Message in a Bottle - Nicholas Sparks [17]
The rest of the column was devoted to the letter. When Deanna joined Theresa for breakfast, she read the column as well before looking at anything else. “Marvelous,” she said when she finished. “It looks even better in print than I thought it would. You’re going to get a lot of mail from this column.”
“Do you think so?”
“Absolutely. I’m sure of it.”
“Even more than usual?”
“Tons more. I can feel it. In fact, I’m going to call John today. I’m going to have him place this on the wire a couple times this week. You may even get some Sunday runs with this one.”
“We’ll see,” Theresa said as she ate a bagel, not really sure whether to believe Deanna or not, but curious nonetheless.
CHAPTER 3
On Saturday, eight days after she’d arrived, Theresa returned to Boston.
She unlocked the door to her apartment and Harvey came running from the back bedroom. He rubbed against her leg, purring softly, and Theresa picked him up and brought him to the refrigerator. She took out a piece of cheese and gave it to Harvey while she stroked his head, grateful that her neighbor Ella had agreed to look after him while she was away. After he finished the cheese, he jumped from her arms and ambled toward the sliding glass doors that led to the back patio. The apartment was stuffy from being closed up, and she slid the doors open to air it out.
After unpacking her bags and picking up her keys and mail from Ella, she poured herself a glass of wine, went to the stereo, and popped in the John Coltrane CD she had bought. As the sound of jazz filtered through the room, she sorted through the mail. As usual, it was mainly bills, and she put them aside for another time.
There were eight messages on her recorder when she checked it. Two were from men she had dated in the past, asking her to call if she had a chance. She thought about it briefly, then decided against it. Neither of them was attractive to her, and she didn’t feel like going out just because she had a break in her schedule. She also had calls from her mother and sister, and she made a note to call them sometime this week. There were no calls from Kevin. By now he was rafting and camping with his father somewhere in Arizona.
Without Kevin, the house seemed strangely silent. It was tidy as well, though, and this somehow made it a little easier. It was nice to come home to a house and only have to clean up after herself once in a while.
She thought about the two weeks of vacation she still had left this year. She and Kevin would spend some time at the beach because she had promised him they would. But that left another week. She could use it around Christmas, but this year Kevin would be at his father’s, so there didn’t seem to be much point in that. She hated spending Christmas alone—it had always been her favorite holiday—but she didn’t have a choice, and she decided that dwelling on that fact was useless. Maybe she could go to Bermuda or Jamaica or somewhere else in the Caribbean—but then, she didn’t really want to go alone, and she didn’t know who else would go with her. Janet might be able to, but she doubted it. Her three kids kept her busy, and Edward most likely couldn’t get the time off work. Perhaps she could use the week to do the things around the house she had been meaning to do… but that seemed like a waste. Who wanted to spend their vacation painting and hanging wallpaper?
She finally gave up and decided that if nothing exciting came to mind, she would just save it for the following year. Maybe she and Kevin would go to Hawaii for a couple of weeks.
She got into bed and picked up one of the novels she had started at Cape Cod. She read quickly and without distraction and finished almost a hundred pages before she was tired. At midnight she turned off the light. That night, she dreamed she was walking along a deserted beach, though she didn’t know why.
The mail on her desk Monday morning was overwhelming. There