Fly Away
The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only.
You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way.
Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book
you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at:
us.macmillanusa.com/piracy
.
To Benjamin and Tucker, who show me every day what love really means;
To my family—Laurence, Debbie, Kent, Julie, Mackenzie, Laura, Lucas, and Logan. Each
of you keeps me going, and our memories tell our story; And, lastly, to my mom.
We miss you.
Acknowledgments
With every book I write, I seem to lean on my friends for the strength it takes to
imagine a story and give it life. This journey was particularly rocky, and there were
times I might have given up if not for my friends. I thank Susan Elizabeth Phillips
and Jill Barnett for telling me that it was time to write this story, and to Megan
Chance and Jill Marie Landis, I say, absolutely honestly, I couldn’t have done it
without you. Thank you.
Thanks also to Jennifer Enderlin and Matthew Shear for giving me what I needed most:
time.
Contents
The charm, one might say the genius of memory, is that it is
choosy, chancy, and temperamental:
it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs
the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust.
—Elizabeth Bowen
If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream,
and have a flower presented to him as a pledge
that his soul had really been there, and if he
found that flower in his hand when he awoke—Aye!
What then?
—from the notebooks of S. T. Coleridge
Prologue
She is in a restroom stall, slumped over, with tears drying on her cheeks, smearing
the mascara she applied so carefully only a few hours ago. You can see instantly that
she doesn’t belong here, and yet here she is.
Grief is a sneaky thing, always coming and going like some guest you didn’t invite
and can’t turn away. She wants this grief, although she’d never admit it. Lately,
it’s the only thing that feels real. She finds herself thinking about her best friend
on purpose even now, all this time later, because she wants to cry. She is like a
child picking at a scab, unable to stop herself even though she knows it will hurt.
She has tried to go on alone. Really tried. She is trying still, in her way, but sometimes
one person can hold you up in life, keep you standing, and without that hand to hold,
you can find yourself free-falling no matter how strong you used to be, no matter
how hard you try to remain steady.
Once—a long time ago—she walked down a night-darkened road called Firefly Lane all
alone, on the worst night of her life, and she found a kindred spirit.
That was our beginning.
More than thirty years ago.
TullyandKate.
You and me against the world.
Best friends forever.
But stories end, don’t they? You lose the people you love and you have to find a way
to go on.
I need to let go. Say goodbye with a smile.
It won’t be easy.
She doesn’t know yet what she has set in motion. In moments, everything will change.
One
September 2, 2010
10:14
P.M.
She felt a little woozy. It was nice, like being wrapped in a warm-from-the-dryer
blanket. But when she came to, and saw where she was, it wasn’t so nice.
She was sitting in a restroom stall, slumped over, with tears drying on her cheeks.
How long had she been here? She got slowly to her feet and left the bathroom, pushing
her way through the theater’s crowded lobby, ignoring the judgmental looks cast her
way by the beautiful people drinking champagne beneath a glittering nineteenth century
chandelier. The movie must be over.
Outside, she kicked her ridiculous patent leather pumps into the shadows. In her expensive
black nylons, she walked in the spitting rain down the dirty Seattle sidewalk toward
home. It was only ten blocks or so. She could make it, and she’d never find a cab
this time of night anyway.
As she approached Virginia Street, a bright pink
MARTINI BAR
sign caught her attention. A few people were clustered together outside the front
door, smoking and talking beneath a protective overhang.
Even as she vowed to pass by, she found herself turning, reaching for the door, going
inside. She slipped into the dark, crowded interior and headed straight for the long
mahogany bar.
“What can I get for you?” asked a thin, artsy-looking man with hair the color of a
tangerine and more hardware on his face than Sears carried in the nuts-and-bolts aisle.
“Tequila straight shot,” she said.
She drank the first shot and ordered another. The loud music comforted her. She drank
the straight shot and swayed to the beat. All around her people were talking and laughing.
It felt a little like she was a part of all that activity.
