“This is my fault,” she sighed. “For giving you everything you ever wanted . . . For not teaching you the value of an honest day’s work. Sweating over something. Staying with it until you’ve got it just right. This is my fault.”
Koa spoke beside me. “Meg.”
I shook my head.
“You want me to stay?”
I stepped back, waved him away. He retreated into the shadows.
“Were you not aware”—she was back to screaming now—“that I know every executive editor who works at Pelham Sound? Every assistant editor? Every marketing manager? Are you not aware that I’ve been invited to their homes, Megan? Attended their weddings and their children’s bar mitzvahs? Those people are not only my colleagues, they are my friends.”
“Pretty lame set of friends, who’d agree to publish a tell-all book about you.”
I could feel Koa’s gaze burning into me. I angled myself away from him.
“Can we talk about this later?” I said quietly into the phone.
“I want you to stop what you’re doing, Megan. I want you to stop writing this book this instant, and come home to New York.”
“I’m not coming to New York.”
“Where shall we meet, then? Tell me. Paris? San Francisco?”
“No, Frances, you’re not getting it.”
“Then explain it to me, Megan. Enlighten me.”
“I’m saying”—my voice had risen a couple of notches—“I’m writing this book, no matter what you say. No matter what you do. I’m writing it. Period. End of discussion.”
But of course, with Frances, there was no period. Just one never-ending, gargantuan run-on sentence.
“The fortieth anniversary is in less than six months,” she said. “You’ll ruin everything. But that’s just what you intended, isn’t it?” she asked.
I let out a long, tremulous breath. My calm was slipping, I could tell. Soon I’d be screaming back at her. Fighting tears. Overwhelmed with the old feelings of loneliness and desperation.
“Frances,” I said in a measured tone. “I’m not changing my mind. I’m writing the book, they’re publishing it. That’s all.” My eyes flicked up. Koa had hung the lantern beside his cabin door and was standing there, shoulders squared, hands clasped in front like a nightclub bouncer.
“I’m sure they’ve hired a ghostwriter for you,” Frances said. “That’s not even a question. But did you sign a contract? Did you have a lawyer review it?”
“I’m not going to discuss this with you.”
“Megan, you have no idea how to read a contract. No idea how they can slip in clauses and exhibits that will trap you. These people are sharks, darling, you can’t even imagine. You could have been swindled by this Asa person or God-knows-who at Pelham Sound—”
“It doesn’t concern you.”
“You’re my daughter. Everything you do concerns me.”
My breath hitched. Why did she have to say things like this? Clichés she tossed out that felt like a knife ripping through me.
“Come to California, then,” she continued. “Come to Carmel. Beno?t has a ranch. A very secluded, beautiful, peaceful ranch. We can talk there. Talk about why you feel like you have to do this. I want you to just take a moment here, Megan. Think about how this book is going to change everything.”
“I wish to God it would.”
“What does that mean? I don’t know what that means, Meg.”
“Why don’t you? You’re the one who ran off and got married without even telling your only daughter. You got married, Frances, and Asa, your assistant—”
“That anemic little turd—”
“He was the one who broke the news to me, okay, Frances? Your traitorous, turdy assistant. I got your birthday invitation. And I showed up for the party, and Asa told me you and Beno?t had gotten married.”
“I didn’t know you were coming. You never called.”
“We don’t call each other, Frances.” My voice broke, and I stopped. Took a breath. “We communicate through other people. You never called me about Edgar.”
Here was the moment, I was offering it up to her—the opportunity to say, I’m sorry, Megan. I’ll do better.
I love you.
But nothing came. No soft words. No apologies. Just a crystalline silence. To my profound dismay, I felt my eyes fill. I ground my fist into my forehead.
“I hear that you’re angry, Megan. I understand.”
I glanced at Koa. He was still standing by the cabin door, arms folded, eyes on the ground. Probably wondering how a grown woman could have such a difficult time talking to her own mother. I wished he would leave. The humiliation of this was unbearable.
“I’m not angry, Frances. Not anymore,” I said.
I saw Koa pull his phone out of his pocket and frown at it.
The electrical zings were zooming up and down my arms and legs, and my head was pounding. I closed my eyes, felt the woods and the night around me, the warmth of the island. I breathed in and out. In and out. The breeze lifted strands of my hair, cooling where sweat filmed my skin.
“What, Megan?” Frances demanded.
I could hear her short, sharp breaths on the line, waiting for me. For the next blow. The killing one. But something was wrong. I couldn’t seem to speak. All I could think was her name. Frances. Frances . . .
“Mom,” I gasped.
Just as Koa put his phone to his ear and said in a low voice, “I can’t talk right now.”
“What, Megan? What is it?” Frances said.
And then I felt the ground rush up to meet me. Tasted sand and straw and grass and watched as everything, like in the final scene of a movie, faded to black.
KITTEN
—FROM CHAPTER 9
“Did your daddy tell you that?” Fay asked. She was hoping her voice didn’t betray her fear.
“No, Cappie’s mama did. She told Cappie and me about the ghosts and the Jesuits and all the ceremonies. She made me a member of the tribe.”
“That was awfully nice of her. But you know you’re not really Guale.”
“I am. Mrs. Strongbow did the ceremony one day when I was playing with Cappie. It was real. I’m really Guale. And I’m the mico now, too.”
Mico.
That word again, that Fay had dreamed about. She swallowed. Carefully, so she wouldn’t choke.
“What’s the mico?” she asked quietly.
“The chief. The head of the tribe. Cappie’s mama said that we were the last of the Guale, and now that she and Cappie are gone, it’s just me.” She drew herself up. “I’m the only one left on the island. So I’m the mico.”
Ashley, Frances. Kitten. New York: Drake, Richards and Weems, 1976. Print.
Chapter Twenty
The next morning at breakfast, Doro announced she was escorting me over to the mainland to see her doctor. After my fainting episode, Koa had told her about my neuropathy, and they both thought I could use a medical opinion.
Captain Mike met Doro and me and Laila, who had some shopping to do, at the dock. After a breezy forty-five-minute trip over the calm sound, we were in St. Marys. The medical complex was a cluster of one-story pink stucco buildings an easy half-mile walk from the marina.