Surfside Sisters(50)
At the Atheneum garden, Keely perched on a bench, smiling at the library where her love of books had started.
Then she took out her cellphone. She was longing to talk with Isabelle. She hadn’t spoken to her since Tommy and Isabelle had called Keely to tell her they were engaged. Now they were married and their baby had just been born. It was time. Keely was brave enough now. Isabelle had Tommy and his baby, but Keely had a book. True, the basic elements of the plot of Rich Girl came from Keely’s envy of the beautiful rich girl who got the handsome man, but Keely had changed so many plot points and details that it wasn’t really about Isabelle and Tommy at all.
“Hello, stranger,” Keely said warmly.
“Keely. I heard you were in town. Congratulations on your book.” Isabelle’s voice wasn’t warm, but neither was it cold.
“Isabelle, let’s get together for coffee.”
“Sorry. I don’t have time.”
“I’m leaving Nantucket tomorrow.”
“I’ve got to go. Brittany’s crying.” Isabelle disconnected.
Keely sat in the small park for a long while, letting her emotions settle. The bad thing about having a best friend is that when you lose her, you have no one else close enough to turn to, no one who understands you like that best friend.
Yet Keely was certain that she couldn’t have a best friend if she didn’t admire and even envy that person, and in return, that person admired and envied her. She didn’t mean the acidic, poisoning envy that was so powerful among stepmothers in Disney movies. She meant the kind of envy that made her feel complimented that such a person would be her best friend, the kind of envy that spurred her on to do her best.
She’d never talked with anyone about this. She wished she could talk to Isabelle about it now, about envy. Keely could imagine the two of them with a bottle of wine, talking deep into the night.
But Isabelle didn’t have time for Keely. Maybe that was only a statement of fact. Isabelle had a daughter now. Or maybe Isabelle’s envy of Keely’s published book was still at the burning stage. Keely would need to wait until that envy had cooled. And if she could be honest enough to admit it, Keely was still hurt about Isabelle marrying Tommy, and the truth was Keely didn’t miss Tommy half as much as she missed Isabelle.
People changed. Keely knew that. Keely had to adapt. She was a published author now. Her dream had come true. She gathered that triumph around her like a warm, invisible magic cloak to protect her heart.
Eventually Keely rose and walked home, taking little pleasure from the beauty around her. She stayed one more day, long enough to sign books at the wonderful event at Mitchell’s Book Corner. Rich Girl was high on the bestseller lists. The publicists at Ransome & Hawkmore had arranged an extensive book tour for her. She flew to Boston, Chicago, Milwaukee, San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, Charleston, and Rehoboth Beach and Bethany Beach. She traveled for a month, living out of a suitcase, visiting bookstores and book clubs, signing autographs, and later eating room service salads on her bed as she remembered all the women she’d met. She missed their company.
She was glad to return to her tiny apartment in Manhattan in August. She stayed there during the rest of the hot humid summer with the air conditioner on full blast. She worked on her new novel while downing gallons of iced coffee, venturing out in the early evening when the heat was not quite so brutal to buy something for dinner.
Keely enjoyed the colorful autumn, walking through Central Park, kicking the flame-colored leaves. This was a pleasure she didn’t have on Nantucket, where the gales and the salt air prevented maples from growing tall. In New York, the autumn air snapped with crispness, turning her cheeks red, filling her with expectation.
During the gorgeous fall, Keely spent hours proofreading the manuscript of Poor Girl, even though the publisher’s proofreaders were carefully checking it. If one typographical error or misplaced question mark got through, Keely would get emails and comments on Facebook. She often met Fiona or one of that gang for drinks or a party or a concert or a reading at a bookstore. She still strolled the city streets like a kid in a candy shop.
But a strange kind of loneliness was seeping into her heart, like a tide finding a crack in a dam and slowly and inevitably breaking a barricade apart. She realized she’d been on a wild emotional high for a long time, exhilarated by her dream coming true. Now she was descending into reality. She couldn’t understand what was going on with her. She was living the dream…and she was happy, but also sad.
Work was the antidote to too much navel-gazing.
With her second novel ready for the printer, and buoyed up by the wonderful reaction of readers to Rich Girl, Keely spent the dark November days focused on writing her third book, Sun Music. It was different from her first two books, more melancholy in a way, but she managed to have two women reconcile after a long embittered period of enmity, and that gave the book a rising finale. It might help her readers, and Keely as well, believe that forgiveness could happen, that jealousy could dissolve, that old friendships, old loves, could be rekindled.
She knew she was writing this book because she missed the island. She missed Isabelle’s friendship. Her new friends were brilliant, screamingly funny, and amazingly ambitious. Outside of her apartment, Keely felt she lived her life at a different speed, but that might have been because so many sights, sounds, events, opportunities, and aromas seemed to zoom toward her with roller-coaster velocity. Would she change from island girl to city woman? Could she? Did she want to?