Chapter 2: Making Waves

Port Hills, New Zealand

December 25, 2004

It was 6:33 AM when the sound of the kids woke them up.

Jake opened one eye to find the bedroom still dim with that blue-tinted early light unique to New Zealand summers, then shut it again with a grunt. On the other side of the bed, Celia shifted under the covers. Laura groaned. No one moved fast. No one wanted to. But this was Christmas, and they were parents, which meant the day belonged to the short people in the house. The ones already awake.

And waiting.

Somewhere down the hall, the unmistakable sound of restrained chaos filtered upward—whispers that weren’t whispers, feet that weren’t quite running, a tiny voice trying to hush a smaller one.

Santa had come. And the kids were playing by the rules.

How nice of them.

Jake rolled onto his back and exhaled. “Six-thirty. They let us sleep in.”

“God bless them,” Laura muttered, face still buried against Jake’s chest...

“I give it ten more minutes,” Celia said, her leg entwined with Jake’s. “Five if Cap starts shrieking.”

He did.

Six minutes later, all three adults shuffled out of bed, still dressed the way only exhausted parents staging a fake Santa delivery until 2:00 AM dress: Laura and Celia in panties and nothing else, Jake in boxer briefs, one sock missing. They hadn’t even made it to the sex part of the evening, which was frankly disappointing. But Santa had been a demanding little bastard this year, and the hot buttered rum drinks mixed with lingering jetlag hadn’t helped.

The stockings had been stuffed. The gifts had been sorted. Tabby’s telescope assembled and put in a big-ass carboard box. The Lego box checked and rechecked to make sure it was the right classic set with no branding bullshit. And Caydee’s iPod mini—oh, the iPod—had been synced and loaded with a playlist that could only have been created by people who loved their child enough to tolerate spending forty minutes in iTunes purgatory.

They’d done it all, tired and bleary, but with care. Because even if Caydee and Tabby no longer believed in the jolly red myth—and Cap was still mentally living in a world where shoelaces were sorcery—the ritual still mattered.

Santa wasn’t a person anymore. He was a performance.

And once the performance ends, it doesn’t come back until grandchildren drag his fat ass out of retirement.

So they did it right. With cookies. With ribbons. With hot buttered rum and snarky commentary about whose handwriting was best suited for the “From Santa” tags. And now, they were throwing on sweats and T-shirts, scrubbing sleep from their faces and padding barefoot down the hallway, trying to look festive instead of mildly hungover.

In the family room, the stockings were down, the wrapped presents respectfully untouched, and the kids were in full holiday inspection mode. Caydee and Tabby sat side by side, legs crossed on the floor, carefully evaluating their stocking haul like forensic analysts. Cap, possibly still dreaming, sat on the couch with a candy cane in one hand and a sock in the other, blinking at the lights on the tree like they might explain something if he stared long enough.

Stockings were the only acceptable pre-presents indulgence. This was a rule, not a guideline. Violation carried consequences.

Jake dropped onto the arm of the couch with a grunt.

“Good morning,” he said, voice like gravel.

“You missed Santa,” Caydee said, without looking up.

“We were asleep,” Celia said, flopping into a chair. “And so were you.”

“I was pretending,” Caydee said.

“Cap wasn’t,” Tabby offered helpfully. “He was totally out. We had to drag his butt out of the crib.”

Cap blinked slowly. “Buhh.”

The tree glowed, the coffee hadn’t been made—Jake had been too hot buttered and rummed to remember to set it up—and the adults were running on sugar fumes and tradition. But it was Christmas. And the room, for all its chaotic parts, felt whole.

From the hallway came the sound of more feet—Mary and Tom appearing in matching pajamas that suggested they’d made a group decision to embrace grandparent chic. Papa and Mama Valdez followed, moving at a pace that said yes, we’re awake, but only technically. Pauline arrived next, Obie behind her with his usual cowboy gait and a mug that clearly did not contain coffee.

“Morning,” Obie said, raising his mug.

Celia sniffed. “Bourbon this early?”

“Tradition,” he said.

Grace, Chase, and Gina, of course, were still asleep. They were older. Or smarter. Either way, the day had begun.

Jake, Celia, and Laura didn’t even try to enforce order once the rest of the adults filtered in. The coffee was finally brewing—Jake had thrown the pot on himself while still blinking at the buttons—and the kids knew the system. Stockings first. Presents only after caffeine and general assembly.

Tabby got the first big box.

