“It wasn’t necessary to go to jail for me, Mom,” I said softly.
“Better me than you, sweetie.” She took a quick sip of wine, then put her glass on the counter and nonchalantly cracked her petite knuckles. “I’ve been in jail and know how to survive. You wouldn’t last a day.”
I leaned back and drained my wineglass, then reached for the bottle, determined to be good and tanked before this conversation was over.
Epilogue
A month later, on a warm afternoon in Dharma, Mom and Dad celebrated their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary with seven hundred of their closest family and friends.
Mom looked beautiful and rested after spending a week at the Laughing Goat sweat lodge. After detoxification, she’d shared in the sacred pipe purification ceremony, which had allowed her to channel shamanic drum meditations and astral travel to Alpha Centauri with her spirit guide, Ramlar X.
Dad beamed with love as Mom reminisced.
Guru Bob offered the use of his elegant hilltop home and terraced patio for the occasion. He made a heartfelt toast, and then I presented my parents with a nicely bound leather photo album containing pictures and keepsakes of their life together, from the Deadhead days to the present.
There were photos of all of the kids along with pictures and mementos of the various Grateful Dead concert sites or weapons facilities protest marches we’d all been named after.
For the album, I had experimented with a flamed-heat iron to brand an embossed grapevine pattern into the thick leather cover. The stock was thick, acid-free paper, deckled and interleaved with delicate sheets of rice paper. I hoped it would become a family heirloom.
Mom cried like a baby when she saw it, so I know she liked it. Dad’s eyes swam with tears and he couldn’t speak for twenty minutes. It wasn’t as grand as the first-class tickets to Paris my brothers surprised them with, but I think they loved it just as much.
A month before, the night Sylvia Winslow was taken off to jail, Mom had sat me down and begged me to put the album together. She’d confessed that Abraham had been her original choice to do the project she wanted to keep a secret from our family.
“I don’t believe it!” I’d said when she’d explained what she wanted. “That’s why you were meeting him at the Covington that night? To sift through family photos?”
“It was his idea to meet there,” Mom explained. “He’d been so busy, but he knew that once the exhibit opened, he’d finally have a free minute or two to go over my plans.”
“That’s crazy.”
She frowned. “What’s crazy is me waiting in the wrong workroom for almost an hour.”
I shivered. “That mistake probably saved your life.”
“I never even heard the gunshot,” she wailed. “I was practicing for my cosmic bilocation class.”
“I would’ve done the same thing,” I’d assured her.
Now we raised our champagne glasses and toasted another round for my parents. They kissed and the crowd applauded.
“They’re the most wonderful people in the world,” someone said next to me.
“I couldn’t agree more,” I said as I turned and did a double take. It was Annie, Abraham’s daughter. She was completely transformed. Instead of the kohl-eyed Goth look she’d sported when I met her, she wore no makeup except lip gloss. She looked like a happy teenager with her dark hair fluffed softly around her face. She wore a long, sage green cotton skirt with a matching tie-dyed tank top, and oh, dear Lord, Birkenstocks. Dharma had claimed another convert.
“Look who’s gone country,” I said.
“Thanks, I guess.” But she smiled as she said it.
“Did the move go okay?”
“Yes, thanks to your mom and dad,” she said. “I really like it here, you know?”
“I’m glad. I was sorry to hear about your mom.”
“Thanks. It wasn’t unexpected, but still.” She shook her head. Annie’s mother had died a few days after Sylvia Winslow was arrested.
After the paternity test results had come through, verifying that Annie was indeed Abraham’s daughter, I’d signed papers making Annie and me joint tenants of Abraham’s house and surrounding property. The lawyers took some of Abraham’s holdings and set up a trust that would pay Annie an allowance until she could figure out what she wanted to do with the rest of her life.
“Your mom’s been introducing me around,” Annie said. “She’s amazing.”
I glanced over at Mom, who was currently doing the funky chicken with my four-year-old nephew. “Yeah, she is.”
“I guess I owe you,” Annie said with a half smile. “But don’t expect me to kiss your ring every time I see you.”
I sipped my champagne. “Not every time.”
She grinned and walked away.