Cloud Nine - Luanne Rice

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a good friend. Every year he sponsored Grand Prix Day at the local high school, and he’d let all the kids sit in a race car and pretend they were driving.

      Most of all, she talked about what a great boss he was, how he made Alice such a valued member of his staff: his team. She was just as integral a part of Von Froelich Precision as Julian’s head mechanic, his pit crew chief. While Secret’s dad buried himself in the newspaper and TV shows, Alice was building a new and fabulously glamorous life in the fast lane. Secret and her dad were numb zombies, too busy missing Fred to notice that her mother was leaving their family behind. Secret’s parents got divorced a year earlier. Her mother married Julian a month after that.

      ‘You know, the Queen of England drives a car like this,’ Julian said. When Secret looked up, she saw his eyes watching her in the rearview mirror.

      ‘Lucky her,’ Secret said.

      ‘A Range Rover. I thought you’d be interested, considering you’re such an Anglophile.’

      ‘What I’m interested in is when we’ll get to the fair,’ Secret said. She wanted to see her father. He was giving sight-seeing rides until three, and she wanted to get there before then. She checked her watch. ‘It’s nearly fourteen hundred hours. It’s going to be too late to go. If I’d known we were going to go looking for an umbrella stand, I’d have gone with my friends …’

      ‘People who think small usually end up with small lives,’ Julian said.

      ‘I agree,’ Secret said.

      ‘You’re too good for the fair, Susan. A bunch of cheap garbage for sale and a lot of badly maintained rides. Mechanically, they’re dangerous. Wanting to go to the fair is beneath you. I want to show you beautiful things …’

      ‘I was thinking of something else,’ she said. ‘About thinking small.’

      ‘Honey,’ her mother began, wanting to cut her off.

      ‘You were? What?’ Julian asked, meeting her gaze in the rearview mirror. He had eager, puppy-dog green eyes that made her feel terrible – he wanted her to like him, and she never would. He had long dark blond hair that he tied back in a tucked-under ponytail. Secret knew he thought he looked sexy, as if he were trying to be one of the rock-movie types he hung out with, but she thought he looked pretentious. She wondered how he’d feel if he knew he had a small bald spot on the back of his head, about the size of a silver dollar.

      ‘What?’ Julian pressed, tossing his head, not taking his eyes off her. ‘What’s thinking small?’

      ‘People who buy things all the time,’ Secret said quietly.

      Julian drove in silence.

      ‘I feel sorry for them,’ Secret said.

      ‘Susan, you love shopping. Don’t –’

      ‘No, let her talk,’ Julian said, sounding hurt. ‘I want to hear.’

      ‘Nothing,’ Secret said, scrunching down. ‘Just that every time you have a free minute, you seem to be driving somewhere to buy something expensive. How many priceless antiques does one person need?’ She thought of the carriage house, filled to the brim with mahogany tables, rosewood chests, teak benches. ‘You could open your own shop.’

      ‘Yes, but I don’t need to,’ he said.

      ‘I know,’ Secret said. For some reason she thought of Sarah Talbot; she sold beautiful things, but she did it to make people happy. She wanted the college kids in town to feel safe and warm, wrapped in thick down quilts and soft wool blankets. They might be far away from their parents, but they could feel all cozy and tucked-in with things from her store. She wondered if Sarah had gone to the fair.

      ‘Honey, with all the beautiful things Julian gives you, you’re not sounding very grateful,’ Alice said.

      ‘Dad gives me everything I need.’

      Julian made a sound through his nose.

      ‘What?’ Secret asked, feeling something hard in her chest. Her breathing became faster, and her airway constricted.

      ‘You’re right, you’re absolutely right,’ Julian said.

      ‘Then why did you make that noise?’ Secret asked. She felt the wheezing start.

      ‘Oh, no reason. That’s correct, what you said about your father. He puts clothes on your back, and he sends us money for your food. But …’

      ‘What?’ Secret nearly screamed.

      ‘I guess it’s a matter of where you like your clothes to come from. If Cromwell Casuals is okay for you, then fine.’

      ‘It is!’

      ‘You’re a little young, Susan. But one day the names Armani and Prada might mean something to you. Dolce & Gabbana, you know? I want to treat you like a princess. I don’t have a daughter of my own. I haven’t noticed you putting those Gainsboroughs out in the hall. Being a pilot is very cool, but the salary doesn’t buy great paintings. You know?’

      ‘Julian, I think that’s enough,’ Alice said.

      ‘I just want her to understand,’ Julian said, reaching across the seat to stroke his wife’s head. ‘The way the world works.’

      ‘Don’t talk about her father,’ Alice said, lowering her voice. ‘Don’t say anything bad to her about Will.’

      Her mother was trying to defend her father, but it was too late. Secret was having an asthma attack. She fought to breathe. The air rasped through her mouth, into her lungs. Alone in the backseat, she gulped a sob. Her chest ached, and her throat stung, but that wasn’t the worst part. Secret’s heart was being squeezed. It was being crushed, as if two big hands had grabbed it and wanted to break it.

      Reaching into her pocket, she found her inhaler. Pumping it once, she placed it in her mouth and took a breath. The aerosol hissed. Her lungs filled like a balloon; she could almost hear them inflate. Her mother looked back, and with her eyes asked Secret if she was okay. Secret nodded, her eyes glittering with tears. They stared at each other, each wanting something they could never have.

      When her mother turned back to Julian, to try to cajole him out of the bad mood he had just fallen into, Secret was miles away. Her eyes closed, she was sailing. Out in Narragansett Bay, the white spire of Trinity Church sharp against the blue September sky, the sloop was flying across the water. Her father had the tiller, and Fred was trimming the jib, and Secret and the woman were just sitting back, their mouths open with joy, drinking the wind. The woman was so happy, her eyes shining with love. Secret knew she was supposed to be her mother, but in the fantasy she wasn’t. In the fantasy her mother was off spending money with Julian.

      With her eyes closed, as she sat in the backseat of Julian’s Range Rover, speeding away from the fair, Secret clenched her fists to keep the fantasy going. The day was fine, the bay was calm, her father and Fred were laughing. The woman sitting beside her had brought a thermos of hot cider. They were sailing to an island, a secret island none of them had ever been to before, and they were going to have a picnic. The woman was smiling into the sun, and she turned to Secret and touched her hand, and now Secret could see her face, could see her kind and accepting face, could see she was Sarah Talbot.

      Sarah sat in a paper smock waiting for Dr Goodacre to see her. Each monthly visit required long intervals of patience. He was a neurosurgeon, and most of his cases were, or had been, life-or-death. If you had a brain injury, you wanted Dr Goodacre. He saw the head-on crash victims, the motorcyclists who spun out without their helmets, the children who dived into shallow water and broke their necks, the riders who flew off horses and severed their spines, the people who woke up with brain tumors.

      His nurse, Vicky, walked in. She looked tense, driven. Opening a cabinet, she rummaged through

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