Passing Through Paradise

by Susan Wiggs

  “He wanted to wait until he was on firmer ground, politically,” Ronald added.

  That sounded odd to Mike. Other politicians had kids — look at the Kennedys.

  “Winky and I believe that’s what their quarrel was about the night of the accident,” Ronald said, clasping hands with his wife.

  “Look,” said Mike, growing even more uncomfortable. “Don’t feel you have to— “

  “We were interviewed by dozens of crime investigators and the ME,” Ronald said. “We can surely tell our story to one of Victor’s old friends.”

  “That night, they were barely speaking,” Winifred explained. “We were at a fund-raiser, and you could have cut the tension with a knife.”

  “At first,” Ronald added, “we didn’t want to believe Sandra was responsible. But as things came to light, we were forced to think the unthinkable.”

  “It made a sort of terrible sense,” Winifred explained. “She was clearly unhappy. She stood to benefit from his life insurance policy.” She exchanged an anguished glance with her husband.

  Mike tried to understand their bitterness. What were they thinking? That Sandra had plunged Victor to his death because she wanted kids and he didn’t? Because she wanted his money? Or did the Winslows simply need to find someone to blame, some way to make sense of the senseless?

  “We don’t know what was in her mind,” Ronald said. “I don’t think any of us ever really knew her.”

  “I always thought she resented Victor’s success,” Winifred said. “Everyone loved him, but she was a loner. Not cut out to be a politician’s wife at all. They were having problems, but we respected their privacy. I think she wanted a divorce, but didn’t want to let go of his money.”

  It all sounded pretty far-fetched to Mike. The woman would have to be off her rocker to stage an accident, risking herself as much as Victor. But he didn’t say anything to Victor’s parents.

  “You’re probably thinking we should let go of this,” Winifred said. “That’s what everyone else says. We should let go and move on.”

  “We can’t,” Ronald admitted. “We loved our son, Mike. You of all people should know that.”

  “I can’t stand the thought that she took him from me, and she’s getting away with it,” Winifred said. “Be careful of her, Michael.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” he assured them, setting down his coffee cup. He flashed on an image of Sandra, saving the mouse in her woodpile. He made his escape, leaving the silent, elegant mansion so haunted by sadness. He respected the Winslows, but they were trapped by their grief, as trapped as Sandra was in her drafty old house on Blue Moon Beach.

  He wished he could talk to Victor again, maybe shoot some baskets and hang out the way they used to, so long ago. What was Victor’s side of the story? What had he been thinking, feeling? Was he scared? Had he suffered?

  The questions would go forever unanswered. There was only one person alive who knew what had really happened.

  Chapter 8

  Journal Entry—January 6—Sunday

  Ten Useful New Words

  5. Fungible—Freely exchangeable for another of like kind.

  6. Elegiac—Of, relating to, or involving sorrow for that which is irrecoverably past.

  7. Semiotic—Relating to signs or indications.

  8. Caduceus—A winged staff with two serpents twined around it, carried by Hermes.

  9. Euphonious—Pleasing or agreeable to the ear.

  10. Defenestration—An act of throwing someone or something out of a window.

  Sandra drummed her fingers on her notebook, then set it aside in exasperation. On an empty Sunday afternoon, with the wind stirring whitecaps in the Sound, she wasn’t getting much work done. Ordinarily, she did her best work during storms. She wasn’t quite sure why, but there was something magical and evocative in the dark lash of wind and rain against the windows, the harsh voice of turbulence shouting from the sky.

  At such times, as though infused with the energy of the storm, her favorite fountain pen often had a mind of its own, skating across the page, leaving a banner of peacock-blue writing in its wake. She didn’t listen to her own words, but instead played the part of a medieval scribe taking dictation from a higher source.

  But not today. She’d been so rattled by the encounter with Ronald and Winifred that she barely even remembered the drive home. The Winslows had cut her off as swiftly and cleanly as a field amputation. The searing contempt of Victor’s parents had cauterized the wound.

