by Joy Fielding
“Tom and me,” Heather said from her seat at the kitchen table.
“What?”
“Object of the preposition,” Heather said.
“I don’t believe this! Tom, do something.”
“Mom, please,” Julia pleaded. “I just want to come home.”
The words tugged at Cindy’s heart.
“Officer Medavoy,” a familiar voice announced in Cindy’s ear.
“Officer Medavoy, it’s Cindy Carver. We met the other night. My daughter Heather …”
“Yes, of course. How is she?”
“She’s wonderful. Wonderful,” Cindy repeated, her eyes absorbing the miracle that was her younger child. All these years she’d overlooked Heather’s quiet light because she’d been so blinded by the raging fire that was Julia. All those years Cindy had given short shrift to one daughter because she was so busy mourning the loss of the other. And now Julia was back, and she was saying exactly what Cindy had been waiting a lifetime to hear: Please, Mom. I just want to come home.
And it was too late.
“It’s my other daughter I’m calling about. Julia.”
A collective intake of breath.
“She’s home,” Cindy told the officer. She closed her eyes, shook her head, a cry escaping her mouth as she tried to continue. Could she really tell the police the truth, knowing that her daughter might go to jail, her dreams of stardom over? Hadn’t the last two weeks seen enough misery and shattered dreams to last a lifetime? “She waltzed in about an hour ago,” Cindy announced, “totally unaware of everything that’s been happening.”
“Thank God,” she heard the Cookie whisper, as Julia burst into a flood of grateful tears against her father’s chest.
Cindy continued reading from the invisible script her ex-husband and daughter had prepared, surprised by how convincing she managed to sound. Tom was right. When all was said and done, what other choice did she have? “Thank you,” she told the officer before hanging up the phone and facing the others. “He said he’ll let Detectives Bartolli and Gill know what’s happened, that they’ll probably contact us first thing in the morning.”
“Thank you so much, Mom,” Julia whispered.
“You did the right thing,” Tom said.
Cindy glanced toward the kitchen table, expecting to see at least a hint of recrimination in her mother’s eyes, a scowl of disapproval on her sister’s lips, a look of disappointment on Heather’s face. But all three women were nodding their tearful support. There were no judgments here, Cindy realized. Only love.
Tom kissed Julia’s forehead. “Try to get some sleep, sweetie. You want to look good for the reporters in the morning.” He touched the Cookie’s elbow, began leading her toward the hall.
“Wait,” Cindy called out. What was she doing now?
“Cindy, we’re all beat. Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”
“Julia can’t stay here.” The words were out of Cindy’s mouth almost before she realized they were in her head.
“What?” Tom stopped abruptly.
“What?” Julia echoed.
“You can’t stay here,” Cindy said again, the words sounding no less strange for having repeated them.
“I don’t understand.”
Cindy took a deep breath, releasing the air slowly from her lungs, feeling her heart about to burst. “I love you, darling. I always will. You know that. And I’m so sorry.” She glanced from Julia to Tom, then back again. “It’s just that I can’t spend any more time living with someone I don’t really like.”
Julia’s eyes filled with unexpected tears. She quickly lowered her head, her hair falling across her face as it had during her audition for Michael Kinsolving.
(Fantasy: Julia raises her head, tears falling the length of her cheeks. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “Please forgive me. I never meant to hurt you. I love you more than anything in the world. I promise I’ll change. I promise things will be so different from now on.”)
Julia remained in that posture for several seconds, then a toss of her hair, a shrug of her shoulders, brought her head back up. When her eyes next met her mother’s, the tears were gone. “Whatever. I’ll stay at Dad’s.”
The Cookie’s eyes widened in alarm.
Could she really do this? Cindy wondered. Could she really send her daughter away? Was she prepared to lose her again, possibly forever? Cindy felt her body shudder, as if finally absorbing the fact that Julia had been lost to her a long time ago.
Julia stood in the middle of the kitchen, not moving, as if giving her mother a few extra seconds to change her mind. “Okay, then. If that’s the way you want it. Come on, Elvis. We’re going back to Dad’s.”
“Oh no,” the Cookie wailed. “I will not have that mangy mutt peeing on my good carpets again.”
“Come on, Elvis,” Julia repeated, as if the Cookie hadn’t spoken.
Elvis slowly raised himself up from his position underneath the kitchen table and lumbered over to the middle of the room to where Cindy was standing. Then he barked loudly three times, and stretched himself across the top of Cindy’s feet.
“Fine.” Julia rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Stay here, if that’s what you want.”
“Thank God,” the Cookie muttered.
“Shut up,” Julia snapped.
“You shut up.”
“Ladies, please,” Tom implored, ushering the two young women toward the front door without so much as a backward glance.
Cindy followed, her eyes trailing after them as they walked down the street. She saw Julia climb into her father’s car, watched that car pull away from the curb, then turn the corner onto Avenue Road.
And then she was gone.
(Flashback: Julia, age fourteen, her ponytail waving behind her, carries her suitcase into her father’s waiting BMW, leaving her childhood—and her mother—behind.)
“Are you all right?” Heather asked, coming up behind her.
