Read Luanne Rice for Free Online Page B

find us?”
    “Let’s not
worry about Ted,” Marisa said. “We’ve got plenty to do, just taking care of ourselves. Now—peanut butter and jelly, or oatmeal cookies?”
    “Cookies and milk. I don’t like it here that much, Mom. Except for Rose. She makes being in this cold, rocky place
almost okay. Rose is the best, best friend I’ve ever had. Mom, is she really
going to be okay?”
    Marisa
walked over to the refrigerator and opened the door, so Jessica couldn’t see
her face, or see her hands shaking. Mystification, it was called … not being
straight with your own child, keeping them in the fog.
    “Mom, is
she?”
    Marisa thought
of what Lily had said—that Rose had been born with heart defects. That meant
multiple. VSD, so that meant ventricular. Aortal as well? She still had her textbooks from nursing school—where were they? If she could
put her hands on them, maybe she could learn more about what was happening with
Rose. Pediatric cardiac care wasn’t her specialty, but at least she could help
Jessica understand.
    “I want her
to be okay,” Jessica said, looking up as Marisa set down the milk and cookies.
    “I know you
do.”
    “Maybe we
could use our secret savings, to pay for an operation and save her life. We
have the money, right? Or one of our friends could do it for free?”
    Marisa
picked up the remote, turned on the TV. They had a satellite—up here, so far
from civilization, it was the only game in town. Hundreds of channels, with endless choices. A person could
grow old just clicking the remote. She found an Adam Sandler movie she thought
Jessica would like and stopped there.
    “Mom?”
    “Jess, why are you saying that? Rose’s mother
is taking care of her.”
    “Okay. Fine. But you didn’t see her down by the dock. She
practically turned blue, and she couldn’t breathe, and I didn’t know what to
do, and that horrible scary man with the fake hand had to help her!”
    “But you
did know what to do—you went to get her mother. You stayed calm.”
    “I did,”
Jessica agreed, munching her cookie in thoughtful agreement. Then she stopped
and looked up. “Like I did when Ted hurt my puppy.”
    On the
screen, Adam Sandler was being hilarious. All over the world, people were
watching this movie and laughing. But not this mother and
daughter. Marisa was too busy staring at Jessica, noticing the way she
said “hurt”—when Ted had killed Tally, not just hurt her.
    “I really
don’t mind that we’re hiding. As long as he never finds us, and you never take him back. You know that, right?” Jessica asked.
    “I know
that,” Marisa said.
    Jessica nodded, accepting, good daughter that she was. She stared
at the TV screen; Marisa felt a slide of guilt for parking her daughter in
front of Adam Sandler, wanting to distract her from all the questions. She went
to the window and looked out, and as she did she remembered where her textbooks
were: boxed up and stashed in the storage unit, along with almost everything
else.
    Through the
trees, down the hill, she saw the wide blue sparkling bay embraced by craggy
cliffs and granite headlands. The big white hotel with its long red roof lorded
it over the small town—Lily’s shop, the whale-watch boats. Marisa knew that
although she’d let Jessica go on the birthday cruise, she herself would have to
cancel. A woman’s club might be a little too dangerous. She blinked into the
bright early summer sun, and her eyes stung. In Boston, she knew this would be
considered a house with a “million-dollar view.” To Marisa, it just felt like
somewhere far, far from home.
    Because she
didn’t like feeling that way, and because she knew a way to feel closer to
home, she went online. E-mails, her favorite message boards,
and a secret chat room—better than cocktails in the afternoon for making
everything nice and numb. Intimacy and friendship without the dangers of
being found out. Instead though, bypassing her favorites, she went straight to
the