People magazine had showed up on the stands today with a two-page story about Kevin and his mystery marriage. She’d fled here to escape a nearly overwhelming urge to pick up the phone and call Charlotte Long, the woman who was her only inside source of information about Kevin. It was May, and the marriage and separation had taken place three months ago, but she didn’t know anything more now than she had then. If only she could call Charlotte Long without worrying that she’d tell Kevin.

As she headed down the staircase and into the courtyard, she tried to figure out how to keep herself busy for the rest of the day. No one was banging on her door begging her to star in a new film. She didn’t want to start another quilting project because it would give her too much time to think, and she’d had more than enough of that lately. The breeze loosened a lock of hair and whipped it against her cheek. Maybe she should stop worrying about the consequences and just give in to the urge to call Charlotte Long. But how much pain did she want to put herself through when she couldn’t see any possibility of a happy ending?

If only she could see him.

Chapter 7

7

Should I overdose on pills? Daphne asked herself. Or jump from the top of a very tall tree? Oh, where was that handy carbon monoxide leak when a girl needed it?

—Daphne’s Nervous Breakdown

(notes for a never-to-be-published manuscript)

I’m fine,” Molly told her sister every time they talked.

“Why don’t you come out to the house this weekend? I promise, you won’t find a single copy of People around. The irises are beautiful, and I know how much you love May.”

“This weekend’s not good. Maybe next.”

“That’s what you said the last time we talked.”

“Soon, I promise. It’s just that I’ve got so many things going right now.”

It was true. Molly had painted her closets, pasted photos in albums, cleaned out files, and groomed her sleepy poodle. She did everything but work on the revisions she’d finally been forced to agree to do because she needed the rest of her advance money.

Helen wanted some dialogue changed in Daphne Takes a Tumble as well as three new drawings. Two would show Daphne and Melissa standing farther apart, and in the third, Benny and his friends were to be eating cheese sandwiches instead of hot dogs. Everyone had scoured Daphne with the most lascivious of adult minds. Helen had also asked Molly to make changes in the text of two older Daphne books that were going back to press. But Molly had done none of it, not out of principle, although she wished that were the case, but because she couldn’t concentrate.