Cindy nodded. “I’m okay,” she said, realizing that she was.
Maybe nothing would ever completely heal the wound in her heart, maybe there would always be a part of her that wanted to run down the street after her older daughter and beg her to come home. But it was too late for that. Julia wasn’t fourteen anymore. She was all grown up now. An adult, with a mind and a will of her own. And, thank God, she was healthy and strong and safe. Hell, she was indestructible.
They were the ones who’d been battered and bruised and beaten these last few weeks, Cindy realized. For fourteen days they’d been treading water and holding their breath, struggling to keep their heads above the cruel current. Their lives had been turned upside down and inside out. And now, suddenly, it was over. Just like that. Two weeks of slow torture resolved in mere seconds.
And yet those seconds would resonate with all of them for the rest of their lives.
“How are you guys?”
“Tired,” said her mother.
“Exhausted,” said Leigh.
“We should get to bed.”
“What do you think will happen tomorrow?” her mother asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Neil’s coming over with bagels,” Heather reminded them.
Cindy smiled at the three women. “I love you,” she said simply.
“We love you too,” they said in unison.
Elvis lifted himself off Cindy’s feet and stared at her expectantly.
“Don’t worry,” Cindy told the dog. “We love you too.”
(Final images: Cindy drapes one arm across her daughter’s shoulder as the other arm stretches to accommodate both her mother and sister; the dog’s tail snaps hopefully against her leg as she guides everyone toward the stairs.)
ALSO BY JOY FIELDING
PUPPET
High-powered, twenty-eight-year-old defense attorney Amanda Travis likes several things: the colour black; lunchtime spinning classes; her oceanfront condo; a compliant jury; men whose wives don’t understand them.
Some of
the things she doesn’t like: the colour pink; clients who don’t follow her advice; nicknames of any shape or size.
Something else Amanda Travis doesn’t like: memories.
But when Ben, the first of her two ex-husbands, calls from her hometown of Toronto with the alarming news that her mother has shot and killed a man in the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel, it becomes more and more difficult for Amanda to continue running from her past. Now she must return to face her demons and the life she left behind—a love that once consumed her and a mother who holds a strange, dark power over everyone she encounters. “Puppet” is the nickname Amanda’s mother once called her. But now Amanda is determined to fight her mother’s fatal whims—even if it kills her.
COMING SOON IN HARDCOVER FROM
DOUBLEDAY CANADA / ISBN: 0-385-66054-5
ALSO BY JOY FIELDING
DON’T CRY NOW
Bonnie Wheeler had a picture-perfect life: a rewarding job as a schoolteacher, a happy marriage to a successful TV director, a sprawling suburban home, and Amanda, her adorable three-year-old daughter. She’d heard the sordid details about her husband’s ex-wife, Joan—the drinking, the instability. Then Joan calls her with a cryptic warning—you’re in danger, you and Amanda.
But when Joan is found murdered and Bonnie is the prime suspect, she knows this is no game. Suddenly her secure world comes crashing down around her. Things she once believed in are lies. People she thought she knew have shocking secrets to reveal.
Desperate to know who intends to harm her daughter, Bonnie is caught in a frantic race to keep Amanda safe—even as she feels her own grasp on reality slipping.…
SEAL BOOKS / ISBN: 0-7704-2721-9
ALSO BY JOY FIELDING
WHISPERS AND LIES
Terry Painter enjoys her quiet life in tranquil Delray, Florida, where the single, forty-year-old nurse lives alone in the house she inherited from her mother. When young, vibrant Alison Simms rents the cottage on her property, the two women strike up a fast friendship—and Terry is swept into a fantastic new life: dinners out, shopping, makeovers, even flirting with the handsome son of one of her elderly patients.
But nothing about her newfound companion is as it appears, as Terry discovers when Alison’s closely guarded past comes to light. Now Terry is locked in a race to reclaim her own life—before she opens the door any further to the stranger she thought she knew.…
SEAL BOOKS / ISBN: 0-7704-2919-X
ALSO BY JOY FIELDING
THE OTHER WOMAN
At first, Jill Plumley thought it was a flattering, if tasteless joke, when the sexy young attorney introduced herself and whispered, “I’m going to marry your husband.” Then David Plumley began spending late nights and weekends at the office, and Jill realized it was no joke. She recognized the scenario only too well. After all, she herself had lured David away from his first wife. She too had been “the other woman.”
The Other Woman uncovers the inner workings of love, passion, and marriage to show how life can go wrong precisely when we finally get exactly what we’ve always wanted.
SEAL BOOKS / ISBN: 0-7704-2918-I
ALSO BY JOY FIELDING
GRAND AVENUE
Looking back, it seemed like paradise: lives filled with blessings of friendship, marriage, children, and career. For twenty years, four friends—Chris, Barbara, Susan, and Vicki—shared everything and faced the challenges of life and love head-on. Now, one sits alone to ponder the strange twists of fate and circumstance. Now, she must sift through the past to discover exactly what went wrong, how dreams turned to nightmares as friendships faded and lives were destroyed.…
SEAL BOOKS / ISBN: 0-7704-2894-0