  The truth had finally struck her. The limb was gone. The identity she had made for herself—wife, daughter-in-law, community leader—had been excised. Could she have been more stupid, showing up at the church expecting . . . what? Redemption? Forgiveness? Understanding? She should have known better.

  Simmering with anger, she shed the St. John’s suit Winifred had helped her pick out last year, and put on her favorite old jeans and Victor’s sweater—knowing it still smelled of him and would make her cry—and tried to get something productive done.

  The blank screen of the computer resembled a gray, demonic eye stalking her, reminding her that she hadn’t read her E-mail in a week, that there was a conspiracy to trash her books on an on-line book site, and that someone had set up an electronic newsgroup dedicated to proving that despite the ruling of the medical examiner, Victor Winslow ‘s death had been caused by his wife. She was the woman on the grassy knoll.

  Now, with her parents in crisis on top of everything else, the only thing she had left was her writing. At least that was still intact after the bizarre horror of the accident and investigation. Or maybe not. Hours after sitting down with her notebook, she glanced back through the scribbling, debating whether or not the pages were worth transcribing into manuscript form.

  She used the old excuse of not turning on her computer during a storm. Like everyone else, she’d heard stories of people who ignored the warnings and worked at their computers with an electric storm raging outside. Such fools often came to a bad end—they were virtual lightning rods for disaster, anything from electrocution to having their hard drives reduced to burnt toast, taking all their life’s work, their checking accounts and—horror of horrors — their E-mail into the digital ether, never to be recovered.

  Computer-savvy people scoffed at such tales as urban legends, but Sandra couldn’t afford to put it to the test. So when a storm rolled in—a frequent occurrence in the middle of winter—she kept her computer off.

  Propping her chin in her hand, she stared out the window facing the sea and listened to the hiss and burble of the teakettle on the stove. The hundred-year-old timbers trembled; the wind found gaps in the old windows, rattling the glass and pervading the big house with a chill that no amount of heat would banish completely. The window caulking had crumbled years ago, and no one had ever bothered to fix it.

  Her thoughts drifted to Mike Malloy, he of the big shoulders and battered pickup truck. If he hadn’t shown up this morning, offered her a cup of coffee, she wasn’t sure she would have made it home. He couldn’t know how grateful she’d been for the company, and for his simple “who cares “ attitude about the accident.

  The accident. Finally, someone saw it for exactly what it had been—a horrible, disastrous accident, the sort of thing that happens on prime-time news shows.

  Maybe it was just her imagination, but she felt a weird connection with Malloy. She knew she shouldn’t trust the dangerous warmth he stirred in her, but she wanted to. After the disaster with Victor, she wasn’t even sure she understood the nature of love, of passion. Maybe she simply wasn’t meant to. Maybe she was one of those strange creatures destined to live out her life alone, contenting herself with the quiet rewards of her small family and few friends.

  If she knew what was good for her, she’d settle for that. Losing Victor—first to his secrets and lies, then to the murky currents that had swept him away—had created a hurt so intense she never wanted to feel it again. She didn’t want to feel anythin
g again—not love, joy, grief, rage. . . . Because even joy had its price. She didn’t want anyone to thaw the carefully crafted numbness that protected her heart.

  Not even Mike Malloy.

  She gave up trying to work and felt herself edging toward a decision. She needed a friend, someone who could pull her away from her world, just for a little while. It was a little humiliating to realize how much of her social life had revolved around his friends, his family, his agenda. Now the parties, the meetings, the convivial dinners and fund-raisers had fallen away, and she’d been left with only a couple of allies who cared about her rather than the man she’d married.

  There was Joyce, her hairdresser, who owned the Twisted Scissors and listened with gum-cracking sympathy to Sandra’s troubles, cheerfully dismissing the gossip about the accident. And then there was Barbara Dawson, who lived in nearby Wakefield.

  As soon as the storm abated, Sandra drove to the small inland town and headed into a newish builder-designed community. She parked in front of her friend’s house, wondering if she should have called first. Too late now. Shouldering a voluminous totebag, Sandra got out of the car. Despite the tract-home uniformity of the suburban neigh-borhood, the Dawson house stood out—a huge, half-finished monument to mediocrity. But there was nothing mediocre about the woman who lived here.

