The last secret_ a novel - Mary McGarry Morris [80]
Nora moves the purse onto the floor next to her tapping foot. Can't stop fidgeting. Hard to concentrate. Or even sit still. She feels like she's going to climb out of her own prickly skin. Anxiety, the doctor said, but the medicine makes her even more tired. Weak-willed. Instead of relying on pills, she needs to deal with this herself Strength and determination, the way her mother held it all together. One step at a time. Doing her best, all she can do, her best, her very pathetic best. At home she goes through the motions. Easier this way. Three hang-ups the other night. Eddie is still in the area. Kay swears she saw him leaving Stop and Shop with a cart full of groceries. Why does that bother her, and who is this mysterious Eddie, Kay keeps asking. Things are as tense at work as at home. Oliver is making progress in physical therapy, but no one dares tell him about problems at the paper. Ken and Stephen had a terrible row during Friday's editorial meeting. Stephen had just found out that Ken covered up Bob Gendron's accident. Even though it happened weeks ago, he wants it reported. Old news or not, Stephen railed, it's fair journalism. The Chronicle has never lowered its standards, and it won't start now, no matter whose personal interests are at stake. Stephen has always been critical of Ken's lackadaisical approach to the family business, but now to have Ken in charge is more than he can stand, even if it means a crack in Oliver's carefully managed family façade. Details of the shouting match have filtered down through the staff Their quick glances gleam with schadenfreude, but she finds it too hard to care. Can't muster the energy. She doesn't look a bit healthy, Hilda told her today. Skin and bones, circles under her eyes. What is it? Kay kept asking through lunch. Work, was all she'd say. What about Ken, Kay asked uneasily, how were things on that front? Better, she lied. Kay wants the miserable details so she can gloat. She was always jealous of Robin and Nora's friendship. So, there's no one left for Nora to tell how lost she feels and, on top of everything now, how paralyzed by Eddie's nearness. She couldn't even tell her sister. She aches for Carol, not this distant, troubled woman, though, who keeps calling with new twisted memories, but the Carol of old who helped her grow up. Robin, she thinks with a stab of painful longing, lost to her, the one person she would have gone to. That's why, why it's so hard, more than the loss of friendship, it's a death almost, the loss of such intimacy. Because I loved her, too, Nora thinks, and the realization stuns her.
The room is hot, airless with the young woman's voice, its gloom of resignation, a numbing cant. She doesn't like me. She doesn't want to be here either but has to, has to do this, has to bare her soul for any bleeding heart with money to give, Nora thinks.
She squirms. In the best of times she's uneasy here. The wall color is jarring, an orangey pink that reminds her of raw salmon, and the furniture, a clash of donations. The one-armed navy blue couch is half of a sectional. There are two chairs, one, bright yellow with white stripes, the other, a mauve velour wingback The scented burning candle on the scratched glass coffee table barely masks the musty horsehair upholstery. Each of the three conference rooms is like this, the goal being the comfort and security of home, or at least the young priest's vision of home.
“Maybe if we were rich, none of this would've happened.”
Nora glances at the folder. Alice. She always forgets her name. No storybook Alice, hers the wan pallor of drawn curtains and bolted doors. Her faded blonde hair sprouts a good inch of new brown growth. With every sound her small dark eyes scan the perimeter, as if for shelter. Footsteps, murmurous voices, the clang of a water pipe, all threats. Posttraumatic stress syndrome, which for some abused women can last for years, according to Father Grewley's informational packet.
Nora is here as part of his mentoring program. Months ago when he first asked, she said