Surfside Sisters(39)

I’ve tried to call you but you never pick up so I’m sending this text.

I wish you were here, Izzy, we could pop a bottle of champagne and drink it at Surfside and dance in the waves. No one but you really understands. I have an agent! Miracles do happen! My book probably won’t get published—but I have an agent so maybe it will! Could you come home for a few days? Or maybe I should drive out to the Berkshires and take you out to dinner to celebrate. This is the best day of my life!





XOXOXO K


Sorry I couldn’t answer sooner. It was Gordon’s mother’s birthday. (She makes Queen Elizabeth look like Lady Gaga.) How exciting that you have an agent. Congratulations. Did you tell Tommy? What does he think? I’ll call soon.





XO I



Isabelle, no one understands the importance of getting an agent but you. I told Tommy. He’s more excited about the size of the striped bass he caught last week.

I took Mom out to dinner to celebrate, but she doesn’t really get it, either. I’m just cleaning houses and babysitting and keeping my fingers crossed.





XO K





“Come on, Keely. Let’s get married. It’s time. It’s past time.”

They were seated on the beach in the late afternoon. The dune they leaned against was warm. The ocean was friendly, blue and white and lacework froth.

“Tommy,” Keely said, trying to keep the strain from her voice. “We’ve talked about this so often…It’s foolish to marry when we don’t have the money to rent a house, let alone to buy one.”

“Keely—”

“We’re twenty-five years old. And we’re still living with our parents.”

“Maybe your mother would like us to move in with her. Keep her from being lonely. I could fix things around the house—”

“Sweetheart, you already help her when she needs something fixed. You’re wonderful with her. You’re wonderful, period. But you want to buy a deep-sea fishing boat, and I want to write a novel that gets published, and we’ve both worked a million hours a week for the past two years and we’ve saved and saved our money, and we don’t have anything close to a down payment.”

Keely pulled her knees up and rested her forehead on them, hugging her legs tightly, trying to keep from crying. She was so tired. She had tried so hard. Tommy was a wonderful man, sexier now than when he was in high school, and he was kind and hardworking and funny. He was the whole package.

    But he wanted to start a family. Now. He wanted some little Tommy Fitzgeralds running around, playing Nerf ball with him.

He really wanted, although he hadn’t yet come out to say it in words, for Keely to stop “messing around” with her “stories” and get a good full-time job, maybe something with the town, so they could have health benefits.

They’d argued about this for months. She could not get him to understand that writing was for her what deep-sea fishing was for him. She’d forced him to read a short story that was published in a literary magazine because she’d been sure that would help him understand her, her talents, her goals. Ha. He didn’t even get the point of the story. Really, he didn’t even get the point of fiction, unless it was science fiction, which Tommy said was actually kind of true because it was science fiction.

“Life isn’t all about money, Keely. Remember what you and Isabelle used to call yourselves? Surfside Sisters? Because you would both leap into life instead of dawdling at the edge, waiting until it was safe.”

Sometimes Tommy surprised her. “You remembered that? Oh, Tommy, I do love you.” Leaning forward, she kissed him thoroughly.



* * *



—

How much should one person ask from life? Was she greedy? Selfish? Or simply self-deluded?

These things she knew: She was fortunate to live on this beautiful speck of land surrounded by the ocean. Fortunate to have a mother alive and well and a truly pleasant companion. She had a sexy, lusty lover who was good to her and did manly jobs around the house, but she didn’t have to do his laundry or clean the sink after he shaved. She had several short stories published in literary reviews—smallish reviews, but respectable. She made a nice fat salary with Clean Sweep, and she helped her mother pay the mortgage every month. She had a best friend who was in her second year at the Berkshire Writers’ Colony, who was halfway through writing a novel.

    And Keely had an agent! She had finished a novel, and sent it to an agent, and Sally Hazlitt liked it!

But would it sell? Would it get published? The chances were one in a million.

Keely wished she could send the novel to Isabelle for her opinion, and yet she didn’t want to, and she didn’t actually understand why.



* * *



—

Tonight was Tommy’s poker night with the guys. Keely would cook dinner for herself and her mother, do laundry, read one of the novels she’d taken from the library. A normal evening. She was fortunate. Anxious but fortunate.

She stepped out of the shower just as her cell rang. Wrapping a towel around her, she padded into her bedroom and answered.

“Keely? It’s Sally Hazlitt. I have some very good news for you.”