True Blue (Hubbard's Point) Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE LUMINOUS NOVELS OF

  Luanne Rice

  Safe Harbor

  “Luanne Rice has a talent for navigating the emotions that range through familial bonds, from love and respect to anger…A beautiful blend of love and humor, with a little bit of magic thrown in, Safe Harbor is Rice's best work to date.”

  —The Denver Post

  “Heartwarming and convincing… a meditation on the importance of family ties…buoyed by Rice's evocative prose and her ability to craft intelligent, three-dimensional characters.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Firefly Beach

  “A beautifully textured summertime read.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Rice does a masterful job of telling this powerful story of love and reconciliation.”

  —Booklist

  Summer Light

  “Few… authors are able to portray the complex and contradictory emotions that bind family members as effortlessly as Rice…. This poignant tale of love, loss, and reconciliation will have readers hitting the bookstores.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Rice's fans will enjoy this well-spun yarn.”

  —The Orlando Sentinel

  “The prolific Rice skillfully blends romance with magic.”

  —Booklist

  “As can be expected from Rice, a touching story that will be hard to forget. Keep those tissues close at hand.”

  —The Facts

  Dream Country

  “A moving story of love and reunion… an absolute joy to read… I finally put Dream Country down at 2 a.m. and almost called in sick the next day to finish it.”

  —The Denver Post

  “Superb… Stunning.”

  —Houston Chronicle

  “Captivating… Dream Country will cast a spell on readers.”

  —The Orlando Sentinel

  “A transcendent story about the power of hope and family love… a compelling plot and nuanced character portrayals contribute to the emotional impact Rice creates believable dramatic tension.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Engaging… a taut thriller… Rice's descriptive gifts are impressive.”

  —Star Tribune, (Minneapolis)

  “A story so real it will be deeply etched into the hearts of its readers… Rice once again delivers a wonderfully complex and full-bodied romance.”

  —Booklist

  “Highly readable… moving… a well-paced plot… Rice pulls off some clever surprises.”

  —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

  Follow the Stars Home

  “Addictive… irresistible.”

  —People

  “Involving, moving… stays with the reader long after the last page is turned.”

  —The Denver Post

  “Uplifting… The novel's theme—love's miraculous ability to heal—has the ingredients to warm readers’ hearts.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Rice is a gifted storyteller with a keen sense of both the possibilities and contingencies of life.”

  —Times Record, Brunswick, ME

  “Powerhouse author Luanne Rice returns with a novel guaranteed to wrench your emotional heartstrings. Deeply moving and rich with emotion, Follow the Stars Home is another of Ms. Rice's classics.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Rice's story of love and redemption will please fans of her tender and poignant style.”

  —Booklist

  “Heartwarming… This is a novel that will touch readers’ hearts.”

  —The Sunday Oklahoman

  Cloud Nine

  “A tightly paced story that is hard to put down… Rice's message remains a powerful one: the strength of precious family ties can ultimately set things right.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “One of those rare reading experiences that we always hope for when cracking the cover of a book… A joy.”

  —Library Journal

  “Elegant… Rice hooks the reader on the first page.”

  —The Hartford Courant

  “A celebration of family and the healing power of love. Poignant and powerful… One of those rare books which refreshes and renews the landscape of women's fiction for a new generation of readers.”

  —Jayne Ann Krentz, author of Sharp Edges

  Home Fires

  “Exciting, emotional, terrific. What more could you want from a late-summer read?”

  —The NewYork Times Book Review

  “Compelling… poignant… riveting.”

  —The Hartford Advocate

  “Rice makes us believe that healing is possible.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Good domestic drama is Rice's chosen field, and she knows every acre of it…. Rice's home fires burn brighter than most, and leave more than a few smoldering moments to remember.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  Blue Moon

  “Brilliant.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “A rare combination of realism and romance.”

  —The NewYork Times Book Review

  “Eloquent… A moving and complete tale of the complicated phenomenon we call family.”

  —People

  MORE CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR LUANNE RICE

  “What a lovely writer Luanne Rice is.”

  —Dominick Dunne

  “Ms. Rice shares Anne Tyler's ability to portray offbeat, fey characters winningly”

  —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “Luanne Rice handles with marvelous insight and sensitivity the complex chemistry of a family that might be the one next door.”

  —Eileen Goudge

  “Miss Rice writes as naturally as she breathes.”