She’d been hoping for a real telescope ever since Fourth of July, when she’d begun hinting about it with increasing desperation—stars this, constellations that, space documentaries “accidentally” left playing on the TV. And now, with the real deal sitting beside her—a proper auto-tracking scope, not a toy—Tabby stared at it like it had just descended from orbit.

She ran her fingers along the adjustment knobs, already calculating the best place to set it up. “I want to find Centaurus this time,” she said excitedly. “And Carina. I never got a good look last year.”

“You will,” Jake said.

She nodded, half-listening, already lost in the sky she hadn’t seen yet. The Southern Cross she knew. That had started it all—the first time she’d looked up last Christmas and realized the stars were different here. Backwards. Like the sky was flipped and inviting her to decode it.

This year, she had the tools.

Cap’s gift came next—a large plastic tub of old-school Legos, the kind without branding, storylines, or instruction manuals. Just bricks. Just possibility.

Cap plopped down in his footie pajamas, pulled off the lid, and immediately began sorting. Not chewing, not throwing—sorting. Within minutes, he had a stable wall five bricks high, built with eerie precision. Then he knocked it over and attempted to climb the coffee table.

“He does that,” Laura said, watching him fondly and fearfully. “He builds something, then climbs something. Like it’s a rule.”

“He climbed the ironing board last week,” Celia added. “I didn’t even know he could find the damn ironing board.”

Jake gestured at the toddler, now hanging off the arm of a recliner like a baby lemur. “He stacked couch cushions last Tuesday and tried to leap onto the changing table.”

“Do we know why he does this?” Tom asked, brow furrowing.

“Nope,” Laura said. “He has no interest in music despite the family he was born into. But he loves climbing to the top of things.”

“Future mountaineer,” Obie offered. “Maybe one day he’ll climb Mount Everest.”

“But he won’t be dragging a guitar up there with him,” Jake said sadly.

“I think he’s going to be a pilot,” Celia said. “Just like his padre.”

Caydee’s box came last. She opened it carefully, reverently, as if it might explode. But she knew what it was. She always knew. Daddy had spent three weeks swearing it wasn’t happening—seven was too young, he’d said. She’d get distracted, lose it, drop it in the pool. But Jake also knew she wasn’t a normal seven.

The iPod Mini was silver. The playlist had taken two nights and three arguments to finalize. And when she plugged in the earbuds and scrolled through the library—nearly every song Jake and Celia and Grandpa Kingsley had ever sung to her at guitar-sing, from ancient harmonies to warm lullabies to War Pigs and Killing in the Name Of—she didn’t smile. Not at first. She just closed her eyes.

Jake watched her. She had said thank you multiple times but the true gratitude was in her eyes as she flipped through the playlist one by one.

The rest of the morning unfurled in waves. More gifts. More coffee. A lot of “you shouldn’t have”s and “where are the batteries” and one incident involving Cap, a dish towel, and the telescope tripod that nearly ended in structural collapse.

Chase wandered in around eight, wearing a long T-shirt and looking quite rumpled. Gina followed, fresh-faced and radiant. Grace, poetically, was the last to appear, mug in hand and hair still damp, looking like she’d slept eight hours and dreamed of nothing at all.

By noon, wrapping paper blanketed the floor. Cap had climbed two more pieces of furniture and attempted to disassemble part of the couch. Caydee had made it through six songs and one soft, unexplained cry. And the adults—fed, relaxed, and lightly caffeinated—were already dividing up cleanup duties without needing to speak.

It was, by any reasonable metric, a perfect Christmas morning.

None of them had any idea that prying eyes had been watching them the entire night.
Not just watching, but documenting. Through digital photography.

Drew was clean. Not fresh, not rested, not exactly alive—but clean. The kind of post-stakeout shower where the hot water hits your spine and your only conscious thought is thank God I’m not pissing in the darkness anymore.

He and Peterson had staggered back to the hotel just before seven, shoes coated in grit, camo sleeves smelling like grass and polyester anxiety. They’d split the remaining bottle of water during the hike out, had a silent elevator ride up to the second floor. Morning briefing with Valerie as soon as they were clean. They needed to smell like humans this time.

Valerie had insisted. “If you show up stinking like bush meat again,” she’d told them two days ago, “I’ll have the hotel fumigate the suite and charge it to your mother.” No word about how it had been she who had insisted they show up without showering the first time.

