scraping the barrel.”
“I could say something about glass houses and stones, old son, but I won’t.”
“Okay, I’m sorry.”
“I’d like you to audition for presenter.”
“Me? When I tried-out for Startup you told me that my wooden performance lived up to my name.”
“Maybe I got a little carried away by my own cleverness.”
“Maybe.”
“Forrest, I’m sincere. I’ll have my people line up an audition. I saw something in you at the Ball last night that caught my interest. But I need you to help me with Darcy.”
“Okay, I’ll ask her out, even though she’ll probably turn me down.”
“I suspect she won’t. But one thing, Forrest, she’s never to know that we spoke, understood?”
“Sure.”
Eric ends the call and feels not the slightest twinge of guilt.
He can master his addiction to chemicals, but nobody—not even his dearest friend and neighbor Darcy Pringle—is going to stop him from playing God.
26
Wearing her darkest dark glasses, Darcy reverses the SUV (a clunky relic of the Porter-era as she now finds herself calling the twelve years of her marriage) out of the garage and turns it toward town.
This is the first time she’s left the house since her coffee date with Eric at the Book & Bean three days ago.
She’s been lying low.
Ben and Jerry have been her BFFs and she’s watched enough ten-tissue weepies— Nicholas Sparks should be tried for crimes against the female heart! —to turn her brain to mush along with her midriff.
She doesn’t look at Eric’s house as she passes, and if a lace curtain twitches at Carlotta McCourt’s lair she doesn’t allow herself to see it.
Darcy drives down the main road, fights off the temptation to dash into the Book & Bean for a caramel iced mocha and a cream Danish to go, and heads for the hills.
The quaintness of Santa Sofia dribbles away into the brush as Darcy crosses a ridge and winds down to the town of Bascomb.
Once the center of a minor oil boom, Bascomb was flooded with money a hundred years ago—people living high-on-the-hog as her absconded dad (a wildcatter in his youth) may have said—but is a sad and depleted place now, with rusted oil rigs littering the horizon and storefronts in the main road boarded up.
The place depresses her deeply and if she didn’t have a mission to accomplish here, she would turn the fat-rumped SUV around and head home to continue her career as a miserable shut-in.
But she drives on and parks outside a freshly painted building with a small yard filled with flowers, an oasis in the midst of the grim surroundings.
Darcy checks her face in the mirror and judges her appearance adequate to the task at hand, and as she steps down from the high vehicle, she even manages to find something resembling a smile.
The smile becomes real, and the sadness and humiliation of the last days is forgotten, when kids spill from the entrance of the building and mob Darcy, resisting the attempts of their harried minders to contain them.
If they think of pretty, nicely-put together Darcy Pringle as their fairy princess, what harm can it do?
Darcy visits once a month, always with gifts and provisions and she knows most of the children by name.
Had even chosen—one of the most difficult choices she’d ever had to make—a beautiful freckled five-year-old, Sam, as the child she and Porter would adopt.
Before.
Before.
Before . . .
Darcy on her knees talking to Sam, feels the prick of tears.
God, girl, I thought Mr. Sparks had you all wrung out.
She’s saved when one of the saintly women who run the center appears in the playground with a giant check: the proceeds from the Spring Ball.
The check, of course, is purely symbolic, prepared for a photo-op with the Bascomb Bugle .
The money raised a few nights ago has already made its electronic way into the Children’s Center’s bank account.
Darcy stands and the kids crowd around her as she holds one side of the check, the
“I could say something about glass houses and stones, old son, but I won’t.”
“Okay, I’m sorry.”
“I’d like you to audition for presenter.”
“Me? When I tried-out for Startup you told me that my wooden performance lived up to my name.”
“Maybe I got a little carried away by my own cleverness.”
“Maybe.”
“Forrest, I’m sincere. I’ll have my people line up an audition. I saw something in you at the Ball last night that caught my interest. But I need you to help me with Darcy.”
“Okay, I’ll ask her out, even though she’ll probably turn me down.”
“I suspect she won’t. But one thing, Forrest, she’s never to know that we spoke, understood?”
“Sure.”
Eric ends the call and feels not the slightest twinge of guilt.
He can master his addiction to chemicals, but nobody—not even his dearest friend and neighbor Darcy Pringle—is going to stop him from playing God.
26
Wearing her darkest dark glasses, Darcy reverses the SUV (a clunky relic of the Porter-era as she now finds herself calling the twelve years of her marriage) out of the garage and turns it toward town.
This is the first time she’s left the house since her coffee date with Eric at the Book & Bean three days ago.
She’s been lying low.
Ben and Jerry have been her BFFs and she’s watched enough ten-tissue weepies— Nicholas Sparks should be tried for crimes against the female heart! —to turn her brain to mush along with her midriff.
She doesn’t look at Eric’s house as she passes, and if a lace curtain twitches at Carlotta McCourt’s lair she doesn’t allow herself to see it.
Darcy drives down the main road, fights off the temptation to dash into the Book & Bean for a caramel iced mocha and a cream Danish to go, and heads for the hills.
The quaintness of Santa Sofia dribbles away into the brush as Darcy crosses a ridge and winds down to the town of Bascomb.
Once the center of a minor oil boom, Bascomb was flooded with money a hundred years ago—people living high-on-the-hog as her absconded dad (a wildcatter in his youth) may have said—but is a sad and depleted place now, with rusted oil rigs littering the horizon and storefronts in the main road boarded up.
The place depresses her deeply and if she didn’t have a mission to accomplish here, she would turn the fat-rumped SUV around and head home to continue her career as a miserable shut-in.
But she drives on and parks outside a freshly painted building with a small yard filled with flowers, an oasis in the midst of the grim surroundings.
Darcy checks her face in the mirror and judges her appearance adequate to the task at hand, and as she steps down from the high vehicle, she even manages to find something resembling a smile.
The smile becomes real, and the sadness and humiliation of the last days is forgotten, when kids spill from the entrance of the building and mob Darcy, resisting the attempts of their harried minders to contain them.
If they think of pretty, nicely-put together Darcy Pringle as their fairy princess, what harm can it do?
Darcy visits once a month, always with gifts and provisions and she knows most of the children by name.
Had even chosen—one of the most difficult choices she’d ever had to make—a beautiful freckled five-year-old, Sam, as the child she and Porter would adopt.
Before.
Before.
Before . . .
Darcy on her knees talking to Sam, feels the prick of tears.
God, girl, I thought Mr. Sparks had you all wrung out.
She’s saved when one of the saintly women who run the center appears in the playground with a giant check: the proceeds from the Spring Ball.
The check, of course, is purely symbolic, prepared for a photo-op with the Bascomb Bugle .
The money raised a few nights ago has already made its electronic way into the Children’s Center’s bank account.
Darcy stands and the kids crowd around her as she holds one side of the check, the
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