The House On Willow Street by Cathy Kelly Read Free Book Online

body screamed that there was something very, very worrying about this message.
    If Suki knew of anybody working on a book about the Richardsons, the wealthy political family into which Suki had once married, then she’d have told Tess. The Richardsons were powerful people and if someone wanted to talk toanyone connected with the family, a note on their fabulous creamy stock paper would have arrived, possibly even a phone call from Antoinette herself—not that Tess had had any contact with the Richardsons since Suki’s divorce. But she was quite sure that, if someone was digging into the past, they’d have been in touch, loftily asking her not to cooperate. That was the way they did things, with a decree along the lines of a royal one.
    But there had been nothing. No correspondence from the Richardsons, no mention of this from Suki herself.
    No, there was something strange going on.

2

    S uki Richardson stood in the wings at Kirkenfeld Academy and wondered why she’d agreed to trek all this way into the middle of nowhere in a howling gale.
    As in so many of the colleges where she was asked to speak, the radiators were ancient and stone cold. Suki knew from years of delivering speeches in drafty halls that an extra layer made all the difference, so tonight, under her purple suit, she wore a black thermal vest.
    “Where does your idea for a lecture begin?” an earnest young girl had asked earlier, probably hoping to steal a march on the second-year students by putting a direct question to Suki, author of the feminist tract on their Women’s Studies course. “Is it an idea previously addressed in your books, or something new?”
    Suki had smiled at her, toying with the idea of telling the truth: It begins with the phone call telling me the fee for showing up. That and the latest bill.
    “It’s an idea I’d like to explore further,” she’d told the student in a husky voice thickened by years of smoking. She couldn’t tell the truth: that her days of making money fromTV and book sales were over; that since Jethro she’d been broke; that the bank kept sending hostile letters to the house.
    Life had come full circle: she was poor. Same as she’d been all those years ago, growing up in the de Paor mausoleum in Avalon, always the kid in the shabby clothes with the jam sandwiches for school lunch.
    Suki shivered. She hated being poor.
    The woman at the lectern coughed into the microphone and began:
    “Our next speaker needs no introduction . . .”
    Under her carefully applied layers of Clinique, Suki allowed herself a small smile. Why did people kick off with that—and then, inevitably, follow it with an introduction?
    Nevertheless, she enjoyed listening to the introductions. Hearing her accomplishments listed out loud made her seem less of a failure. The litany of things she’d achieved made it sound as though she’d done something with her life.
    “. . . at thirty-two, she married Kyle Richardson IV, future United States ambassador to Italy . . .”
    Poor old Kyle; he’d had no idea what he was letting himself in for. His father had, she recalled. Kyle Richardson III had soon realized that Kyle IV had bitten off more than he could chew, but by then the engagement was in the Washington papers and they’d been to dinner in Katharine Graham’s house, so it was a done deal. The Richardsons were fierce Republicans, flinty political warriors and very rich. There had been many women sniffing around Kyle IV, or Junior, as his father liked to call him. Junior would inherit a whole pile of money, the company—highest-grossing combat arms manufacturer in the US, what else?—and possibly his father’s Senate seat. It was the way things were done.
    “. . . the enfant terrible of politics published her debut polemic, Women and Their Wars when she was twenty-nine . . .”
    The reviews had been fabulous. Being beautiful helped. As her publisher at the time, Eric Gold, had pointed out: “Beautiful women who