Sunburn: A Novel(77)
And nothing was. Except Polly.
She should have gone to Reno, after all. Might have cost her Adam, but it would have saved his life. She shouldn’t have wound Gregg up like a top, knowing he would come spinning right at her. She never planned to shoot him. Or did she? She wanted only to provoke him into crossing some line, proving that he was the unfit parent. It’s hard to remember all her beautiful plans, which ones worked, which ones didn’t. She saved herself. She saved her daughters. Everyone else was—what was that word that Adam liked to use? Lagniappe.
She is paying for her tomatoes when she hears a band at the far end of the parking lot start a familiar song. The man next to her—cute, probably ten years younger than she is, his graying hair gathered in a short, thick ponytail—begins to croon, almost under his breath. When he sees her head jerk up in recognition, he talksings the words to her: “I’d like to get to know you.”
She sees the dim interior of the High-Ho, the jukebox’s tubes glowing pink and green. The sun setting and rising over the cornfields, bigger than any other sun she has ever known. An iron bed, a quilt folded over the footboard. A silk dressing gown. A metal-top table. Room 3 at the Valley View. A slip of green paper, the scrawled order for poached eggs and rye toast carrying an erotic charge unlike any she had ever known, or would ever know again. The summer of 1995 feels like a century ago. Last August, she took Joy and Jani to Rehoboth, ignoring the Belleville bypass and choosing the old main road, the one that goes past the High-Ho. It’s a Mexican restaurant now, advertising Margarita Mondays and Two-fer Taco Tuesdays. The Valley View? Razed, leaving only a view of the nonvalley. Mr. C died in 2002, and it’s doubtful that Max and Ernest are alive, much less showing up for Margarita Mondays in a bar that’s been repainted with red, white, and green stripes, the better to resemble the Mexican flag.
Everybody’s dead. Except Polly.
Ponytail smiles at her, pulls out his cell phone and offers its blank text screen to Polly. Give him your digits, Jani would say if she were here. What could it hurt?
Oh, honey, if only you knew.
“I really would like to get to know you,” he says with the confidence born of never being turned down.
Polly shakes her head, glad for the dark glasses that hide her eyes.
“Trust me, you wouldn’t.”
Polly drives home, to the perfect house with the two perfect daughters—yes, both perfect; anyone who doesn’t see their individual perfection is dead to her—who will never know, must never know, what their mother did to provide them with their happy lives. The summer sky is a cloudless blue that seems hundreds of miles away, a towering ceiling, out of reach, higher than any bird or plane could fly.
You could even say it arches.
Author’s Note
Where to start? I owe a daisy chain of thanks. To the usual suspects: Carrie Feron, Vicky Bijur, Sharyn Rosenblum, their staffs, and everyone at William Morrow. To Angus Cargill, Sophie Portas, and everyone at Faber and Faber. To Lizzie Skurnick, who
didn’t mock my commas. To the FL’s, who cheerfully mock everything about me. To the social media tribe, with a particular
shout-out to Ilana Bersagel for giving me a word that led to a chapter. To Michael Ruhlman, who agreed to vet that chapter, along with all my cooking/restaurant details, for nothing more than the promise of a dinner out. To Ann Hood, who introduced me to Michael, and if I’m going to thank Ann, I might as well thank the entire faculty at Eckerd College, with a particular shout-out to my favorite Frisbee/biking pal, Henry Hays-Wehle. And to Dennis Lehane, Sterling Watson, and Les Standiford,
for organizing that merry band of writers who have become a family of sorts for one week every January. To Molli Simonsen, Sara Kiehne, and Reena Rexrode. To Lauren Milne Henderson, who helped me crack this plot on a glorious July day in her garden.
To Marjorie Tucker, for a key detail about insurance. To Todd Bauer, for helping me combat the sedentary writing life. To
Anne Tyler and James M. Cain, for inspiring me. To David, Ethan, and Georgia Rae Simon, who tolerate those “lost” weeks when our household goes to hell as I ponder deep thoughts about insurance, grilled cheese sandwiches, and arson. To all the places where I worked on this book—St. Petersburg, Florida; New Orleans, Louisiana; New York, New York; Fenwick Island, Delaware; Havana, Cuba; Barcelona, Spain; London, England; Spannocchia, Italy; and, of course, Baltimore, Maryland. It is a deeply wonderful life.
About the Author
Since LAURA LIPPMAN’s debut, she has won multiple awards and critical acclaim for provocative, timely crime novels set in her beloved hometown of Baltimore. Laura has been nominated for more than fifty awards for crime fiction and won almost twenty, including the Edgar.
Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Now a perennial New York Times bestselling author, she lives in Baltimore and New Orleans with her family.
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