Hearts on a String by Kris Radish

Author:Kris Radish [Radish, Kris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-553-90778-0
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2010-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

ten

TUESDAY EVENING

There is nothing like the smell of a cooking hunk of meat seasoned with some kind of magic sauce to slow the pulses of four women who have just found out that they are sharing a suite with a murderer.

Margo is the first to spring from her seat after Patti’s surprising announcement. She knows that food can settle people down, bring them together, or give them something to do so they don’t faint. No one else is moving.

Holly longed to run to the bathroom and climb into the tub, like she did when everyone was leaving to try on bathing suits. But she stayed where she was.

Patti really doesn’t know what to say after she’s shared her own deepest secret. It has been so long since she has even mentioned the word murder that she has no idea what to say next. For years and years Patti has been singing, “Please release me, let me go …” whenever thoughts of what happened all those years ago parade through her mind. She’s struggling to keep herself from singing out loud as if she’s just been introduced onstage and it’s time for her first number.

Why now, for the love of God? Why tell a bunch of disgruntled, stranded, mismatched women, when so many crises have already been launched that it will be a miracle if anyone can even breathe after this latest announcement? Why dig up the whole damn mess? Why share such an intimate story when intimacy beyond shouting and arguing has been close to non-existent with these women, who met on a blind date in a public restroom? What in the hell has possessed her, Patti Nuttycombe, to pick this particular moment to expel a long-held truth that she has worked feverishly to suppress for so many years she may not even be able to count them up?

After Patti told them, she had a sudden moment of physical relief. Her heartbeat slowed and there was a slight tug at the back of her head as if something had fallen out and she could now move in a direction that just moments before had been blocked. She had an almost unstoppable urge to drop her glass and let her hands flop to her sides.

And she hated herself.

She hated herself for revealing in those few words who she had been and what she had done, because now she had to tell the entire story. She had to explain everything and waltz them back to her beginnings and show them a world she was certain none of them had ever seen except in magazines or made-for-TV movies.

Patti Nuttycombe had to be honest and open and for the first time in many years there was not a song she could hide behind.

For a brief moment she thought of simply lying. She could make up a story or tell them she just said that to throw them off, and to keep Nan calm until the big government cheese showed up. This idea passed quickly, because she knew they wouldn’t buy it.

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