Wonderland (2 page)

The golf cart stopped at the base of the Wonder Wheel and someone got out. Blake was assuming it was Lovey Hovey, but from this high up, the person seemed smaller, somehow. Glenn Hovey was slow and overweight, and this person didn’t seem to be either of those things.

Okay, already,
Blake thought.
Get the fuck of here, asshole. Go.

But the person didn’t leave. Blake watched as whomever it was moved closer to the base of the wheel. And then suddenly, without warning, the Wonder Wheel’s music began to play. A nondescript, tinkly carnival melody that Blake had heard countless times began to blast through the speakers inside the carriages. In the silence and stillness of the early morning, the sudden noise was jarring. He dropped his phone to grab the steel spoke with both hands. Luckily the iPhone was still attached to the lanyard, and it dangled from his belt.

And then the wheel began to turn.

The movement was slow, only a few inches in a couple of seconds, but the rotation was enough to kill Blake’s balance. His left foot, resting on a skinny, slanted bar slick with moisture, slipped off and dangled in the air. Panic set in. The sudden weight of the unanchored limb, combined with the continuing rotation of the wheel, caused his sweaty left hand to lose its grip. A second later, his right hand slipped, too.

Oh shit oh shit I’m going to fall . . .

He took one last swipe at the pole, but he missed, his fingers clawing at the air, grasping at nothing.

TWO

V
anessa Castro had fallen asleep beside the stranger, which she didn’t think was possible for her to do. She wasn’t comfortable in strange beds, and that included hotel rooms, her friends’ guest rooms, and the beds of men she’d only met a few hours ago.

The sun was up and she could see a sliver of light peeking through the bedroom window where the curtains didn’t quite meet. Her bed mate was snoring beside her. She was glad he was sleeping, because she could make her escape without the usual awkward goodbye, which would include one of them saying something like, “I’ll call you,” or, “We should have dinner sometime.” Things people said to each other when they had no intention of calling or having dinner. Things people said to each other the morning after the night before.

He’d said his name was Oz, but she didn’t know if that was true, and it really didn’t matter. She’d given him her middle name, Lynn. They’d hit it off immediately after he approached her at the bar, and she knew within ten minutes that he was there for the same reason she was. Just on the outskirts of town, the Tango Tavern was a well-known pickup spot, the place you went specifically to meet new people you might never see again for small talk, craft beer, and whatever else might follow.

They’d avoided the usual getting-to-know-you questions like “Where are you from?” and “Where do you work?” and instead spent the first half of the evening sitting on bar stools, staying carefully impersonal. The Seahawks, the Mariners, and the Sounders were included in the conversation, which flowed more naturally with each beer they drank. He’d been impressed with her football knowledge, less so with her baseball and soccer knowledge, and when those topics dried up, their conversation had shifted to Wonderland. He regaled her with stories about the early days, back before it was bought by Nick Bishop, the park’s current owner. Oz clearly thought highly of Bishop, whom he referred to as a friend, and not so highly of Jack Shaw, the original owner and founder of the park, and a man most people in Seaside had hated.

It was safe to assume that Oz currently worked for the park in some capacity—a lot of people in Seaside did—but he never confirmed it and she didn’t ask. He was a few years older than Vanessa, maybe midforties, but his confidence and easy smile made him seem younger.

After exactly three Ninkasi IPAs each, he picked up the tab and invited her back to his place for more drinks. She accepted without hesitation. The ease with which he’d extended the invitation suggested that he’d done this a time or two before, and the ease with which she’d accepted probably told him the same thing. Again, it didn’t matter. All she wanted was not to be alone tonight in the new house, with memories of the past jammed into boxes she had yet to unpack. It was why she’d thrown on a pair of high heels with her jeans, and why she was wearing her one good Victoria’s Secret push-up bra underneath her low-cut top. Oz only lived three blocks away, and though they should have walked over due to their level of inebriation, the cool night air would have sobered them up. Neither of them wanted that. Besides, bringing her car made for a quicker getaway in the morning.

They had sex twice. The first time was on his living room sofa after two shots of Patrón, and it was the ripping-off-your-clothes kind of sex, sloppy and hard and fast. The second time was a bit later, in his bedroom, and they both took their time. If he was married, there was no evidence of it anywhere, not that she was looking too closely. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, and that was good enough for her.