  Stepping over a curb fringed by beaten-down weeds, Sandra made her way up a concrete path littered with a Big Wheel, a laser scooter, two soccer balls and a scrawled warning in rain-smeared chalk: No Girls Alloud. A minivan dusted with a cat’s footprints sat in the side driveway.

  When Sandra rang the bell, a chorus of “I’ll get it” sounded, followed by the drum of running feet. The door opened wide, banging the much-abused wall of the foyer. Four identical pairs of brown eyes focused on her. Four grubby mouths, the degree of toothlessness varying with age, smiled in greeting.

  “Hello, Aaron, Bart, Caleb and David,” she said, naming them in order of height. “Can I come in, even though I’m a girl?”

  “Yup.” They shuffled aside to let her pass. She stepped into the colorful clutter of the Dawson house. Marred by the scuffs and smudges of the resident tribe, the house smelled of equal parts baking cookies and hamster cage. Aaron shouted, “Mo-om! Sandy’s here!”

  “Well, for heaven’s sake.” Propping a large, brown-eyed toddler with a runny nose on her hip, Barb walked into the foyer. “C’mon in, girlfriend.”

  “Can we go out now, Mom?” asked Bart. “It stopped raining, and we need to finish digging the foxhole.”

  His mother waved a weary hand in surrender. “I always dreamed of having trench wars in my backyard.”

  Emitting spontaneous machine-gun noises, the herd charged toward the rear of the house.

  Barb stepped aside to let them pass. “Don’t slam— “

  The door banged shut.

  “—the door.”

  Squawking in protest, baby Ethan squirmed free of his mother and waddled after his brothers, setting up a roar of protest until Barb hauled him in front of the TV, gave him a handful of dry Cheerios and turned on Rugrats.

  “Just call me Mother of the Year,” she said with a grin.

  “Hello, Mother of the Year,” Sandra said. “Is this a good time?”

  “Let’s see. Ralph’s off in the wilderness on paintball maneuvers with his buddies, Ethan has an ear infection, I just cheated on my diet with half a bag of Doritos and my sons are destroying the neighborhood with entrenching tools. So, yeah. It’s a perfect time.” As cheerful and openly friendly as her boys, she clasped Sandra in a brief hug. “I’m glad you stopped by. I phoned after hearing the ruling, but you didn’t answer. Let’s make coffee.”

  Sandra took a seat at the boardinghouse-sized kitchen table while Barb bustled around. Creator of the wildly popular Jessica and Stephanie series of paperbacks for girls, she was one of the best-selling authors in the country. In her jeans, Keds and a sweatshirt smeared with jelly, she was as unpretentious as the mug of Sanka she made with instant hot tap water. Never mind that the mug had been imprinted to commemorate her first New York Times best-seller; it had a chipped rim, and the gold leaf lettering was flaking off.

  The two had met at a meeting of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, which convened four times a year at Newport’s Redwood Library. On the surface, they had nothing in common—Sandra the quiet loner and Barb the soccer mom—but they shared one consuming passion that forged a sturdy bond: writing books for children. A few years ago, they’d begun reading each other’s first drafts and talking shop. Barb was a consummate professional, and a godsend in the confusing and unpredictable world of publishing. Barb’s life of yelling kids and madcap chaos contrasted wildly with Sandra’s too-quiet existence.

  She set her totebag on the table, a tacit indication that they would talk business. Although Barb had given Sandra sympathy and support from the very start of her troubles, Sandra didn’t discuss the Victor issue much, not with Barb, not with anyone. “I have your manuscript,” she said, taking it out. “Lady, you continue to amaze me. I wanted to stand up and cheer in the end, when Jessica and Stephanie rode through town on a pink parade float.”

  “Just like real life, eh?” Gesturing around the cluttered, male-dominated house, Barb added, “Can you blame me for writing idealized fantasies for girls? I finished reading your manuscript, too. Just a sec—I’ll get it.”

