Riggs Park Part 23

All the same, it was Marilyn who had to extricate herself from my embrace. I couldn't let go of her, didn't see how I ever would.

Now, a month later, I felt rather than heard Jon and Steve approach me on the beach, and drop down onto the sand on either side of me. I didn't look at either of them, only felt the pressure of Jon's hand on top of mine, pleasant and somehow binding, and the teasing nudge of Steve's shoulder, pushing me closer to Jon.

"Gentlemen, I appreciate this," I said, "but all this attention is almost too much." I got up, brushed sand from my clothes, and walked down to the tide line. Marilyn stood with her toes digging into the wet sand, watching a noisy gaggle of gulls make a commotion and then fly off. What luck, not to have to wait until April to see her! She greeted me with a slow smile. "Who would have imagined this? Short sleeves in the middle of February, and not even in Florida."

"Seventy-three degrees. And just when you and Steve could visit." Steve had been working in New York lately so he could spend a day or two each week at Marilyn's, but this was the first time she'd been strong enough for him to bring to North Carolina.

"Look at us," she said, opening her arms out to the nearly empty stretch of sand. "Just two old ladies on the beach."

"Old! We're not even sixty. You think we're old?"

"It's all relative. Depends on how old you expect to get."

"Don't talk like that! I've told you before!" I batted my arms at her, not seriously. She was a feather, too weak to run away.

She linked her arm in mine, leaned on me a bit as we headed back toward Steve and Jon. "Guess what? Andrew and Dee Dee are pregnant."

"And still unmarried until April? I'm scandalized!" I laughed, then echoed what I knew she was thinking. "See? Maybe, after all, you'll get your little girl."

She paused just a beat too long. "Let's hope so."

I pretended not to hear her hesitation. "I'll have to give the necklace back, won't I? You'll want it for your granddaughter."

"I might."

"Indian giver," I said.

Back above the tide line, I flopped down between Jon and Steve while Marilyn lowered herself slowly, gingerly, as if all her bones were sore.

"Tired?" Steve asked.

"A little," Marilyn said. "Not much."

Jon took my hand and clutched tight, as if to squeeze out my sadness. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking," I said slowly, "that as far as I'm concerned, we can sit here the rest of the afternoon. Sit here till darkness falls."

"And freeze our b.u.t.ts," Steve said.

"Sit here till the tide comes in. Till waves of age wash over us. Waves of infirmity. Till it carries us away."

"I think you are carried away," Marilyn told me.

"Not that we're complaining," Steve said.

We did sit for a long time, looking at the wide swath of beach, balmy between cold snaps, the sh.o.r.e of the new century and our old age, the sh.o.r.e of our last pilgrimage. Fine with me. As long as they were along for the journey. As far as I was concerned, we were still at the center of the complicated tapestry that had been our lives: love and treachery, the wail of babies, the rustle of falling leaves; friends, torrential snowstorms, humid heat-a cloth of different colors, woven, textured, rich. The calendar said winter, but maybe not. As far as I was concerned, we were still at the very core of autumn, the blazing sunset before the dark, old enough to look back, young enough to look forward. And oh! it was dazzling.

Continue reading for an excerpt from.

Ellyn Bache's upcoming release,

DAUGHTERS OF THE SEA,.

available this October from.

Harlequin NEXT.

CHAPTER 1.

By the time the moon rose high enough to brighten the darkness, Veronica Legacy had been driving nearly eleven hours and was so tense that the tips of her fingers had begun to go numb from clutching the wheel.

"I'll drive if you're tired, Mama," her daughter Simpson said for the twentieth time.

For the twentieth time Veronica shook her head. She'd stopped only twice since they'd left the South Carolina coast this morning and didn't mean to slow down now. The only way to get where you were going, she reckoned, was to plow on.

Eleven hours before, Veronica had left her husband, Guy, for the third and final time. Her first major departure, more than eighteen years ago, was one she rarely allowed herself to think about, and her second, a year later, had lasted only a week. This would be different. Permanent. The third time was the charm, she'd always believed.

"We're leaving, honey," she had said to Simpson just the day before. "We're going somewhere we can settle for good."

"What about Dad?"

"You can wait here for him if you want, but he'll just be off again somewhere and wanting to drag you with him. The sensible thing is to come with me."

"Where are you going?"

"To stay with Ernie Truheart," Veronica said.

"The one who sends the Christmas cards?"

"Yes."

"But you hardly know her. A Christmas card is not a relationship. I don't know her at all."

"Yes, you do. You were there with me once, but you were too little to remember."

"What's going on, Mama? This isn't like you." Simpson extended a hand as if to check Veronica's forehead for fever.

"I'm not sick, honey." Veronica caught her daughter's fingers in her own and moved them away from her head. "I'm doing this to keep myself well. We can't live like nomads all our lives. I've spent all the time I'm going to working in every cheap T-shirt shop in every beach town on this coast."

"Kmart and Wal-Mart, too, Mama. You always liked Wal-Mart."

"It's not just the jobs. It's the constant moves. It's the-"

"You did it this long. You never minded before this past year."

"Oh, I always minded."

"And you knew after Dad stayed here in Beaufort the whole school year, he'd be ready for someplace different."

This was just like Simpson, sounding so logical. But Veronica only shrugged because she knew it was impossible to explain to a nineteen-year-old what it was like to reach the very middle of life-thirty-eight!-with a person who insisted on wandering the countryside, never living a neat plait of life but always a wild and unruly tangle, a thousand strands blown in every direction by the slightest wind.

"All I can say, honey, is that my mind's made up and it would break my heart if you didn't come with me." Veronica could see that Simpson thought she didn't have a choice.

So at dawn this morning they'd finally locked the trunk of the Mercedes on what suddenly looked like pathetically few possessions to show for twenty-one years of marriage. Pathetically few. She hadn't even tried to settle up with the landlord after she closed her checking account and counted the dismal balance. When you waited until age thirty-eight to get on with your life, you couldn't let a detail like rent reduce you to poverty.

READERS GUIDE.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS.

1. Like many people, Barbara and Marilyn have a nostalgic view of the "old neighborhood" where they grew up. How does this change when they revisit Riggs Park many years later? Is it altered more by what they see there, or by what they learn about events that happened there when they were young?

2. Riggs Park is a novel about women's friendships, and particularly about the lifelong bond between Marilyn and Barbara, as well as their early friendship with Penny. Was each one always the kind of friend she wanted to be to the others? What are some of the sacrifices they made for each other? Were there times when they could have done better?

3. Essie Berman makes many decisions that affect the lives of the children in Riggs Park well into adulthood. Are they wise ones? Should she have done some things differently?

4. In what ways is the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam-fix the world-important to Barbara's not-very-religious parents and later to Barbara and Marilyn themselves? Are they serious about "fixing the world," or just conveniently adapting the idea to fit their lives?

5. As a result of their experiences and life lessons, some people "mellow" as they grow older, while others grow bitter. How would you characterize the changes in Marilyn and Barbara and Jon-first, over the years of their lives, and second, as a result of what happens during the months of the story?

For more discussion questions,

visit www.readersring.com.

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