Vanessa watched him sleep a moment longer. Even in the minimal light of the bedroom with one side of his face pushed into the pillow, she could see the chiseled angles of his jaw, the curve of his lips, the strong shape of his brow. That, too, was unusual. In her experience, most princes turned out to be frogs once the beer goggles were off. This was a guy she would have been attracted to sober. She wondered if he’d feel the same about her—he’d certainly been complimentary about her dark hair, dark eyes, and curvy build the night before—but she wasn’t planning on sticking around to find out.

She eased out of bed, careful not to joggle the mattress. Dressing quickly and quietly in the dark, she slipped out of the bedroom with a small sigh of relief. Her high heels were in one hand and her purse was in the other as she tiptoed down the stairs and out the door in her bare feet.

This was the last time she would do this. Once the kids joined her on the weekend, she was done with strange beds and strange men. Her grief would have to manifest itself in a different way.

Driving home, she couldn't help but compare Seaside to Seattle. Dubbed the “Wonder of Washington,” according to the sign at the side of the freeway as you drove in, Seaside was picturesque. Small enough to be charming, but large enough to have all the amenities, it was safe, clean, and right on the Pacific Ocean. And it was home to Wonderland, the Northwest’s largest amusement park.

Turning onto Main Street, she could clearly see the silhouette of the Wonder Wheel and the roller coasters, though they were two miles away. Because of Wonderland, all the local businesses did well, and not just in the summer, but all year-round. Seaside had money, and lots of it. And it spared no expense in ensuring that everything always looked pretty.

Which it did. The downtown, with its mature oak trees casting dappling shadows on the sidewalks and its old-fashioned store signs, looked like something out of a postcard. In fact, you could buy postcards in almost every shop in the downtown stretch that featured photos of all the shops in the downtown stretch. Seaside relished in its own aesthetic appeal.

It hadn’t always been like this. In the midnineties, back when Wonderland was still called World of Wonder, the town hadn’t exactly been flourishing. The accusations against Jack Shaw were no longer being ignored, and Shaw had finally been charged with multiple counts of sexual abuse. His accusers were several young men who’d worked for him in the eighties. The ugliness of the whole thing had tainted Seaside, but right before the trial was set to begin, Shaw died.

By then, the amusement park—and Seaside as a whole—had dried up. Many of the privately owned businesses downtown, hanging by a thread over the summer, were closed and boarded up by winter. Families moved away; tourists spent their dollars elsewhere. Vanessa had spent one fabulous summer between high school and college working at Wonderland, and during her time as a Wonder Worker, the park had never been more than half full on its busiest day.

Still, she’d enjoyed her time in Seaside tremendously. It was the first time she’d ever been away from home. Wonderland had been her first real job, where she’d learned to make cotton candy and caramel apples. Shabby though it was in those days, Seaside was the first place she’d fallen in love. Marcus, a local boy with shaggy hair and a Harley, had brought her to the beach the night of July Fourth to watch the fireworks. They’d shared a joint, talked all night, and then he’d taken her virginity in the sand as the sun came up. That summer had been the first and last time Vanessa had ever felt like she was exactly where she wanted to be. It was the first and last time she’d ever felt free.

And perhaps that’s why she’d decided to move her family to Seaside. She hadn’t dissected it too closely, not that anybody at her former job had asked. Most of them hadn’t even said goodbye.

John-John had been sad at first when she’d told him they were moving. He was only seven, but old enough to have a school he liked and friends he would miss. The fact that Wonderland was in Seaside had helped sweeten things. Every kid loved Wonderland, and her son was no exception.

Ava, on the other hand, was still not convinced. Teenage girls were difficult in the best of circumstances, and god knew these circumstances were less than ideal. At fourteen, Ava was old enough to understand why they had to leave Seattle, but she’d made it no secret that she resented Vanessa for moving them out of the city she loved. According to her daughter, going to high school at Seaside Academy in the fall was “tantamount to social suicide.” The only saving grace was that she’d been hired to work at Wonderland for the summer, which would be her first real job other than baby-sitting.

