couple. The secretary quickly banished that wicked notion from her brain. There was nothing wrong with Susanna Wing that a little polish couldn't cure, and anyway, nobody was perfect. Dr. Bob had loved her enough to marry her, and the church secretary thought that should be enough recommendation for anybody.
One of the saddest things about Susanna Wing was that people seemed to want to like her better than they really did. She was a “looker,” as men used to say, with a compelling face and a terrific figure, and when she smiled, they say it made you feel special. But she was also, as Pat Danner hinted, a little rough around the edges compared, say, to an easy, fresh-faced charmer like Artemis Hornung. If you had lined the two women up and said, “Pick the minister's wife,” you'd probably never have pointed to Susanna. There were good reasons for that, though, and they were tragic ones. Susanna was an orphan, for one thing. Both of her parents were dead long before she was grown. She was raised in a series of foster and group homes where nobody kept her around for more than a few months at a time. With no other relatives who cared enough to keep track ofher, when she died it was as if she had existed only in Bahia Beach, and only for the short time she'd been married to BobWing.
The church was packed at her funeral, but it was all church members and other friends of her minister-husband. Nobody came from out of town to mourn her, nobody at all. If there were people who would have wanted to come, if they had known, no one knew how to locate them. In keeping with the hard-luck story of her life, Susanna had grown up in Lancaster, California, where, when she was eighteen years old, a river had risen for the only time in recorded history and flooded the courthouse square, ruining every record stored in the basement of the courthouse, including the files of every juvenile for whom the court was acting as guardian. That meant the memory of the names of the people she lived with as a child died with her.
Susanna had once been married to money. She'd wed a computer start-up whiz, a Californian who had made and lost several fortunes before dying in a rock-climbing accident at the age of fifty.
“She didn't talk about Donnie at all,” people at the church said. “It was too painful.”
The obituary of Donald Scale in the Sacramento Bee portrayed a successful businessman who, like Susanna, had no other names of survivors to list in his death notice. Neighbors in the upscale neighborhood where the Scales lived in their Tudor-style home said the couple kept very much to themselves. Since the yards were large and surrounded by hedges, it was hard to get to know people unless you made a special effort or went to the annual block party. Donnie and Susanna weren't the sort to frequent such gatherings and nobody made the trek to their home to borrow a cup of sugar and start an acquaintance. By the time of Donnie's tragic death, all of his former companies had been liquidated—hehad taken the cash, planning for an early retirement with Susanna—and the employees were scattered far and wide.
“She never talked about her past,” people at the church said.
In many ways, Susanna was much better suited to her first husband, or so it seems now to those who learn the little bits about him that one can learn. He had no children, his parents were also deceased, he'd been an only child with no real talent for friendship, apparently, only for entrepreneurship. Nobody really knew why his widow moved to Bahia Beach, but they said that when she showed up for a meeting of the “grief group” at Sands Gospel, she seemed to be looking for love. They welcomed her, her new minister most warmly of all.
“Susanna was in his office a lot at first,” Pat Danner says. “I heard crying in there.” She admits that for a little while she feared that Susanna Scale was one of those women— there were a lot of them—who coveted the handsome
One of the saddest things about Susanna Wing was that people seemed to want to like her better than they really did. She was a “looker,” as men used to say, with a compelling face and a terrific figure, and when she smiled, they say it made you feel special. But she was also, as Pat Danner hinted, a little rough around the edges compared, say, to an easy, fresh-faced charmer like Artemis Hornung. If you had lined the two women up and said, “Pick the minister's wife,” you'd probably never have pointed to Susanna. There were good reasons for that, though, and they were tragic ones. Susanna was an orphan, for one thing. Both of her parents were dead long before she was grown. She was raised in a series of foster and group homes where nobody kept her around for more than a few months at a time. With no other relatives who cared enough to keep track ofher, when she died it was as if she had existed only in Bahia Beach, and only for the short time she'd been married to BobWing.
The church was packed at her funeral, but it was all church members and other friends of her minister-husband. Nobody came from out of town to mourn her, nobody at all. If there were people who would have wanted to come, if they had known, no one knew how to locate them. In keeping with the hard-luck story of her life, Susanna had grown up in Lancaster, California, where, when she was eighteen years old, a river had risen for the only time in recorded history and flooded the courthouse square, ruining every record stored in the basement of the courthouse, including the files of every juvenile for whom the court was acting as guardian. That meant the memory of the names of the people she lived with as a child died with her.
Susanna had once been married to money. She'd wed a computer start-up whiz, a Californian who had made and lost several fortunes before dying in a rock-climbing accident at the age of fifty.
“She didn't talk about Donnie at all,” people at the church said. “It was too painful.”
The obituary of Donald Scale in the Sacramento Bee portrayed a successful businessman who, like Susanna, had no other names of survivors to list in his death notice. Neighbors in the upscale neighborhood where the Scales lived in their Tudor-style home said the couple kept very much to themselves. Since the yards were large and surrounded by hedges, it was hard to get to know people unless you made a special effort or went to the annual block party. Donnie and Susanna weren't the sort to frequent such gatherings and nobody made the trek to their home to borrow a cup of sugar and start an acquaintance. By the time of Donnie's tragic death, all of his former companies had been liquidated—hehad taken the cash, planning for an early retirement with Susanna—and the employees were scattered far and wide.
“She never talked about her past,” people at the church said.
In many ways, Susanna was much better suited to her first husband, or so it seems now to those who learn the little bits about him that one can learn. He had no children, his parents were also deceased, he'd been an only child with no real talent for friendship, apparently, only for entrepreneurship. Nobody really knew why his widow moved to Bahia Beach, but they said that when she showed up for a meeting of the “grief group” at Sands Gospel, she seemed to be looking for love. They welcomed her, her new minister most warmly of all.
“Susanna was in his office a lot at first,” Pat Danner says. “I heard crying in there.” She admits that for a little while she feared that Susanna Scale was one of those women— there were a lot of them—who coveted the handsome
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