Richard stepped forward, pulling a baggie from his trouser pocket. The skunky scent wafted out as he opened it. “Just a little send-off, for old times’ sake,” he said, and shook the marijuana into the hole.
“Damn, that’s a waste of good weed.” Sal tsked. “A sister could have used a pinch of that.”
“Sal, come on.” Fin gestured to Joy, but the child was staring into the hole, oblivious.
Cecibel put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “You okay?”
Joy shrugged. “It’s just weird.”
“How so?”
“Her not being here. She’s always been here.”
And now she’s not. That’s just how it goes. “I know. It’s going to take getting used to.”
“Yeah.” Joy looped her arms around Cecibel’s waist, twisted fingers into the end of her long braid like she used to do when she was a baby seeking comfort.
“Ready?” Fin held the shovel up. Cecibel nodded. Sal. Richard. Joy’s arms tightened.
One shovelful. Two. More. The pile beside the tree shrank as the hole was filled. Cecibel’s heart constricted. Alfonse, then Switch, and Judi. Now Olivia. Old people who’d lived their lives. The natural progression of things tempered sorrow. There was no tragedy in an old person’s death. Cecibel held her daughter just a little closer.
“That’s that, then.” Richard clapped, rubbed his hands together. “Olivia provided for a special supper. She made me promise the chef would use salt in her honor.”
“Thank the little baby Jesus!” Sal waved his hands in the air. “I didn’t know we even had any around here.”
“Low-sodium salt.”
“You’re no fun at all, Dr. Dick.”
“I can still fire you, Salvatore.”
“But you won’t.” Sal blew him a kiss. “Who else could organize your chaos?”
Heading back to the mansion, the men bickered like an old married couple. An unexpected pairing. Professional. Personal. Cecibel wasn’t sure which had come first, but they worked in a way that made both these men she loved happy.
“I have to put this away.” Fin held up the shovel. “I’ll clean up and meet you in the dining room.”
“Wait for me, Daddy,” Joy said. Cecibel let go of her child, ignored the little pang of envy. Her preference had been clear from those earliest days when surgery or writing kept Cecibel sequestered from them both. Joy loved her, certainly. She simply loved Fin a little bit more.
Hand in hand, father and daughter left her alone with the newly planted tree, the scent of turned earth, the silence, and the sunset. Cecibel sat on the low stone wall, let the whole of it all settle around her. That time in her life, that greatest of times, was over now. Truly and completely. They were gone, but not forgotten. Never forgotten. How could they be when there were college courses dedicated to their writings? When their books never went out of print? When she had the last work of those former kings and queens even greater in death than they’d been in life to either keep for herself, or give to the world?
Plucking a fistful of wildflowers from the wall, Cecibel tried and failed to still her pounding heart. She placed the small and simple bouquet on the headstone closest to the newly planted tree, rested her hand to the summer-warmed stone.
“What do you think, Alfonse?” She closed her eyes, wished and wished and wished. But no answer came. No ghostly voice. No inkling. No shiver. Such things happened in the novels she wrote, not in real life. “It’s up to me, then, huh? Okay.”
Cecibel pulled her cell phone from her pocket. Her finger poised over the screen. She curled it back into a fist, fingernails digging into her palms. She was not a literary great; she was not certain those existed anymore. Not like Hemingway and Woolf. Not like Carducci and Peppernell. But she’d been their muse. And, in the end, they were hers.
She tapped the screen. The ringing on the other end—with all the ring tones available now, why was it still that old-fashioned sound?—reverberated in her belly. A click. A voice. “Hello, Diana Stewart speaking.”
“Diana, it’s me, Cecibel. Cecibel Bringer.”
“Why didn’t you call my cell? How are you? Do you finally have something new for me? I’ve been waiting for—”
“Diana, listen, before I lose my nerve.”
“Okay. I’m listening.”
Cecibel licked her lips. She walked in the direction of the mansion, phone to her ear and heart in her throat. “I have this manuscript,” she said, “and I guarantee it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before.”