The kids wouldn’t be in Seaside until school let out in a few days, and in the meantime they were staying with their grandmother. The current living situation was another thing that displeased Ava. Her grandmother, she complained, cooked “weird, inedible things.” Vanessa secretly agreed. Cecilia Castro—her late husband John’s mother, not Vanessa’s—had turned vegetarian at age sixty, and liked to feed the kids things like bean burgers and tofu pancakes.

Her cell phone rang, and the call display showed Cecilia’s house. Vanessa smiled. It was too early for her mother-in-law to be calling, but not too early for John-John, who was always the first person awake.

She put him on speaker phone. “Good morning, sweetheart.”

“How come you’re already in the car?” he asked, sounding as if he’d been up for hours.

“I have an early work thing.” Vanessa mentally cursed herself for having to lie. “What’s going on, monkey?”

“I was thinking about Wonderland.” John-John had no use for small talk. She could imagine him sitting in the living room, Cecilia’s cordless phone pressed to his ear, wearing his Spider-Man pajamas. She missed him so much in that moment she almost couldn’t breathe. “Apparently the Legion of Doom is the highest and fastest roller coaster in the world.”

“In the world?” Vanessa said indulgently, knowing it wasn’t. “Even taller and faster than Space Mountain at Disneyland?”

“Apparently,” John-John said, because “apparently” was his new favorite word. “I should be big enough to go on it now. I wasn’t last year, remember?”

Vanessa remembered. Wonderland had long been an annual summer getaway for the Castro family. They’d rent a beach house, and Frank Greenberg, John’s old Army buddy who lived in Seaside, would be over for dinner almost every night. At the end of the week, they’d all go to Wonderland together, saying goodbye to Frank after Sunday brunch before heading home. Every August, every year, for nine years running.

But not this year. It was hard to believe how much had changed in six short months.

“If you’re tall enough, then the Legion of Doom it is,” Vanessa said. “Is your grandmother up?”

“Yes. She’s making breakfast.”

“What about your sister?”

“I tried to wake her but she threw a pillow at me and yelled at me to get out of her room. Apparently she was up late last night having a text fight with some boy. She said he’s a douche. What’s a douche?”

“It’s, uh . . .” Vanessa scrambled to think of an appropriate way to explain it, realized she couldn’t, then said, “It’s a bad word. Don’t say it again.”

“Okay. Are you coming to pick us up tomorrow?”

“Not tomorrow, sweetheart. I’ll see you on the weekend, remember? The house is almost unpacked and ready to go.”
Except for your dad’s things
, she thought, but didn’t say. She pulled into her driveway.

“Okay.” John-John was always so agreeable. “I have to go. Grandma says my omelet is ready.” He lowered his voice. “It smells weird. She put vegan cheese in it.”

Vanessa laughed. “Eat it anyway, it’s good for you. I love you. I’ll call you tonight.”

She disconnected and let herself into the house. Dropping her keys onto the table, she headed straight for the kitchen, making a point not to look at the boxes in the living room still left to unpack. She’d left them for last, not quite sure what she was going to do with the contents inside. They were John’s things, after all.

She turned on the coffeemaker and stared out the kitchen window. Wonderland was in the distance, and she could clearly see the looping roller coaster that was the Legion of Doom, that hopefully John-John was now big enough to ride. He’d be terribly disappointed if he wasn’t, and Vanessa didn’t think she could take seeing her kids any more disappointed than they already were. Beside the roller coaster was the giant Wonder Wheel, all twinkling lights and colorful chairs swaying slightly in the breeze.

The loneliness consumed her then. Taking a seat at the table, she cried for a good five minutes. Then she shook it off, as she’d been able to do every day over the past week, and went upstairs to take a hot shower. She needed to wash the scent of the man from the night before off her body. As she soaped, Vanessa prayed that she wouldn’t see Oz—or whatever his real name was—again. There was no room in her life for anything complicated, even if she’d liked him a bit more than she was willing to admit.

An hour later, hair clean and dressed in fresh clothes, she walked through the glass doors into the Seaside Police Department, gun holstered at her hip. Though it was only her second time here, the officer staffing the reception desk recognized her the moment she entered.

“Good morning, Deputy Chief,” he said. “Welcome to Seaside PD.”