SATURDAY, MARCH 22, 1997
MOJAVE DESERT
CLAUDIA CRAWFORD
It would be the only night like it for another four thousand years. The evening arrived with the hope that what had been shattered could somehow be repaired. In the days leading up to it, conversations were had—the meaningful, once-in-a-lifetime kind. Promises were made. Plans were hatched. Lies were told. When the sun came up the next day, nothing would be the same. And deep down, they all knew it. Even though they were pretending they didn’t.
The remaining members of legendary rock band The Vows and their families were expecting to be swept up in the wild ride of nostalgia and adoration they’d been craving. Instead, they were caught up in a sordid, terrible drama. Too much had happened since the night many months ago when the hurtling object had first been spotted in the sky, its curved tail illuminating what would otherwise remain hidden. The comet would continue its journey unaware of the upheaval and pain and triumphs of the people below. It hurried along, like time itself, indifferent and unyielding.
The Concert Under the Comet was set to take place just as Hale-Bopp reached its closest distance to Earth. There had been some concern all week that a bank of clouds might ruin the show.
Thankfully, they drifted away that morning, allowing the stars—and the single streak of light that would get twenty-thousand rock fans out into the Mojave Desert on a cool spring Saturday night—to show themselves.
But it wasn’t only the comet they’d come to see. It was the lineup of stars. The biggest names in the music industry would perform, several of whom would take the stage together for the first and last time. It would be televised around the globe, making it bigger than the original Woodstock. More important than Live Aid ‘85. Filled with more star power than a Vanity Fair Oscar party. Even the ticketholders would be either wildly rich or so beautiful that someone would shell out eight thousand dollars to get them through the gate.
It was a tribute to a dead legend. The rise of a new star. The end of innocence for one lost teenager. It would be the greatest reconciliation of any celebrity couple in history. Or it would be their demise. Those last two things would remain up in the air until morning.
The location was a well-guarded secret. It had to be if they were going to keep the riffraff away. The riffraff could watch via pay-per-view for a whopping $49.95 (the highest priced pay-per-view event up to that point in time). The record label executives, production team, and cable provider were certain the riffraff would be all too happy to pool their cash so they could say they’d been a part of it when they got to work the following Monday. They were right.
Two hours before sundown, the audience would be brought to the location in a steady stream of air-conditionedbuses, limousines, and town cars. The lights would go up. The music would play. People would cheer themselves hoarse and drink and dance and sing along (most of them off-key, depending on how many drinks they had). When they’d go back to Las Vegas, their drivers would turn on the heat for their now-chilly, exhausted passengers. The drivers would be relieved they weren’t rowdy and out of control. Instead, they were dead quiet as the shock of what happened lingered.
That afternoon, five-month-old Elliott (who always went straight to sleep in the car) dozed through the long ride under the bright afternoon sun. Later, when the sky grew dark, his mother, Claudia Crawford, would point up at it and tell him about the comet, knowing he wouldn’t understand, but hoping it would somehow leave a faint imprint on his fresh, new mind. Claudia would give the performance of a lifetime that night. She was the only woman who’d been part of The Vows, but she wouldn’t play with them that evening. She would go on alone for reasons the audience wouldn’t understand until after.
Claudia had planned to leave little Elliott back at the hotel in Vegas with her very reliable French nanny. Only the nanny went out dancing the night before and never came back, so Claudia was forced to bring him to the desert and leave him in the care of two teenage girls she barely knew. But everything would be fine. Elliott would be safely tucked away in a holiday trailer nearby with the girls watching over him, and Claudia would only be gone for forty-five minutes. An hour tops.
But of course, that’s not what happened. Things ran late, as they do at these events, and she ended up leaving him for the better part of two hours. By the time she returned to the trailer, it would be empty.
Before long, she would find herself groping her way through the impossibly dark desert, screaming his name, gripped by a panic that only fills a parent whose child has vanished. It would occur to her that she might never again hold her baby. Never press his chubby cheek to hers, never smell his neck, never hear him laugh again. She might never hear him speak his first words or watch him take his first steps. What if he never got to do those things? What if he was already dead?
Her knees would give out, and she’d slide to the cold ground, and she’d be disgusted at herself for letting her emotions overwhelm her. She’d be hauled to her feet and ordered to keep going by the last person on earth she expected to help. Although her companion was only there because her child was missing too.
