Nina Riva woke up without even opening her eyes.

Consciousness seeped into her slowly, as if breaking the morning to her gently.

She lamented it all without even peeking through the curtains of her own eyelashes.

If Nina listened closely, she could hear the ocean crashing below the cliffjust faintly.

A shabby beach bungalow off of PCH, built on stilts, extended out over the sea.

But Brandon had wanted to live on a cliff.

Nina listened as best she could for the sounds of the water and she did not open her eyes.

There was nothing for her to see.Brandon was not in her bed.

Brandon wasn’t in the house.

Brandon wasn’t even in Malibu.

He was at the Beverly Hills Hotel, with its pink stucco and its green palm trees.

He wasmost likely at this early hourcradling Carrie Soto in his sleep.

And then the two of them would probably start packing together for the U.S. Open.

Nina didn’t hate Carrie Soto for stealing her husband because husbands can’t be stolen.

The cover image was flattering enough.

They had pulled one of the photos from her swimsuit shoot in the Maldives earlier that year.

She was wearing a fuchsia high-leg bikini.

And then, of course, there were her famous lips.

On the cover, they had cropped it out.

But she was used to that by now.

Nina had been wearing a white bikini with a flowered sundress thrown on over it.

She’d been smoking a Virginia Slims and carrying a six-pack of Tab.

If you looked closely, you could tell she had been crying.

Next to it, they’d put a photo of her father from the mid-sixties.

Over the photos ran the title THE APPLE DOESN’T FALL FAR FROM THE RIVA TREE.

Every time she thought about it, her jaw tensed up.

She finally opened her eyes and looked at her ceiling.

She stood up out of bed, naked except for a pair of bikini underwear.

She breathed in the salt air.

It was not yet hot that morning; the breeze that stalks all seaside towns was running offshore.

She walked until she got to the edge of the cliff.

She looked out onto the horizon.The ocean was as blue as ink.

The sun had settled into the sky an hour or so ago.

Seagulls chirped sharply as they dove and rose over the sea.

Nina could see the waves were good, a clear swell was moving in toward Little Dume.

She watched a set come in, watched them go unridden.

It seemed like a tragedy.

Those waves hitting the break all by themselves, no one there to claim them.

She would claim them.

She would let the ocean heal her like she always had.

She may have been in a house she never would have chosen.

She may have been left by a man she could not even remember why she’d married.

But the Pacific washer ocean.

Malibu was her home.

She had seen it grow from humble ranches to middle-class neighborhoods.

Now it was becoming a land of oversized mansions on the beach.

The only real surprise was that Nina had married one of them.

She didn’t move.

She wasn’t ready to turn around.

FROM THE BOOK MALIBU RISING, BY TAYLOR JENKINS REID.

COPYRIGHT 2021 BY TAYLOR JENKINS REID.

PUBLISHED BY BALLANTINE, AN IMPRINT OF RANDOM HOUSE, A DIVISION OF PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE LLC.