He laughed, and we skipped down the rest of the steps to the parking lot.
Sitting in the middle of the lot was a black 1970 Mustang Boss 429, gleaming like new. I stopped and threw David a questioning look. He tossed me the keys.
Next stop, Las Vegas.
And the world, beyond.
Epilogue
“Mo-o-om!”
I was in the middle of a pile of paperwork and a simultaneous conference call with Warden HQ, which had already gone on for two hours and was likely to go on for two more. I counted to ten, silently, and hit the mute button on my phone just as someone, of course, asked me for my opinion. Ah well. I always told them family came first. “What is it?” I called, with extreme patience.
“I need you!”
“Do you need me right now?”
“Well—yeah, kind of!”
That was when I smelled something burning, and the smoke alarms went off at the back of the house. I jumped up, scattering papers in a summertime paper blizzard as I dashed toward my son.
He was standing in the doorway saying, “Mom, I didn’t mean to; it wasn’t my fault. . . .”
“Lewis Kevin Prince, get out of my way!”
He knew that tone, at least, and, head down, shuffled aside so I could see the freaking bonfire that was raging in the corner of his room. Those curtains were toast.
Again.
I called up my mad Fire skills and snuffed it out with only a little puff of smoke. It was worse than I’d thought—carpet melted into a toxic cesspool in the corner, the paint done for, the aforementioned curtains gone from white to charred rags. It could have been worse. At least this time, he’d kept it away from the closet, the computer, the game system, and his huge rack of books.
Our son was eight years old, and nobody in the entire history of the Wardens had shown this kind of crazy potential at this age. Potential for destruction, sure, but not with such an impressive amount of firepower. Literally.
I looked at the damage, sighed, and said, “Lewis, I’m going to have to get your dad for this.”
He looked so gleeful for a second that I wondered if that had been his plan all along. Dad, home, with us. If it was, he was smart enough to look immediately angelic. Not hard for him—he was a gorgeous kid, with floppy straight dark hair and big blue eyes. He had his father’s features, though. In the pictures I had hanging up around the house, there was no doubt at all as to his parentage.
I really don’t know where he got the stubbornness from, though. And the wild streak.
The front door slammed open, and a cheery voice yelled out, “Get some clothes on, you, you hippies!” Cherise. Good thing I’d put the conference call on mute. Yikes, that would have greatly enhanced my standing in the Warden executive offices. “Hey, are you burning a roast again? You really suck at this housekeeping thing, you know. Good thing I brought pizza and Bellinis.”
Only in Cherise’s world did that combination make sense. I loved Cherise’s world.
“Aunt Cher!” Lewis quickly abandoned the disaster of his bedroom and pelted out toward the living room. “Did you bring it? Did you?”
I followed him, because standing there in contemplation of the wreckage was just not helping. Cherise wasn’t alone; holding the pizza box was Tommy, whose shy smile always delighted me—like Lewis, he’d grown up to be a beautiful boy, and with far better manners (from Cherise! Who knew?). Lewis ran up to him and took the pizza, which made Tommy frown a little in anxiety and trail him toward the kitchen. “Don’t eat any yet!” I heard Tommy say sternly. “We need to wait for our moms!”
I could just imagine what Lewis would say to that. “Lewis, listen to Tommy!”
Yeah, right. Poor Tommy.
Cherise put her purse down—Prada, very nice—and added her designer sunglasses to the pile. She looked summer-hot, and life was definitely being good to her these days. She’d started up a personal stylist business, and was now all the rage among the Miami elite, with a rising number of Hollywood clients as well. “So,” she said. “I’m assuming the fire’s out?”
“Don’t worry, you won’t smudge anything.”
“Damn straight.” She flopped on the couch, put her sandaled feet up on the coffee table, and folded her hands over her trim stomach, which the sundress left bare. “You’re not bailing on us, are you?”
I flopped down next to her and stretched out my legs. Mine were longer and better toned, thanks to running around after my hyperactive hamster of a son. Cherise’s had a better tan. “I have a conference call.”
“When?”
I gestured vaguely toward the open door of the office, where people were still mumbling on the phone line without me. “Forever, apparently.”
“Come on, it’s a holiday! You work every holiday. Be a do-bee, not a don’t-bee.”
“I’ve got beer in the fridge, don’t I?”
“You could be drinking that beer at the beach. Followed by a really swell dinner with your friends. I’m here to make sure you go.”
I sighed. It was Memorial Day, and Memorial Day had a special meaning now for the Wardens. We didn’t officially have ceremonies—hadn’t since the first year—but all of us thought of Memorial Day as the day we honored our fallen friends and comrades. And we gathered, wherever we were, to break bread together and just . . . be glad we were still alive.
Over the past eight years, a lot had changed. The destruction wrought during Mother Earth’s brief, angry wakening had changed the face of a lot of communities around the world . . . and utterly obliterated a few. From the ashes, people rebuilt, and they rebuilt well. The remaining Wardens had helped, too. Finally, eight years out, the trauma was starting to lessen, but it would never really fade. Not for any of us.
I made a decision, and popped my head in the kitchen. As usual, Lewis had persuaded Tommy that they didn’t really need to wait for permission to start on the pizza. I shook my head and said, “Go ahead, boys. Eat up. It just means you can’t go swimming for thirty minutes.”
“Mom!” Lewis promptly said, and looked very disappointed. “That’s not even true. It doesn’t matter if you eat.”
“It’s true today, buster, because you’ve had half the pizza in about five minutes and you need to stop. Now go get your beach stuff.”
He and Tommy dashed off toward Lewis’s bedroom, still clutching their last pieces of pizza. I sighed and closed up the box and put it away in the fridge, retrieved a six-pack of bottled beer, and added it to my always-ready beach bag.
Then I went into the office, unmuted the call, and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, can I have your attention?”
The voices fell silent. Twenty Wardens, all waiting for me to say something profound.
“Go enjoy your holiday,” I said. “We’ll pick this back up tomorrow. It can wait.”
Nobody argued. There was noticeably more good cheer in their voices as they signed off.
Cherise had brought her car—a sedan, not a Mommy-van; even if she eventually had a dozen kids, I didn’t think she’d ever go to that extreme. It was a brand-new Ergani, the sleek electric one, and she seemed to like it. I missed the feel of the engine, but I had to admit that hers was more planet-friendly.
We spent a few blissful hours at the beach, sipping our beer and watching our kids play. As the sun began to sink toward the western horizon, we packed up, whistled for Lewis and Tommy to drop whatever arcane thing they were doing with shells and sticks, and piled back into the car, tired and happy.
Cherise drove us to the restaurant where we always seemed to congregate for these types of events: Fuego. It was full to capacity in the dining room, with benches of people sitting outside admiring the sunset and waiting for tables, but Cherise strolled right up to the desk and said, “Warden party.”