So now they were clean. Hair damp. Faces shaved. Memory cards almost full—but never entirely. Because every paparazzo knew the rule: the moment you filled your last card, or—if you were old-school—fired your final frame of film, that was when Bigfoot would appear, riding the Loch Ness Monster and holding Jimmy Hoffa’s severed head.

Drew’s Nikon held 1,431 new photos. Peterson’s was about the same. Sunset to sunrise. Kingsley family Christmas Eve, in sequence. Deck drinking, dinner glimpses, living room warmth, Jake kissing both women on the couch, the whole post-kid bedtime phase with the adults doing Santa theater, and finally the dim, golden hush of late-night cleanup. Then darkness.

Nothing had moved after 2:12 AM. They knew the time exactly. Drew had logged it, waiting for another light to flick on. It never did.

Now they were seated on the couch in Valerie’s suite, laptops open, files queued.

She was already pacing. Gray silk robe over yoga pants, coffee in one hand, pen in the other, hair up, mouth tight.

“All right,” she said, not looking at them. “Give me the shortlist.”

Peterson cracked his knuckles, leaned forward. “Sequence starts just before sunset. Family gathered on the back deck—Jake, Celia, Laura, the two older girls, Obie, Valdez senior. Bottle of red wine, possibly Malbec, and a lot of relaxed body language. Celia in Jake’s lap at one point. Laura sits beside him, arm around his shoulders. No one looks uncomfortable.”

“No tension,” Drew added. “Plenty of contact. Some sustained.”

“Photos?” Valerie asked.

“Dozens,” Peterson said. “Mid-light, well-composed, not just silhouettes.”

Drew tapped his keyboard. “Next series is indoor, seen through the windows. Lighting held pretty well thanks to the open blinds and internal warmth. Caydee and Cap get walked through bedtime. Tabby hands out what looked like cookies. Chase dances briefly with Obie. Jake plays acoustic guitar for exactly four minutes.”

“Which song?” Valerie asked.

“Unclear,” Drew said. “Sound didn’t carry. Laura was playing a flute. Celia had her head on Jake’s shoulder.”

Valerie finally sat. “Okay. Go on.”

“After kids vanish,” Peterson said, “the real gold starts. Jake sits on the couch between the two women—Laura on his left, Celia on the right. He kisses Laura on the cheek. Then Celia on the mouth. Neither woman flinches.”

“They smile,” Drew said. “Genuinely. No jealousy.”

Valerie raised an eyebrow. “You sure about that?”

“I’m sure what I saw,” Drew said.

“Mm.” She sipped her coffee. “Continue.”

“Santa prep begins around 12:30,” Peterson said. “They bring out presents, set up staging near the tree. Wrap up close to 2:00 AM. At one point, Jake kneels with both women beside him and they all inspect a Lego box like it’s a rare manuscript.”

“Candid?”

“Very.”

Valerie made a note. “Anything sexual?”

Drew blinked. “I would say everything fell into the category of ‘intimately familiar’ but not overtly sexual in nature.”

“Pity,” she muttered. “Anything after 2:12?”

“No movement,” Peterson said. “House goes dark. We watched for the rest of the night, but hiked out at first light without taking another shot.”

Valerie leaned back in her chair. “All right. Load them up.”

Drew slid his card into the reader. The thumbnails began populating, hundreds at a time. The screen glowed with warm windows, firelight shadows, familiar outlines caught in private ease.

Valerie set her coffee down. “Let’s see what fantasy looks like when you shoot it from two hundred meters uphill.”

She leaned in as the thumbnails populated, her finger tapping idly against the coffee mug. She scrolled through slowly—Jake and Celia with their heads close, Laura laughing with her feet in his lap, the three of them arranging wrapped presents like stagehands on a sentimental film set.

“No jealousy,” she muttered. “No competition. No visible sexual tension. Just warmth.”

Drew nodded. “Exactly.”

Valerie turned. “And you think that’s normal?”

“I think it’s honest,” Drew said. “Occam’s Razor. The simplest explanation that fits the evidence is usually the right one. He’s in a romantic relationship with both of them. That’s what the photos show.”

“And they’re all just happy?” she asked, her voice loaded with sarcasm. “No two people on Earth can survive a long-term relationship without turning into each other’s prison warden, but somehow Jake Kingsley has pulled it off with two women? Simultaneously?”

Drew didn’t blink. “Seems like it.”

Valerie sat back with a dry laugh. “No fuckin’ way. That’s not how people work.”

“Maybe it’s how they work,” Drew offered.