Firefly Beach by Luanne Rice

Author:Luanne Rice
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 0553573209
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2006-06-27T07:00:00+00:00

Driving home, Caroline played his words over in her mind: “She’s my friend.”

“It was good to hear him,” Clea said. “He’d make a good professor.”

“Yes,” Caroline said.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if he and his brother could teach together?”

“It would.”

“At Yale. So close by. We’d probably see him once in a while,” Clea said, her voice neutral, “now that you’re friends again….”

“Clea,” Caroline said. Her voice was stern, but her face was smiling.

Once they got off the highway, they drove through the village of Black Hall. It contained large white shipbuilders’ houses with black shutters and window boxes full of red geraniums, white petunias, and blue lobelia; white picket fences; a yellow Georgian mansion with white columns, once a boardinghouse for the American Impressionists, now a museum; a gas station; stately beech and maple trees; American flags everywhere; two white churches: one, a famously painted Congregational, the other Catholic. Heading south, out of town, they passed the marshes and inlets of the Connecticut River; a third white church, this one Episcopalian; and the fish store with its blue fish weathervane.

“Want to stop by Mom’s?” Caroline asked on the spur of the moment. “To see Skye?”

“Great idea,” Clea said.

By keeping the steeples on the left and the water on the right, they eventually got to the sea road. The road tunneled through a dark forest of hemlocks and old oaks, the branches meeting overhead. The ledge rose on the right, and the road burst free of any tree cover. A vista of open water spread before them, rough water dancing under sunlight, Joe’s ship riding on the waves.

A long drive wound upward through the forest. Wrought-iron lightposts, each topped with an evil-looking bat, lined the way. Her father had commissioned them from an artist he knew in Vermont. They had skeletal black wings, some spread and others drawn close about their spindly bodies; when lit, their eyes glowed red. Hugh had installed them to scare intruders away from Firefly Hill, so nothing bad would happen there again.

Caroline’s stomach flipped. What would they find when they got there? She told herself not to care, that Skye was a grown woman in charge of her own life. She tried to pretend they weren’t stopping just to check up on her.

When they got there, Skye was drunk.

Augusta was needlepointing, looking upset. Simon and Skye were sitting together on the sofa, flipping through a design magazine. Skye could hardly hold her head up.

“Hi,” Caroline said, her heart falling. Clea stood beside her, saying nothing.

“Skye spent the day in her studio,” Augusta said dubiously. Her eyes were red-rimmed and haunted. She looked at Skye, then away. Skye had a bottle of beer tucked behind the sofa leg. She reached down, looked Caroline straight in the eye, and took a slug.

“All she needed all along,” Simon said wearily.

“Needed you, baby,” Skye whispered. “Needed your big…”

How drunk was she? Caroline wondered, listening to Skye whisper little pornographic promises into Simon’s ear. It made her heart ache—literally—to watch her beautiful sister demean herself this way.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.