A Month at the Shore (44 page)

It was Maggie who was the glue that held Laura and her mother-in-law together. Finally: something they had in common. The initial awkwardness in their relationship had begun disappearing immediately after Laura had announced that she was pregnant with Maggie. The women had grown steadily closer ever since, so much so that Laura felt comfortable just then in tucking an escaped strand of graying hair back into the artfully arranged bun on the back of her mother-in-law's head. And when Camille gave Laura a quick, grateful glance, Laura returned it with a warm one of her own.

The women had never discussed either Laura's purloined letter or Camille's forged response to it. And that was a tiny bit of an issue, still, with Laura. But she had hopes—she had no doubt, really—that someday, when they were sitting on a beach together watching Maggie and her sibling at play, they would talk about the letters, and laugh, and say how long ago it all seemed.

She watched as her husband dug deep in his pocket and came up with a scoop of rice for Maggie. Pouring the grains into their daughter's outstretched hand, he said, "Okay, now practice by throwing some at Mommy. Let's see how you do it."

Maggie giggled and heave-hoed the rice across the front of Laura's dress. She enjoyed the experience so much that she demanded another handful, this time to aim at Corinne.

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Coming Next:
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Wendy Hodene thinks she has it all:  a charming husband, a great kid, a house that she loves (even if it doesn't have enough closet space), and family nearby.  And then her husband manages to win a multi-million-dollar lottery, kicking off a tidal wave that sweeps all of her assumptions into the sea like castles in the sand.   The man she thinks she knows becomes a virtual stranger, and the stranger she hardly knows at all is the reason why.

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In Gilded-Age Newport, an upstairs-downstairs romance between a well-born son and a humble maid is cut short of marriage.  A hundred years later, the descendants of that ill-fated union seem destined to repeat history.  Or not.

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Beloved

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A
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ead sample chapters of all of her books
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Antoinette Stockenberg

"A riveting story of selfishness, betrayal, and love that readers will find hard to put down."

--
Library Journal

Wendy Hodene thinks she has it all:  a charming husband, a great kid, a house that she loves (even if it doesn't have enough closet space), and family nearby.  And then her husband manages to win a multi-million-dollar lottery, kicking off a tidal wave that sweeps all of her assumptions into the sea like castles in the sand.   The man she thinks she knows becomes a virtual stranger, and the stranger she hardly knows at all is the reason why.

Prologue

He ripped the phone cord out of the wall, then grabbed her and swung her around, knocking over a floor lamp and sending shards of glass skittering over the worn oak floor.

"We're rich!" he whooped. "Rich! We're rich! God, we're rich!"

He set her down so abruptly that he had to hang on to her to keep her from stumbling backward. Holding her tightly, he let loose a howl of triumph. His look was wild, exultant, new.

Wendy was aghast. She was pinned to his chest, breathless. She said, "Jim, what's
wrong
with you?"

"First thing, phone off the hook, that's what they always tell you. Wendy, we are
rich,
rich, rich. Don't you get it? Rich! No more jobs
... no more bills
... Tyler will get his pick of schools and you can have the house of—"

"Jim, stop; you're scaring me!" She was afraid of the thought that was forming in her head, afraid that it might not be true. Trapped in his grip, caught in a downward drift of cheap white wine and garlic chicken, she said, "For God's sake, just
tell
me."

"Powerball. No kidding, the lottery." His voice had dropped to a whisper, a tiptoe along the edge of a canyon. She could see that suddenly he was afraid, too.

"The office pool. Seven of us—no, eight, eight. What am I thinking? Jack makes eight. He'll shit feathers when he learns. He's in Munich all week."

She was blinking rapidly, as if she had a speck in her eye. She was trying to comprehend.
Jack makes eight.
Eight of what? Eight of Jacks? Eight of what?

"How much? Tell me," she wailed, in agony now.

Her husband's lips were dry. He wet them with his tongue quickly, as if he were trying to get away with something. "Eighty—" He cleared his throat in one harsh try. "Eighty-seven."

"Thousand?" No; that wasn't enough. Not for this. "Million?" No. That was too much. She was bewildered by the math, staggered by the possibilities of it.
"Tell
me, damn it," she said, because she was getting light-headed and was about to fall into the chasm.

He exploded in a singl
e loud laugh. "Wendy, sweet du
fus, concentrate! Eighty-seven million dollars. Eighty-seven million dollars divided by eight and then by income tax, but—
eighty-seven million dollars."

Her face felt scorched by the numbers spewing over her like volcanic ash; they blasted through her mind, obliterating thought. She began to shake. She whispered numbly, "I can't believe it. Not us. That doesn't happen." Inexplicably, she burst into sobs.

Jim howled again and hugged her and lifted her off her feet once more, rocking her left and right and then swinging her around in a circle as if she were a rag doll. Wendy laughed and cried and said, "Jim, put me down, put me down."

He was six feet two; she was half a foot shorter than he was. When they were old, he would be able to see the
gray
roots of her dark hair in that awful week before a touch-up trip to the hairdresser. But for now they were young, with over half their lifetimes yet to come. Wendy had always assumed that they would spend them in love.

How amazing to her that they would be spending them rich.

Chapter 1

The place smelled of cat pee, but Zina didn't mind. She had come to associate the piercing scent with abandoned creatures who needed her love.