Honestly, it seemed a little late for that.
I WOKE UP hours later still holding the fire captain’s card in my hand and Frank in my lap. The speaker hooked up to the gate buzzed so insistently I decided that was probably what woke me. At least the power was back on.
I looked at my watch. Two-thirty. Frank should be getting out of school soon. If he were still going to school.
I slid out from under Frank without waking him and went to answer the buzzer. “Who is it?”
“Delivery,” the voice on the other end said. “I have a birthday cake here for Frank. Is this Mimi?”
I slumped against the wall. Mimi had taken care of everything. “Can you bring it up to the house?” I asked.
“Sure. What’s the code for the gate?”
“Two-one-two-two-zero-zero-zero.”
“So let me guess. Frank is ten years old today?”
“Yes. How did you know? Did you count the candles?”
“Nope. No candles, just like you ordered. The gate code. Two. One-two. Two zero zero zero. A kid’s birthday is one of those number combinations a mother can’t forget, right? But you know it’s kind of dangerous to use a birthday for a security code like that. Birth dates are the first things hackers try after ‘one-two-threefour.’”
So I did know Frank’s birthday by heart. I just didn’t know that I knew it.
I buzzed the delivery guy in without answering. When I went outside to take the cake from him he was standing in the driveway holding the box, surveying the carnage with a stunned look on his face.
“Is everybody okay?” he asked.
I KNOW. I skipped some parts. The ones I don’t like remembering.
After we saw the Dream House on fire, I grabbed Frank’s hand and ran to the kitchen, dialed 911, babbled the nature of our emergency, then raced to Mimi’s office to pound on the door. “Alice,” Frank said after a minute of this. “You know, this door’s not locked anymore.”
I yanked it open and burst into her sanctum. There was her typewriter that had once been Julian’s typewriter. A desk, a chair, a bookcase. No Mimi anywhere, but paper everywhere. Stacks and stacks of it, covered with words. On the desk, the bookcase, the carpet. I don’t care what Frank said about Mimi chucking stuff. It didn’t look like she threw away any piece of paper, ever.
I tried to sound calm. “Where’s your mother?”
“Not here,” Frank said. “Maybe in her bedroom. I tried there earlier tonight but it was locked.”
We bolted down the hall and laid siege to Mimi’s door. We heard fumbling with the lock and then the door swung open. Mimi was in one of her lacy white nightgowns, looking half-asleep and completely annoyed. Frank threw himself on her. “Did we wake you?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Look at you. You’re wearing your birthday suit.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s your birthday. I was going to give it to you today anyway.”
“Why weren’t you in your office? I looked for you everywhere. Except here, because you locked the door.”
“I know, baby. But I really needed sleep. I almost killed myself finishing that book in time for your birthday. I’ve been an awful, neglectful mother these last few months and I feel terrible about it. But now it’s done and I’m all yours again.”
“I hate that book.” She put her arms around him and he buried his face in her shoulder.
“It’s okay, Monkey. The bad part is over now.”
Not quite. “The Dream House is on fire,” I said.
“The Dream House?” she asked.
THEN WE WERE in the backyard together, Mimi and I watching a wall of the guesthouse buckle and send sparks twirling up into the sky. The eucalyptus next to it exploded in flames and burned oily-bright and hot against the night sky. In the distance we heard the wails of fire trucks converging on us fast.
“Sirens,” I said.
Frank still had his head burrowed into his mother’s shoulder. She looked at me, glassy-eyed, and said, “This isn’t my fault.”
“Of course it isn’t your fault. Come on. We need to move. Let me take Frank. I’m bigger than you.”
“Don’t you touch him,” she said. “Don’t you dare.” She picked the kid up and clutched him even more tightly.
“Fine. Anything. Let’s go. Now. Fast.”