Girl on the Best Seller List by Vin Packer Read Free Book Online Page A

realized the child was not going to be a heart-breaker of any kind, neither wild nor modest.
    Gloria looked away from the window and back at Fern, who was standing in the doorway of the kitchen. Fern’s expression startled Gloria. Her mouth was tight, her nostrils slightly flared, and her eyes narrowed for those slow seconds before she spoke. The two women looked at one another — Gloria’s face puzzled, Fern’s cold and hard.
    Then Fern said, “It doesn’t — it
won’t
— do me any good to know
why
you wrote about Jay and me, Gloria. I think you’ve always been jealous of me. But you abused a confidence! You’ve made my life very difficult now.
Very
difficult! I’ve never been laughed at before. It’s a new experience for me!”
    Gloria started to protest. “But why should anyone laugh at
you?
You weren’t the fool! It was Jay Mannerheim who was — ”
    “A fool? Jay?” Fern Fulton’s mouth slid into a lopsided grin that became an unseemly sneer.
“You
may think so.”
    “Fern, listen — ”
    “You listen for once,” said Fern, “I’ve listened to you for years! I’ve listened to your whining and complaining about being poor, about being a misfit, about being clumsy. I’ve listened to everything you’ve ever said, and most of it —
all
of it — was about poor little Gloria Wealdon! I felt sorry for you! All right! I was nice to you! All right! Will you just ask yourself what I ever did to deserve your using my insides for plot material? That’s all! Just ask yourself that! And don’t explain it to me, or apologize to me. I don’t want to hear about it. I just want you to know I think it was rotten of you to write about Jay and me!”
    “I’m sorry,” Gloria managed to say to Fern’s back.
    • • •
    She sat there stunned. She had never heard Fern speak so vehemently. Her impulse was to get up and run back through the fields, to escape this scene which was so completely unpredicted and unprecedented. But as she started to move, she heard Fern’s voice call: “The coffee water is boiling.” The old, easy tone. “I’m cutting the cake. It’s really divine cake, honey! Come on out and jabber with me while I fix it.”
    Gloria Wealdon walked warily into the kitchen.
    Fern, all smiles, said, “Now tell me about my New York! How’d you like it, hmm? Bygones be bygones, ah?” She poked Gloria’s waist playfully with her long finger. “Who’d ever have thought our little Glo-worm would write herself a best seller!”

Four
    Fernanda’s husband was a dull robot, still in love with her, too insensitive to be anything but proud of and anxious over the lisping maverick they had spawned.
    — FROM
Population 12,360
    V IRGINIA FULTON yanked a clump of weeds from between the two shrubs and demanded to know why she shouldn’t say such a thing.
    “Because,” her father answered, “threats are vulgar when there is no way of carrying them out.”
    He squatted beside his daughter. He remembered two days back when Milo Wealdon had dropped by to help him prune the hydrangea. Milo hadn’t seemed any different at all, except during one brief interval when they were examining these very shrubs he and his daughter were working on this morning. Milo had looked at them thoughtfully for a few seconds, running his tongue along the lower lip inside his mouth, the way he did sometimes. Then he had remarked: “I’d get rid of these shrubs if I were you, Freddy.”
    “Are you serious? They were here when I bought this place.”
    “I don’t care. You have to get rid of them. They’re lycium halimifoliums. I suppose that doesn’t mean anything to you.”
    “What’s wrong with them?”
    “The popular name for them is Matrimony Vine. They have an unquenchable desire for conquest. They have these underground suckers that can just take over the whole place! You can’t eradicate them by cutting them down or grubbing them out! Matrimony Vine — that’s the right name for them, all