolutely not. No one's jumping to that," he says, even though he is the exact person who has been jumping the fastest to that.

"What does any of that have to do with his decision to sell Noone Properties?"

"I guess that's what we're asking you."

But Cece isn't exactly listening to what Sam is saying. She is shaking her head, as if considering it—what one thing could possibly have to do with the other.

And she looks genuinely upset. She looks so upset that I realize this is precisely why I asked her the question. To see if she was as surprised by this being a possibility as I was.

"We have something of a complicated history, your father and I, but I've always cared for him. A great deal…"

She looks up—her eyes pained and glossy.

"We hadn't spoken in several months. And I stand by what I said about why Joe took the lead. But it was somewhat unlike your father that he wouldn't want to reach out in some way, to acknowledge the deal, but Joe and your father had a specific dynamic so that was between them."

She pauses, almost as though she is torn about saying what she feels compelled to say. She closes her mouth, as if deciding against it. Then, she leans forward and does it despite herself.

"But in the spirit of things that we shouldn't be offering up, your father did reach out to me. He didn't leave a voice message, so I don't know exactly why. It may have been nothing, but he did call me. Twice."

Sam sits up. "When was this?"

"The night he died."