  —Brendan Gill

  ALSO BY LUANNE RICE

  Safe Harbor

  Summer Light

  Firefly Beach

  Oream Country

  Follow the Stars Home

  Cloud Nine

  Home Fires

  Blue Moon

  Secrets of Paris

  Stone Heart

  Crazy in Love

  Angels All Over Town

  For Tracy Devine

  And in memory off Mlim

  Acknowledgments

  With love and thanks to Irwyn Applebaum, Nita Taublib, Micahlyn Whitt, Matthew Martin, Anna Forgione, Johanna Tani, Andrea Cirillo, Mia Onorato, Lauren and Melissa, Heather McNeil, Br. Luke Armour, O.C.S.O.; my fishing partner, Bouner, and his sisters Whiller and Nuggledean; Paul, Twigg, Joe G., David, Richard, Dan, Georgie, Cora, Steve, Martha; the loving and omnipresent spirits of Helen, Val, Miss Davis, Granny Crawford, Aunt Florence, Uncle Lote, and Lucille.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in the story are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ZEBULON MAYHEW OWNED the sky, and Rumer Larkin ruled the earth. That's how they had divvied up the universe when they were five, and the split had worked just fine this far, into their fifteenth year.

  Crawling behind Zeb out his bedroom window, Rumer pulled herself across the strip of roof that ran below the front windows, and then used the dormer's peak to haul herself up to the very top.

  “Wait for me,” she called to Zeb as he ran along the edge of the sharply slanted roonine, arms out at his sides.

  “You're too slow,” he said, but he did wait, throwing a quick grin over his shoulder and holding out his hand. Grabbing it, Rumer felt sparks in her blood, making her tremble and hold on a little tighter.

  “What are we going to see tonight?” she asked, following him as they balanced their way across the st
eepest part of the roof between the crooked brick chimney and the unicorn weathervane.

  “Larkin, you're hopeless,” he said. “If it doesn't pounce or hop, you don't remember anything about it. What's the date?”

  She hesitated, waiting for him to let go of her hand. He didn't, and she hoped he didn't notice her fingers shaking. He was tall for fifteen, towering above her, his blond head silhouetted by the Milky Way. “August twelfth,” she said finally.

  “Right. The Perseid meteor shower—do I have to remind you every year? We're going to count shooting stars, and I'm not letting you down till you get at least twenty.”

  “Twenty!” she said, secretly thrilled because she knew it would take hours to count twenty shooting stars.

  “There's one!” he said, dropping her hand to point. She turned just in time to see a trail of white fire blazing across the sky. “I'd show you the crab nebulae or Saturn or Jupiter, but I know you don't care.”

  “The sky's your domain, Astro-Boy”

  “Rumer the bunny girl,” he teased back.

  They settled down on the rooftop, at the opposite end of the house from the chimney. From up there, Rumer could see Long Island Sound, white-edged waves of black rippling along the half-moon beach. To the north was the rest of Hubbard's Point, about a hundred cottages nestled together on the hill and in the swale. They lived on the Point itself, which jutted out into the Sound, the dead-end street populated by the grand old dames whose fathers and grandfathers had founded the beach area.

  Next door was Rumer's family's cottage, built the same year as the Mayhews’ and almost identical in design. While most people lived at the Point only in summer, Rumer's and Zeb's families had lived there year-round. Once, when she was seven, she had slept over at Zeb's and sleepwalked straight into his parents’ room, the way she sometimes did at home.

  “Another!” Zeb said, jabbing her side. “You're two behind now.”

  “I'm looking,” Rumer said, but instead she looked through the sheer curtains into her family's bathroom window and watched her sister shaving her legs. “Maybe I'd better tell Elizabeth to pull the shades,” she said.

  “You'd be amazed at what I see you Larkin girls doing,” Zeb said. “Even if she pulls the shade too, you can see through the crack.”

  “You look?” Rumer asked, her mouth dropping open.

  “What do you expect? Our houses are about five yards apart, and your blinds don't close the whole way. Of course I look. Hey, another meteor!”

  Rumer glanced over, assessing him. Did he mean he looked specifically at Elizabeth, or at Rumer too? Why did it seem, suddenly, to matter so much? They were friends, that was all. But Rumer's mouth felt dry, and her hand ached to have Zeb hold it again.

  “Five,” Zeb said, pointing. “Six.”

  “Elizabeth,” Rumer called. She couldn't stand to have her eighteen-year-old sister not know what she was showing: everything. Her nightgown straps had slipped off her shoulder, and her boobs were half hanging out.

  “What are you doing?” Zeb asked, watching Rumer beginning to scuttle across the roofline like a rock crab in a tidal pool.

  “Warning her.”