Acknowledgments
I want to start by thanking the city of Paterson, New Jersey. City of my birth. Always in my heart. Cecilia and Aldo’s Meyer Brothers, Falls View, Derrom Avenue, and the falls are all real places. It’s the Paterson of my parents. If anything doesn’t ring true, blame them for remembering too nostalgically.
If Paterson is the city of my heart, Bar Harbor, Maine, is the town of my dreams. There is no Bar Harbor Home for the Elderly, but how grand if there were. You never know; it could happen. If it does, that’s where you’ll find me someday.
My agent, Janna Bonikowski, makes everything I write better. Whether we’re on the phone, shooting emails back and forth, or sending one another strange texts at odd times, she’s part of my every day, and I thank every lucky star in the sky she’s mine.
Thanks go out to The Knight Agency, for always going above and beyond, and for answering all my curious oyster questions, no matter how bizarre.
Rachel Kahan, fierce lady, without her belief in me and this story, there would be no acknowledgments page on which to thank her. I am forever grateful.
A huge thanks to my daughter, Jamie. She knows why.
And, though she has no idea who I am, and likely never will, I feel the need to thank Dame Helen Mirren, whose brilliant catalog of work gave Olivia life, breath, and heart.
Last thanks goes to my always, my best friend, my love, my Frankie D.
About the Author
Terri-Lynne DeFino was born and raised in New Jersey, but escaped to the wilds of Connecticut, where she still lives with her husband and her cats. She spends most days in her loft, in her woodland cabin along the river, writing about people she’s never met. Other days, she can be found slaying monsters with her grandchildren. If you knock on her door, she’ll most likely be wearing a tiara. She’ll also invite you in and feed you, because you can take the Italian girl out of Jersey, but you can’t take the Jersey Italian out of the girl.
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Reading Group Guide
What do you think life in the Pen was like before Alfonse’s arrival? What changed when Alfonse arrived?
Alfonse tells Cecibel that “love is not passion. . . . Love is sweet and good and righteous. Passion is wild and messy and dangerous.” What is the driving force behind Alfonse’s relationships with Olivia, Judith, Cornelius, and Cecibel? Is it love or passion?
“If you go by what the critics and sales figures say, my greatest work was And the Ladies Sang. A good book. One I’m proud of, naturally. Nineteen eighty-four was a powerful time for women, and the book spoke to several generations fighting the good fight. But if you’re asking which book rests most kindly in my heart, it’s Green Apples for Stewart.” On the strength of this, what do you think Olivia’s greatest works were about?
Throughout the novel Cecibel uses her hair to conceal her scarring and to maintain a sense of “vanity she no longer had a right to.” Does Cecibel hide her scars purely for her own vanity, or does she have other reasons for hiding her scars?
Cecibel serves as the muse behind Aldo and Cecilia’s story. In what ways does Cecibel inspire the characters in Alfonse, Olivia, and Switch’s story? What are the parallels between Cecibel and Cecilia?
Cecibel thinks of herself as a monster. Is Cecibel a monster? What makes her view herself this way?
Finlay was sent to prison for murdering his local teacher after enduring years
of abuse. Do you think Finlay deserved to go to prison for his actions? How do the other characters in the novel view Finlay in light of his crime?
Discuss whether Cecibel is an employee or a resident of the Pen. Are the other staff members simply employees, or are they residents?
“[Cornelius] and I dreamed up this place when we were young men conquering the literary world. We took it from the greats. Faulkner, Joyce, Cather, Parker. We robbed them blind and flew their tattered flags in their faces.” Do you think the Bar Harbor Home for the Elderly lived up to Cornelius and Alfonse’s expectations?
What do you think happens to the characters in the years following the novel’s end?
Copyright
the bar harbor retirement home for famous writers (and their muses). Copyright © 2018 by Terri-Lynne DeFino. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
First William Morrow paperback published
first edition
Cover photographs © PER SWANTESSON/Stocksy (main image); © kaisorn/Shutterstock (texture)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Digital Edition June 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-274269-8
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-274267-4
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The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers_And Their Muses Page 33