“No. We don’t.”
“Yes. For one thing, you need a haircut.” He smoothed her hair back from her forehead.
“Let’s go get her,” he said.
“Are you crazy? After what she did to you? After the speech?”
He rocked her silently. Whatever was thickening in her chest began to prickle and fizzle like a great bubble of ginger ale.
“Go get her?” she said. “You mean to Texas—go to Texas?”
“Yep. You and me and even Trailways if he’ll behave himself. Drive to Birmingham and then New Orleans and then on over to Texas.”
Peyton saw it in her mind, the empty, heat-shimmering roads, the drone of the engine, the murmur of the radio as stations faded in and out. Small diners and gas stations and neon cactuses and Burma Shave signs. Hamburgers and milkshakes in the car at McDonald’s and Burger King.
“When would we go?”
“Now. This afternoon.”
“She wouldn’t come,” Peyton whispered, the bubble stretching and shining, filling her chest. “Not after what I did.…”
“Bet she would. She needs us, too. She really does. I should have seen that sooner.”
“What if she doesn’t think so?”
He grinned suddenly.
“Then we’ll pester her until she changes her mind,” he said. “We’ll plonk our guitars under her window and yowl like a couple of tomcats until she gives up. She’ll come.”
Peyton hiccuped and began to laugh. The ginger-ale bubble exploded. She ran to the window and jerked the clattering blinds up. Red-gold light smote her. Joy took her then, and hurled her, still laughing, out into the brightening day.
About the Author
ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS’s bestselling novels include Nora, Nora; Low Country; Up Island; Fault Lines; Downtown; Hill Towns; Colony; Outer Banks; King’s Oak; Peachtree Road; Homeplace; Fox’s Earth; The House Next Door; and Heartbreak Hotel. She is also the author of a work of nonfiction, John Chancellor Makes Me Cry. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina.
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Praise for Nora, Nora
“Anne Rivers Siddons has always written as though someone close to god was whispering to her. I want to say Nora, Nora is her best book, but I don’t want to hurt the feelings of Peachtree Road, Outer Banks, Hill Towns or Colony or half a dozen others. She ranks among the best of us and delivers the goods—the whole fabulous package—with every book she writes.”
Pat Conroy
“Siddons’s prose is so fluid, graceful, and lovely, that after diving in, the reader is carried along effortlessly and with great pleasure. [Nora, Nora] is a completely satisfying and nourishing read, containing both style and substance.”
Library Journal
“Bestselling author Siddons’s story takes wing…she has again delivered.”
People
“A wise and humane book that seems destined to broaden this charismatic author’s large and loyal readership.”
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Siddons…has another hit on her hands, and it’s easy to understand why…Just when you think you know what’s going to happen next, there’s a twist. Siddons can recreate a time and a place like nobody’s business, especially if it’s the South decades ago. She gets the nuances, the fashions, the places, the racial overtones, exactly right.”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
“As appropriate for a beach bag as sunscreen and bottled water, Nora, Nora, will make you want to go back and read other Siddons classics…Critics have crowned her the queen of women’s tasteful summer fiction, but men curious to understand the inner workings of the female heart and mind could benefit from reading her work.”
USA Today
“Siddons pulls off another smoothly written novel with ingratiating ease…In addition to her impeccable re-creation of Southern speech and atmosphere, Siddons captures the angst of adolescence with practiced skill, and she handles the rising drama of her plot so smoothly that the book has all the marks of bestsellerdom.”
Publishers Weekly
“Emotionally truthful…sweetly evocative.”
Chicago Tribune
Books by Anne Rivers Siddons
Homeplace
Peachtree Road
King's Oak
Outer Banks
Colony
Hill Towns
Downtown
Fault Lines
Up Island
Low Country
"Nora, Nora"
Islands
Sweetwater Creek
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
NORA, NORA. COPYRIGHT © 2000 BY ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, 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 hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books™.
ePub edition October 2005 ISBN 9780061750892
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