  “I'm telling you—don't bother.”

  “Why, so you can watch her?” Rumer teased, but her heart began to pound when he didn't say no. The stars spun around, and a soft wind blew through the pine boughs. She held her breath, waiting. Even in the darkness she could see Zeb turning red. A sound caught in her throat, and she realized she was remembering the school Halloween party last fall, when she and her sister had worn identical witch costumes and Elizabeth—sweeping across the school stage as if it were a Broadway theater—had won “most beautiful.”

  “You're my best friend,” Zeb said quietly, and suddenly Rumer knew he could hear her crying.

  Rumer nodded, squeezing her eyes shut.

  “More than Paul and Andy,” he said, naming two of their other closest Hubbard's Point friends. She didn't reply. “Did I say something wrong?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Okay, then. Let's get back to the sky. What's the score—me seven, you none? Come on, if there were rabbits up there instead of in the old briar patch we call a yard, you'd be going crazy.”

  But Rumer couldn't just let Elizabeth continue, knowing that she was on display. Crawling across the roof, she left Zeb behind. He was going to be an astronaut someday, and he liked to get all the star practice he could. Rumer's feelings were churning around, a combination of protectiveness and jealousy and hurt and love, and somehow she slipped when she should have grabbed.

  “Whooooo!” she called, bare feet and fingernails scrabbling for a hold on the shingles.

  “Give me your hand,” Zeb said, reaching down.

  “I can't,” she said, sliding slowly.

  “Come on! Give me—” he said, and then he began to slide too. They sped up, side by side, gliding down the Mayhews’ roof, over the moss and lichens, under the trees and stars. But while Rumer managed to grip the gutter rim as she tumbled past, Zeb flew straight off the roof into the azalea bush below.

  “Zeb!”

  He didn't answer. It took all Rumer's strength to hold on, start to haul herself to safety inch by inch. Her heart was pounding. She had killed him.

  “Ouch,” he said, pushing himself up. “My leg…”

  “You're alive,” she called, breathless.

  “You're still up there? Hang on, Rue.”

  A tall pine grew alongside the house. The space between the branches and roof loomed darkly before her, but she had to get down to Zeb. Taking a quick breath, she swung out, scraping her face and hands with hundreds of sharp pine needles. Making her way to the trunk, she scrambled down branch by branch, pine tar sticking to her skin, and dropped the last six feet to the ground.

  Inside their houses, blue light from the TV sets came through the screens. She could hear Mary Tyler Moore's laugh track. Their parents had gone out for dinner together, and they weren't home yet. Zeb had broken his ankle—she saw his foot twisted around, jutting out at an odd angle, and felt sick.

  Rumer had helped a hurt rabbit the previous week, an abandoned dog the week before that, a broken-winged robin in July, and two brand-new motherless kittens in June. She had a sense for helping hurt animals, but her feelings for Zeb were so strong, she couldn't even touch him. Instead, she crouched down and stared into his blue eyes.

  “Zeb,” she whispered helplessly, wanting so badly to lay her hand upon him, to fix his ankle the way she had sometimes healed cats and squirrels and rabbits, afraid that she'd somehow hurt him more if she did.

  “What happened?”

  The voice came from behind, and Rumer didn't even have to look. From the way Zeb struggled to sit up, not wanting to be seen as weak by the most beautiful witch in Black Hall, Rumer knew that Elizabeth had come outside.

  “Tried to catch a falling star,” Zeb tried to joke.

  “I heard someone calling my name,” Elizabeth said, “but when I looked out the window, all I saw was you two rolling off the roof. Are you okay, Zeb?”

  “He's fine,” Rumer said, but she could see that he wasn't. His face was turning white; she'd seen hurt rabbits go into shock before, and that was happening here. Even so, he propped himself up bravely on his elbow, to not look feeble in front of Elizabeth. So Rumer left him with her sister as she started across the yard to use the Mayhews’ phone to call the Shoreline ambulance.

  “If you'd wanted to impress me,” Elizabeth was saying, and when Rumer glanced back, she saw her sister stroking Zeb's forehead, “all you really had to do was come down to earth. Why do you spend all your time chasing starlight? That's all it is, you know. By the time that light travels through space, the star might not even exist anymore. Earth, Zeb. That's where people belong.”

  “Yeah?” Zeb asked in a weak voice, as if he were taking her seriously. “Earth?”

  “Earth,” Elizabeth said, and at that moment Rumer hated her sister for having beau
ty so powerful it could blind Zeb to his own dreams, even more, hating Zeb for allowing himself to be blinded.