Heartbroken by Lisa Unger

Author:Lisa Unger [Unger, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-46522-1
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2012-06-25T16:00:00+00:00

“My mom said there are ghosts on this island,” said Chelsea.

Lulu was sitting on a bar stool near the counter. She was completely useless in the kitchen but had done a fairly decent job of setting the table. Now, in a caricature of herself, she was simultaneously filing her nails and relentlessly checking her cell phone for service.

“My mother told me there was a tooth fairy,” said Lulu. She didn’t bother to look up from her tasks. “Do we still believe the things they say? No.”

“There’s a lady who watches the mainland from Lookout Rock, the highest point on the island,” said Chelsea, undaunted. “A man who walks the perimeter. And someone else I can’t remember. It’s in the book she wrote.”

Chelsea checked the ham. It looked to be nearly done. She wondered if she should take it out. Mom and Birdie were ten minutes past when they said they’d be back. Which, in a way, was a little paralyzing. She’d never known either her mother or her grandmother to be late. And with no cell service, she couldn’t call. She decided to take the ham out, reached for the oven mitts. She hefted the sizzling roasting pan from the oven and set it with a heavy clang on the stovetop.

Lulu looked up from her nails with mild interest. “Oh, right,” she said. “The scathing tell-all.”

“No,” said Chelsea. “It’s fiction. Sort of.”

She wasn’t supposed to have read her mother’s book. Nobody had said that she couldn’t, precisely. But she had sneaked into her mother’s office and read it as it was being written. It was one thing for her father’s life to be a mystery, filled with dark places into which she wasn’t allowed to pry, passages that needed to be blacked out. But her mother had always been wide open. Chelsea wasn’t able to handle the idea that there might be things about Kate that she couldn’t know. She understood that some parts of the book were fiction and some were true. She wasn’t sure which was which. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to ask.

“Oh,” said Lulu, going back to her nails. She didn’t like to read or care about anything that had to do with books unless it was Twilight or Harry Potter—and really, she only liked the movies. Even though she had pretended not to be interested: “Have you ever actually seen anything? I mean, any ghosts?”

“No.” Chelsea wished she could have said yes.

She knew to cover with tinfoil dishes just removed from the oven, so she did that, feeling somewhat proud of herself for taking the initiative. Wasn’t that what her mother was always saying? I shouldn’t have to ask you to clear the table, take out the garbage, empty the dishwasher—whatever it was she was mad about. At this age, you should be able to observe what needs to be done and do it. Take the initiative.

After she had done that, Chelsea looked out the window and saw the red and green navigation lights and the white bimini light.

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