Summer Island

All this I can see now . . . and it is too late.

Monday, I will appear on The Sarah Purcell Show, and after that, what I see will matter only to me. My mother wont care.

But I want to say this-for the record, although Im aware it comes too late and at too great a price-I love my mother.

I love my mother.

Ruby released her hold on the pen. It rolled away from her, plopped over the edge of the bed and onto the floor, where it landed with a little click.

It was too much, all of this, and on the day shed finally believed in a happy-ever-after future for herself. She couldnt write anymore, couldnt think.

“I love you, Mom,” she whispered, staring up at the spidery crack in the ceiling.

Chapter Twenty-four

Nora sat at the kitchen table, reading a fifteen-year-old newspaper that shed found in the broom closet and sipping a cup of lukewarm coffee. The front-page story was an outraged report that Washington State officials had set off underwater firecrackers to scare away sea lions at the Ballard Locks. The sea lions were eating the salmon and the steelhead. Beside that story was a smaller column-complete with photograph. President Reagans dog had received a tonsillectomy.

Mostly, she was waiting for Ruby to come downstairs. Nora had tried to wait up for her daughter the previous night, but at about twelve-thirty, shed given up. It had to be a good sign that Ruby hadnt come home early.

At least, thats what Nora told herself.

She was about to turn the page when the phone rang. Ignoring the crutches leaning against the wall, she hobbled to the counter and answered. “Hello?”

“Its me. Dec. ”

Nora sagged against the cold, pebbled surface of the refrigerator. “Hi, Dee. What excellent news do you have for me today?”

“Youre not going to like it. ”

“Thats hardly surprising. ”

“I just got off the phone with Tom Adams. He called me at home. On Sunday, to tell me to tell you that if you didnt get those blankety blank columns on his blankety-blank desk by Wednesday morning, he was going to slap a ten million-dollar lawsuit on you. He said the paperwork was already done on it, he was just giving you a last chance. ” She made a little coughing sound. “He said he was going to sue everybody youd ever worked with including me. ”

“He cant do that,” Nora said, though, of course, she had no idea whether or not he could.

“Are you sure?” Dee sounded scared.

“Ill talk to Tom myself,” Nora answered, before Dee could really get going.

“Oh, thank God. ”

“What else is going on there? Is the brouhaha dying down?”

“No,” and to her credit, Dee sounded miserable about it. "Your housekeeper went on Larry King Live last night and said . . . terrible things about you.

“Adele said bad things about me?”

“A woman named Barb Heinneman said youd commissioned an expensive stained-glass window from her and never paid for it. And your hair lady-Carla-she said you were a lousy tipper. ”

“Oh, for Gods sake, what does that have-”

“The Tattler reported that guy in the pictures wasnt your first . . . affair. Theyre saying that you and your husband had an ”open“ marriage and you both slept with tons of other people. And sometimes . . . ” Dees voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “You did it in groups. Like in that movie, Eyes Wide Shut. Thats what they wrote, anyway. ”

Noras head was spinning. Honest to God, a part of her felt like laughing, it was that ridiculous. Eyes Wide Shut? Group sex? For the first time since this whole mess began, she started to get mad. Shed made mistakes-big ones, bad ones-but this . . .

This, she didnt deserve. As shed heard in a movie once-this shit she wouldnt eat. They were trying to make her out to be some kind of whore. “Is that it? Or am I carrying some space aliens mutant child, too?”

Dee laughed nervously. “Thats mostly it. Except . . . ”