AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Paparazzi,” Marigold and Ruby say at the same time.
Athena, who is walking around with a teapot and refilling people's cups, stops to look at the women gathered in a circle. "They're relentless," she adds, turning back to Heather's cup and pouring more tea into it.
Marigold takes the lead here. “When I was married to Cobb, they wereeverywhere,” she says, referring to her much photographed and written about marriage to (and ensuing divorce from) legendary rock singer Cobb Hartley. “Sometimes you would think you were completely alone, just walking on the beach or eating a sandwich on a park bench, then BAM, the next day there’s an unflattering picture of you doing one of those things with a crazy headline like ‘Is Cobb Leaving His Wife Because She Overeats?’ It’s outrageous.”
Heather sips her tea and looks at both Ruby and Marigold guiltily. “I’m not going to lie to you all,” she says. “I love a good celebrity tabloid. I can’t help it. I’m sorry.”
“That’s human nature,” Ruby says, letting her off the hook gently. “No need to apologize. And I’m used to it, I just let my guard down this time.”
“Who took the photo?” Molly asks. “Someone who was being paid?”
“I’m actually not sure. I called the B&B and the owner very nicely told me that she couldn’t say who her guests were while I was there—which I understand, and respect—but she did a little cough and said she thought that ‘maybe’ someone who was staying on the island with a relative innocently snapped a photo for posterity and then realized they could sell it and make a few bucks.”
Heather shakes her head. “I never really thought about the fact that the stars I love to see eating street tacos or sitting at a red light in myUsmagazine are just going about their business when someone swoops in and invades their privacy.” She cringes at the thought.
“I’m a firm believer that if you’re in the public eye, one of the trade-offs is that you don’t always get to flip the switch and say when you are and aren’t in the public eye.” Ruby presses her lips together. “With some exceptions, of course,” she says, holding up a hand. “When my husband first died and I was just trying to get out of bed everyday and be there for my girls, I wasn’t having it with the paparazzi. Not at all. Seeing them camped out on the sidewalk outside our home or following me everywhere with their giant cameras really pissed me off.”
“That’s just unfair,” Molly says, looking disgusted.
"It was," Harlow says from where she's standing by a bookshelf. Instead of sitting down with the group, this time she's busied herself with examining different books, and Ruby can't help but wonder if talking about the photo of her mother on Christmas Key laughing with another man hasn't upset her in some way. Harlow re-shelves the book in her hand and finally chooses a seat, sitting down heavily and crossing her legs. "And this is unfair, too. My mom deserves to go out and live her life, and she can do that with whoever she wants, whenever she wants. People don't get to scrutinize you forever, do they, Mom?"
Athena has stopped pouring tea and is staring at Ruby, waiting for an answer to her sister's question.
Ruby is caught off guard by the sting of potential tears behind her eyes; she had no idea that her daughters felt this strongly about her right to privacy, or that they'd moved past their father's death enough to support her moving on with her own life.
“I do think we need to have some basic understandings,” Ruby agrees, blinking her tears back. “If someone shows up here and wants to take pictures of me carrying a cup of coffee from The Scuttlebutt into my bookstore in the morning, well, then so be it. This is a public island and Seadog Lane is a public street. I have no say in that. But if one of my daughters were to come to Shipwreck Key to get over a heartbreak and someone snapped a photo of me consoling my crying child on the beach, I would consider that an invasion of privacy,” she says, looking between her two daughters meaningfully.
“But the paparazzi don’t feel that way,” Marigold says knowingly. “They don’t have normal human boundaries.”
“Okay,” Molly says, standing up to pick out a shortbread cookie from the plate that Heather has brought. She takes a bite but starts talking anyway. “So what now? The world knows you were on an island with Dexter North, and apparently everyone knows that he’s the king of the tell-all biography, so…is that really newsworthy?”
“He asked me about Jack’s death,” Ruby says, rushing ahead and ripping off the band-aid. Molly sits down heavily, the cookie in her hand forgotten as she swallows her first bite. “He wants to write about when I found out about Jack’s affair, and he wants to talk about the way my husband died, but he wants to do the whole book from my point of view, which was not what I expected at all.”
“Whoa,” Heather says, her voice quiet and breathy. “He is not messing around.”
Ruby shrugs. “I expected to be more put off by it, but there’s a part of me that wants to talk.” She looks down at her fingers, which are knotted together in her lap. “I want to heal. I don’t forgive Jack entirely yet, but he’s gone. Spending the rest of my life feeling angry is not the way I want to live.”
“Amen,” Marigold says. She reaches for a frosted cookie. Ruby already knows from watching her snack at the last book club meeting that she’ll nibble on this one cookie endlessly, making it last for the next hour. It’s easy for Ruby to imagine Marigold as a youthful model in her twenties, staying slim by counting calories and sipping black coffee, but now she's known more for the intense workout regimen that she posts about on Instagram, and on her firm belief in moderation in everything. Wine, cookies, pizza, and french fries are all allowed—in small amounts. Marigold is always aware of everything going on around her, of what people are doing, saying and thinking, and of how what she does is perceived by others, which Ruby greatly admires, but also finds exhausting. She’s done that herself for enough years, and what Ruby wants more than anything at this point is tonotscrutinize or be scrutinized.
"So let's talk about the book," Ruby says, picking up her copy of the Monica Lewinsky biography.
"Eh," Molly says, waving a hand and going back to her cookie. "The book was good—we all know that. I got up to bake my morning scones and muffins on two hours of sleep one time because I couldn't put the damn book down and get my shut-eye.”
"It was pretty compelling," Athena agrees. She's sitting forward on her chair, legs crossed and fingers laced together around her knee; she looks so grown up, and Ruby desperately wants to hear what her daughter thinks. "I love the way he didn't villainize her or make her overly sympathetic. Clearly she knew she was The Other Woman in this scenario, but he cut her a lot of slack for her youthful naiveté, which I think made the book even more readable."
"I was once the other woman," Heather says, holding her teacup in one hand as she looks at the window just beyond the circle of women.
"Only once?" Marigold jokes.
"Yep, only once," Heather admits. She brings her gaze back to the other faces around her. "The wife was on life support—“
“Lord have mercy," Molly says. She takes a sip of her tea, but she is clearly listening.
"Yeah, it sounds like it would be a pretty yucky situation, right?" Heather nods at Molly. She could have easily been offended by Molly's tone, but she's obviously not. “This was my fourth husband. His wife had been suffering from dementia for more than ten years, and at the end of her life she was completely unable to communicate or care for herself. I think it was understandable that though he loved her and hired wonderful caregivers for her, he'd emotionally moved on. That's why I allowed it to happen."
"I think that's reasonable," Ruby agrees, offering her support. It's not a path she's ever walked in life, but she can at least imagine a scenario where the romantic part of a marriage is completely over due to illness, even if the love and loyalty lives on.
“Why the attraction to older men?” Molly asks plainly.