  She hurried from the room, and Sandra sat listening to Rugrats and gazing fondly at Ethan, who had strewn Cheerios across the coffee table, then fallen asleep on the couch, clutching a black plastic Uzi. Barb’s life with five rambunctious boys, her giant fireman of a husband and a hundred half-finished projects would make many women cringe, but when Sandra considered it, a powerful wave of yearning swept through her. What must it be like to have so many people depending on her, loving her, breaking her heart and making it whole again?

  She was glad she’d come to see Barb today. She needed to get away for a while, to think about the one aspect of her life that hadn’t deserted her—writing.

  The publishing world knew her as Sandy Babcock, author of critically acclaimed children’s novels. She felt safe in that skin. After marrying Victor, she’d kept her writing separate, walled off from her identity as his wife. She didn’t ever want someone to buy her books because she was married to a public figure. Where was the sense in that? Besides, the material she tended to write about probably wouldn’t endear her to his constituents. The fact that she published under her maiden name was no big secret, just something she never advertised.

  Up until the accident, she’d had so much with Victor. A husband, a writing career, and all the subtle, understated luxuries the Winslow fortune could provide. She’d been lulled into believing she was a Winslow, too. Victor and his parents had made her feel a part of the family. But when disaster struck, all the support and belonging disappeared like a lost computer file.

  “Got it,” Barb said, returning to the kitchen with Sandra’s manuscript, the pages now bleeding from copious—and probably richly warranted—red editing marks. “Congratulations on that write-up in the New York Times. I saved the clipping for you.” Perching a pair of purple reading glasses on her nose, she said, “Here’s the good part— ‘a darkly beautiful addition to the canon of children’s literature.’ “

  “That’s code for calling me the Sylvia Plath of children’s books. Sales on that novel were not exactly off the charts.”

  “Write something light,” Barb advised her. “Think comical. Think commercial. Put a dog in it. Or a pet dragon. That’s what kids want these days.”

  Sandra fiddled with her favorite fountain pen. Comical. Commercial. A dog. Maybe Charlotte, who was coping with her grandmother’s descent into senility, could have a zany adventure with a basset hound.

  “I just don’t have those kinds of stories in me,” she said. “My books always involve a struggle.”

  In each novel she wrote, she took her readers to dark places where
they were forced to confront fears, secrets, prejudices, injustice. Her stories depicted lonely kids with huge problems and narrow options. She loved to explore the shadowy roads those kids traveled—invariably alone— in order to find some sort of redemption. That was the beauty of fiction. When you closed the book, the trouble was gone.

  “I know, sweetie. Just a thought. To be honest, you had me in tears by the end, when Charlotte tucks her grand-mother in bed and kisses her good night. You must be really proud of this one.”

  Sandra nearly spit her Sanka. “I don’t think proud quite says it. To be honest, I feel lucky my novels get published at all. And lately I’ve been wondering if maybe I should write horror. That way, my reputation would be an asset.”

  “Not funny.”

  “But true. Did I tell you Victor’s family’s filing a wrongful death suit against me?”

  “No. Good God, what can they be thinking?”

  “That they want someone to blame, I guess.”

  “So you’re fighting it, right?”

  “Yes. And then I’m selling my house and moving away.”

  Barb’s misty blue-gray eyes widened. “No way. You love that place on Blue Moon Beach. It’s so perfect—the perfect writer’s retreat. I dream of having a place like that—something all to myself, where I can actually hear myself think.” She gazed around the cluttered kitchen in frustration. “I’m weeks behind on my deadline, and Ralph and the boys don’t give a hoot. I swear, sometimes I hate my life. I really do. I’d kill to have your life—oh, sorry.”

  Sandra forgave her with a wave of her hand. “Trust me, you don’t want my life. Sometimes I’d kill for a little of your noise and chaos.”

  Barb pushed aside her coffee mug and put her hand over Sandra’s. The connection felt warm and good. “I worry about you, Sandy. You’re too detached, alone.” Barb held her gaze. “I’m speaking as your friend here. I was worried even before all this mess with Victor. I used to watch you at party functions and social events—you always seemed alone in a crowd, like a pleasant, uninvolved stranger who was just passing through.”