“Follow me,” I said.
We went back to my room and I turned on the light. Frank wasn’t sleeping on the love seat anymore and the sheets I’d made it up with were strewn across the floor. We found the Nocturnal Rambler asleep on the rug in his closet, the light on, the cashmere overcoat it was never cold enough for him to wear rolled up under his head, an oversized pink cardigan I’d never seen before as his blanket. Frank might be okay with pink but he preferred a more tailored fit so I guessed the cardigan was Mimi’s even though I couldn’t imagine her in such a cheerful color. The kid had a shoe tucked in the crook of each elbow, as if he worried someone might steal them while he slept. His hands were folded across the copy of Le Petit Prince.
We backed out of the closet and reconvened in the hallway. “Frank’s protective of his things,” I said. “We’d better trade bedrooms.”
BEFORE WE TURNED in for the night again, Mr. Vargas and I decided to do a little nocturnal rambling of our own. Outside, a crescent moon tipped our way, spilling silvery Southern California magic all over the sad ruins of the Dream House. The two of us stood in the driveway pondering the heap. Mr. Vargas took a deep breath and said, “Smell that?”
“The smoke? The fire captain said it would smell like burned-down-house around here for a few days, a week tops. He didn’t want me to worry about it.”
“Not the smoke,” he said. “The night-blooming jasmine.”
“Oh,” I said. “Yes. That.”
“Alice, did I ever tell you about the time I set my mother’s closet on fire?”
“You did? How?”
“Well, my mother never let me play with matches. So when I managed to nab a big box from the kitchen, I went and hid behind the dresses in her closet to play with them. I figured she’d never think to look for me there.”
“Did she?”
“She didn’t. I don’t think she missed me. Or the matches. After I lit the fortieth or fiftieth one, a dress caught. I might not have been smart enough to see that coming, but I was smart enough to run like heck when it did. My mother was mopping the kitchen when I found her, and she came running with the bucket. That fire didn’t have a chance against my mother.”
“That doesn’t exactly make me feel better about myself, Mr. Vargas, but it gives me hope for Frank.”
“You’ll like this, too, then,” he said. “I didn’t have friends growing up. Who’d have thought a sensitive fat kid who wore glasses and read all the time wouldn’t get voted Most Popular?”
When we turned back to the house we saw a shaft of light beaming heavenward from Frank’s closet skylight. “I guess we should have turned that light off,” Mr. Vargas said.
“I bet Frank left it on because he’s afraid to sleep in the dark with Mimi gone,” I said. “That, or he’s signaling the mother ship to come pick him up.”
“Frank will be okay, Alice,” Mr. Vargas said. “He’s an odd duck, but brilliant children often are. It may take him a while, but someday he’ll figure out how to live in the world of ordinary mortals.” As we climbed the driveway he added, “Frank’s not the one I’m worried about.”
“So you are worried about Mimi.”
He drilled his hands into his pockets and grimaced. “I suppose I’m not as calm about this as I make myself out to be,” he said. “I’m worried, yes. But I’d worry more if she didn’t have Frank. She’s all he’s got, and she knows it.”
“What about a guardian? Do you think Mimi has chosen one for him?”
“I wondered that myself. So I asked our lawyers to check into it.”
“And?”
“Mimi designated a guardian, yes,” he said. “Pretty soon after Frank was born. But it seems she didn’t get around to discussing it with the guy she picked. And now he doesn’t know what to think. Legally, he’s not bound to do it, since she didn’t ask his permission first.”
“Who? Frank’s father?” I asked. “Do we find out now who he is?”
“No,” he said. “Not Frank’s father. Unequivocally not Frank’s father.”
“Xander?” I asked. “Don’t hold out on me, Mr. Vargas.”
“Not Xander,” he said. “I’m not holding out. I just can’t get my head around it.” He tapped his sternum with his forefinger. “Isaac Vargas,” he said. “Me. She appointed me Frank’s guardian.”
( 24 )
I WAS ASLEEP, dreaming I was shaking a cardboard box next to my ear to figure out what was inside it when I heard Frank say, “Alice, wake up.” Since the Dream House was on fire the last time he spoke those words, that sentence catapulted me out of bed. I wasn’t fully awake and was so completely wrapped in bedclothes that I ended up on the floor of my new boudoir, formerly Frank’s bedroom. The kid stood over me in his Sherlock Holmes cape and deerstalker, rattling the shake flashlight Mr. Vargas had given him. He grabbed me by an eyelid and focused it on my eyeball.