Jacqueline Susann's Shadow of the Dolls by Rae Lawrence Read Free Book Online Page B

from the hospital. Anne fastened the pearls behind her neck.
    Much of the rest of it would be sold. She went to the window and looked out across Central Park. The sky was beginning to lighten to a misty gray.
    She tried to imagine everything ahead of them. Would they start over? They could find a way to build it all back, however long ittook. Five years, ten years, fifteen years. She would be nearly fifty years old.
    And what would happen to Jenn? The whispers would follow her everywhere. They lived on Fifth Avenue until.… Her father used to, but then.… Anne had seen what happened to the daughters of scandal. She pictured Jenn at eighteen, going off to college, and someone lifting an eyebrow from across a campus lawn. Yes, those Burkes. You don’t remember? Let me tell you .
    Or would they start over and do something different? They could move to a little cottage in the English countryside. Lyon would write books and Anne would garden and Jenn would have a great big sheepdog to play with.
    Eventually he would leave her. She had felt it for years. At the dinner table, at the beach. At the doctor’s office, as she jogged around the reservoir. Every time she went alone to a parent-teacher conference at Jenn’s school, every time she comforted another friend going through a tough divorce. She was no different from all the other women she knew. Eventually it would be her turn.
    She was just this, only this: the first Mrs. Lyon Burke. Stella would take her out (for lunch, not dinner), and Anne would tell amusing stories about going on bad first dates. She would spend a weekend in Woodstock, she would start taking yoga classes. It wasn’t a question of if . It was just a matter of when . Now or later? Thirty-four or fifty?
    She closed the curtains and sat on the bed. I’ll be Anne Welles again , she thought. And then: I’m still Anne Welles. I can still be Anne Welles. It isn’t too late . She might not have the energy to do it for herself. But she thought of her daughter and felt herself grow strong and awake.
    Behind the boxes under the bed were the two big suitcases they used for trips to Europe. She called the garage to have them bring the car around. It took her less than twenty minutes to pack. The doorman was too polite to ask questions.
    Buckled into the backseat with her favorite pillow and stuffed elephant, Jenn slept all the way to Southampton. Anne sang along with the radio, an oldies station that was playing songs from her first years in New York.
    I will survive! The gas station attendant didn’t even blink at the sight of a woman in pajamas and a full-length mink coat. The roads were empty, and they made every light. The sun was rising over the ocean.
    Anne tucked Jenn into bed and turned on the heat. No telephone messages, no surprise. What was there to say? She hadn’t left a note. It was possible Lyon hadn’t even come home yet.
    She got under the covers, pulling the mink across her shoulders for extra warmth, and at long last fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

1988.
    A nne sat in the waiting room of the TBK Agency, examining her manicure. Not bad, considering that she had done it herself. She hadn’t had a professional manicure since she’d left Lyon three months ago—it was a luxury no longer within her budget. Her cuticles needed trimming, and there were a few little bumps on her right pinkie, but it wasn’t the kind of thing a man would notice.
    She had been waiting for fifteen minutes. She knew what that meant, to be the kind of client who was kept waiting in an outer office. But what choice did she have? She hadn’t worked in years. She was starting all over again, back at the bottom. After one expensive lunch at the Russian Tea Room back in January, the head of TBK had farmed her out to a younger agent who had been in the business for less than five years.
    “Trip Gregory can take better care of you than I can,” she was told. “He doesn’t travel so much, so he’ll have lots of time