June fumbled for the receiver on the bedside before realizing there was no longer a telephone at the side of the bed.
She and Frank had sold his half of the duplex and used the minimal capital gain to buy shares in a land development company that was to have been a sure thing. It had become insolvent, however, three months after Frank invested in it. Frank and June were now living in a lunch box of a place in the Olympic Trailer Court in Santa Monica. It had been a harsh blow, losing all that money, but June couldn’t fault Frank alone for what had been nothing short offinancial disaster. She’d agreed to both the sale of the half duplex and investing in the company that had all but swindled their money from them.
And she wished to God she hadn’t.
She was also back to wishing—now every day—that the time-travel closet at the Venice bungalow had been a real thing, and that she could find it again and use it. She’d crawl inside and go back to the moment Frank showed her that brochure and she’d tell him she had a bad feeling about it. Elwood, who’d had misgivings about the investment opportunity, offered to help them out with a nicer rental after they lost everything, and Frank declined.
These thoughts that plagued her during the day were surely why she’d been dreaming of the closet when she was awakened by the jangling phone.
The house trailer was only fifteen feet across and fifty feet long; so even though the phone sat on an itsy-bitsy shelf by the front door, it wasn’t that far away from the bed June and Frank were sleeping in.
“Just let it ring,” Frank mumbled. “Probably wrong number anyway.”
After eight rings, the phone fell silent only to start up again a minute later.
June pushed back the blanket, crawled across the mattress on all fours since the narrowness of the trailer made it impossible for her to stand at her side of the bed, and made her way through the dimness to the phone.
“Hello?” she said, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
“May I speak with Frank Blankenship, please?” The man on the other end of the line sounded very much awake. And in charge. And serious.
Something was wrong.
June turned to Frank, sprawled across his half of the mattress. “It’s for you.”
“It’s three o’ clock in the goddamn morning,” he muttered.
“I think something has happened.”
Frank sighed. “Who is it?”
June lifted her cupped hand from the mouthpiece. “May I tell him who’s calling?”
“Is this June Blankenship?”
Her breath stalled in her chest. Something terrible had happened. She could feel it. “Yes.”
“This is Deputy Randall Owens from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. Your husband’s brother, Elwood Blankenship, has been in an automobile accident.”
Cold zipped through her body like she’d been injected with it, and she nearly dropped the receiver. Elwood and Ruthie had left for Palm Springs earlier that day. Petite and redheaded, Ruthie was quite a bit younger than Elwood’s forty-nine, though June could only guess by how much. She had two young sons, eight and nine, and her husband had been a naval aviator who died in the bombing at Pearl Harbor more than five years earlier. Elwood was the first man she’d dated in all that time.
It seemed they had that in common, too—a very long stretch of years since they’d wanted to be a part of anything romantic.
June liked Ruthie—a lot—but she worried that she would end up hurting Elwood like other women had done before her when they’d break up with him after discovering he was a little eccentric. A little awkward. A little moody. A little strange.
All things she loved about him now. All things that made him precious to her. All things that made her jealous of Ruthie for reasons she could not explain. She was married. To Frank.
Elwood had invited Ruthie to spend the weekend with him inthe desert, and, to his surprise, she’d said yes. She left her boys with her parents in Newport Beach and then they’d left for Palm Springs.
And now there’d been an accident.
“Oh, God! What happened?” June said, breathless. “Is Elwood okay? Where is he? Is he all right?”
“Ma’am, if your husband is there, I need to speak with him.”
She looked behind her to the bed. “Frank! Frank, there’s been an accident! With Elwood!”
Frank was already clambering off the bed and stumbling toward her. He grabbed the phone. “What’s happened? Where’s my brother?”
