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A sniff. That was the only sound, but Nora knew. “Hes not in, Ms. Bridge. Shall I take a message?”
Ms. Bridge. Only days ago it had been Nora.
“Is he at home?”
"No, hes unreachable, but I can put you through to his service. Or he left Dr. Hombys number for emergency referrals
Nora struggled to remain steady. Call waiting beeped. “Thanks, Midge. Theres no need for that. ” She waited an endless second for Midge to respond, and when the silence began to ache, Nora hung up. Then she ripped the cord out of the wall again.
In some distant part of her mind, she knew that she was sinking into a pool of self-pity, and that she could drown in it, but she didnt know how to crawl out.
Eric.
He wou
ld be on the island by now. If she hurried, maybe she could still make the last ferry . . .
She grabbed her car keys off the kitchen counter and staggered into her bedroom. After cramming a blond wig over her cropped auburn hair, she put on a pair of Jackie O sunglasses. On the bedside table, she found her sleeping pills. Of course it would be bad--wrong--to take one now; even in her drunken state, she knew she couldnt mix booze and pills. But she wanted to.
God, she wanted to . . .
She tossed the brown plastic bottle in her purse.
The only thing she took from her condominium was an old photograph of their family, one taken at Disneyland when the girls were small. She shoved it in her handbag and left without bothering to check the lock.
She banged along the wall, using it as a guardrail as she tottered toward the elevator. Once inside, she clung to the slick wooden handrail, praying there wouldnt be a stop in the lobby. She got lucky; the mirrored elevator went all the way down to the parking garage, where it stopped with a clang.
The doors opened.
She peered out; the garage was empty. She careened unsteadily toward her car, collapsing against the jet-black side of her Mercedes. It took her several tries to get the key in the lock, but she finally managed.
She slid awkwardly into the soft leather seat. The engine started easily, a roar of sound in the darkness. The radio came on instantly. Bette Midler singing about the wind beneath her wings.
Nora caught sight of herself in the rearview mirror. Her face was pale, her cheeks tear-streaked. Shed chewed at her lower lip until it was misshapen.
“What are you doing?” she asked the woman in the sunglasses. She heard the slurring, drunken sound of her voice, and it made her cry. Hot tears blurred her vision.
“Please, God,” she whispered, “let Eric still be there. ”
She slammed the car into reverse and backed out of the spot. Then she headed forward and hit the gas. Tires squealed as she rounded the corner and hurtled up the ramp. She didnt even glance left for traffic as she sped out onto Second Avenue.
Dean stood on the slatted wooden dock. The seaplane taxied across the choppy blue waves and lifted skyward, its engine chattering as it banked left and headed back to Seattle.
Hed forgotten how beautiful this place was, how peaceful.
The tide was out now, and this stretch of beach, as familiar to him once as his own hand, smelled of sand that had baked in the hot sun, of kelp that was slowly curling into leathery strips. He knew that if he jumped down onto that sand, it would swallow his expensive loafers and reclaim him, turn him into a child again.
It was the smell that pulled him back in time, that and the slapping sound of the waves against barnacled pilings. A dozen memories came at him, gift-wrapped in the scent of his parents beach at low tide.
Here, he and Eric had built their forts and buried treasures made of foil-wrapped poker chips; theyd gone from rock to rock, squatting down, scraping their knees on driftwood in search of the tiny black crabs that lived beneath the slick gray stones.
They had been the best of friends in those days, inseparable brothers who seemed so often to think with a single mind.
Of the two of them, Eric had been the strong one, the golden boy who did everything well and fought for his hearts desires. At seven, Eric had demanded to be taken to Granddads island house on Lopez, the one theyd seen pictures of. And it was Eric whod first convinced Mother to let them stay.
Dean could still remember the arguments. They were hushed, of course, as all Sloan disagreements were required to be, full of sibilant sounds and pregnant pauses. He remembered sitting at the top of the stairs, his scrawny body pressed so tightly against the railing that hed worn the marks later on his flesh, listening to his older brother plead for the chance to go to the island school.
Absurd, Mother had declared at first, but Eric had worked on her relentlessly, wearing her down. As a child, Eric had been every bit as formidable as their mother, and in the end, hed won. At the time, it had seemed a monumental victory; with age came wisdom, however. The truth was, Mother was so busy running Harcourt and Sons that she didnt care where her children were. Oh, occasionally she tried to do the “right” thing, as she called it-make them transfer to Choate-but in the end, she simply let them be.
