Page 29 of The Night We Lost Him

Sam’s phone buzzes, a text coming through.

“Shit,” Sam says and holds up the phone for me to see.

“Hey Jack, I’ll call you back, okay? I love you…” Then I click off and take Sam’s phone from him. “What’s the problem?”

“My office just texted,” Sam says. “Cece’s not in L.A. But she’s willing to talk with us if you’re up for taking a little ride.”

“Where, exactly?”

“Santa Ynez.”

“Santa Ynez?”

He pulls off the highway and plugs Cece’s address into the GPS. “We can probably be there at about five fifteen.”

It’s a little before 4:00 p.m. That’s at least an eighty-minute drive in the opposite direction of Los Angeles, of LAX, of the red-eye home. I start doing the math in my head—the amount of time we’d have for this conversation with Cece in order for me to make that flight, in order for me to be there for that cup of coffee.

“We’re going to need to talk quickly.”

Sam turns the car around. “In my limited experience,” he says, “Cece Salinger doesn’t talk any other way.”

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?”

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