FOUR MONTHS BEFORE THE CONCERT
“As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.” ~ John Lennon
9:30 A.M. — NOVEMBER 21, 1996
ENCINO, CALIFORNIA
ZANE MCCREIGHT
This was the worst day of Zane McCreight’s life. Well, maybe notthe worstone. How does one rank these things anyway? It’s not like there was some chart used to quantify the most heart-wrenching moments of your life. Stubbing your toe, one point; getting fired from a job you love, forty-six points. Not that it would be useful to arrange them in order from slightest to worst pain, because how would having that information change anything? The awful thing still happened and there was no way to undo it.
But if such a tool existed, Zane was sure this would be in his top three. Oddly enough, all of them had taken place in the last five years, highlighting how incredibly charmed the first forty-four had been. Losing his dad was by far the worst. (At least a hundred points.) It was a beautiful sunny day like this one. He was here at home playing in the pool with the kids when his phone rang.Heart attack. Sudden. He wouldn’t have felt a thing. Zane was still experiencing shockwaves from that one. And the otherevent was still so raw, he couldn’t even bear to think about it. Not today.
He watched his wife, Sienna, from inside the sliding patio door in their expansive Tuscan-style kitchen. It was unseasonably warm for November, and she was outside doing yoga on a mat next to the pool. Her long, lean body gracefully moved from down dog into plank, then to up dog with ease. She was always trying to get Zane to join her.It’ll be good for you, darling. It’ll keep you young. Her hair was up in a messy bun on the top of her head, and she didn’t have any makeup on, which was her usual state around the house. Sienna was still stunning, even though forty had come and gone. She had the kind of beauty that made it hard to look away from her. Even their golden retriever, Billie, who was lying on the grass near her, couldn’t stop staring at Sienna.
Zane stood helpless as a swell of panic grew inside his body, threatening to swallow him whole. He was about to deliver a blow to his wife from which they might never recover. She would hate him after this. And the children would hate him more. The dog, too. Billie had strangely human eyes, and when she looked at him, he squirmed a little. She knew. She could smell it on him. He was just another rich, entitled asshole.
Their son, Parker, who was fifteen, would never look at him the same way again. Zane was his idol, and the man he wanted to become, which simultaneously thrilled and terrified him because he knew he wasn’t living up to his son’s expectations. It had been inevitable from the start. When the delivery nurse placed his crying son in his arms, it was as if Zane could see their entire future all in one furious moment. Parker would put him on a pedestal, and Zane would desperately cling with everything in him to stay up there. (Well, noteverything. There were certain things hewouldn’t give up.) But he knew someday he’d screw things up in a way that would knock him off it forever.
That day had come.
Ivy, their fiery almost-eighteen-year-old, who was always the last of the kids to warm up to him again when he’d come back from a long tour, would keep him at arm’s length for the rest of his life. And Poppy, at age seven, would stand in the middle of the kitchen with her mouth open and no sound coming out for a painfully, terrifyingly long time until an endless wail filled the room and tears finally streamed down her little cheeks. It wouldn’t be the wail that would echo in his soul forever, but the silence that came before. His little Poppy Seed—a waif of a child like her mother had been—would have to live with what he’d done for almost her entire school career. And the other kids were going to be cruel, no question about that.
Sienna stood still in mountain pose, squinting her eyes to see into the house. A wide smile appeared on her face when she saw Zane watching her, and she blew him a kiss. He smiled back and caught it. It was a cheesy little routine they did to make each other laugh. As if they were too cool to act like people in love, even though they had been together for almost twenty years. His throat constricted, and he pressed his hand on the patio door to steady himself. He would yell at the kids if they did that—leaving a handprint for their housekeeper, Valerie. Oh, God, Valerie would be so disappointed. She was always going on about what a good man he was. What a good father. And now he’d gone and put a handprint on the window too. He should find the Windex and clean that up before she came back.
But he couldn’t help the leaning. What if that was the last kiss Sienna would blow him? The thought was too much to take. He knew what was coming. He was sure it washis child when Claudia told him she was pregnant. That was five months ago, and since then, he’d been living in this awful purgatory, waiting for the baby to be born so the paternity could be confirmed. The band’s manager, Dean, was the only one who he’d told. Dean had pushed for an in vitro paternity test, but Zane said no, on account of it being dangerous for the baby. Dean’s response repulsed him, but not as much as it should have.And the downside would be…?