A man in an expensive Italian suit sidled up beside her. He was tall and obviously
fit, with blond hair that had been carefully cut and styled. Banker, probably, or
corporate lawyer. Too young for her, of course. He couldn’t be much past thirty-five.
How long was he there, trolling for a date, looking for the best-looking woman in
the room? One drink, two?
Finally, he turned to her. She could tell by the look in his eyes that he knew who
she was, and that small recognition seduced her. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“I don’t know. Can you?” Was she slurring her words? That wasn’t good. And she couldn’t
think clearly.
His gaze moved from her face, down to her breasts, and then back to her face. It was
a look that stripped past any pretense. “I’d say a drink at the very least.”
“I don’t usually pick up strangers,” she lied. Lately, there were only strangers in
her life. Everyone else, everyone who mattered, had forgotten about her. She could
really feel that Xanax kicking in now, or was it the tequila?
He touched her chin, a jawline caress that made her shiver. There was a boldness in
touching her; no one did that anymore. “I’m Troy,” he said.
She looked up into his blue eyes and felt the weight of her loneliness. When was the
last time a man had wanted her?
“I’m Tully Hart,” she said.
“I know.”
He kissed her. He tasted sweet, of some kind of liquor, and of cigarettes. Or maybe
pot. She wanted to lose herself in pure physical sensation, to dissolve like a bit
of candy.
She wanted to forget everything that had gone wrong with her life, and how it was
that she’d ended up in a place like this, alone in a sea of strangers.
“Kiss me again,” she said, hating the pathetic pleading she heard in her voice. It
was how she’d sounded as a child, back when she’d been a little girl with her nose
pressed to the window, waiting for her mother to return.
What’s wrong with me?
that little girl had asked anyone who would listen, but there had never been an answer.
Tully reached out for him, pulling him close, but even as he kissed her and pressed
his body into hers, she felt herself starting to cry, and when her tears started,
there was no way to hold them back.
September 3, 2010
2:01
A.M.
Tully was the last person to leave the bar. The doors banged shut behind her; the
neon sign hissed and clicked off. It was past two now; the Seattle streets were empty.
Hushed.
As she made her way down the slick sidewalk, she was unsteady. A man had kissed her—a
stranger—and she’d started to cry.
Pathetic. No wonder he’d backed away.
Rain pelted her, almost overwhelmed her. She thought about stopping, tilting her head
back, and drinking it in until she drowned.
That wouldn’t be so bad.
It seemed to take hours to get home. At her condominium building, she pushed past
the doorman without making eye contact.
In the elevator, she saw herself in the wall of mirrors.
Oh, God
.
She looked terrible. Her auburn hair—in need of coloring—was a bird’s nest, and mascara
ran like war paint down her cheeks.
The elevator doors opened and she stepped out into the hallway. Her balance was so
off it took forever to get to her door, and four tries to get her key into the lock.
By the time she opened the door, she was dizzy and her headache had come back.
Somewhere between the dining room and the living room, she banged into a side table
and almost fell. Only a last-minute Hail Mary grab for the sofa saved her. She sank
onto the thick, down-filled white cushion with a sigh. The table in front of her was
piled high with mail. Bills and magazines.
She slumped back and closed her eyes, thinking what a mess her life had become.
“Damn you, Katie Ryan,” she whispered to the best friend who wasn’t there. This loneliness
was unbearable. But her best friend was gone. Dead. That was what had started all
of it. Losing Kate. How pitiful was that? Tully had begun to plummet at her best friend’s
death and she hadn’t been able to pull out of the dive. “I need you.” Then she screamed
it: “I
need
you!”
Silence.
She let her head fall forward. Did she fall asleep? Maybe …
When she opened her eyes again, she stared, bleary-eyed, at the pile of mail on her
coffee table. Junk mail, mostly; catalogs and magazines she didn’t bother to read
anymore. She started to look away, but a picture snagged her attention.
She frowned and leaned forward, pushing the mail aside to reveal a
Star
magazine that lay beneath the pile. There was a small photograph of her face in the
upper right corner. Not a good picture, either. Not one to be proud of. Beneath it
was written a single, terrible word.
Addict
.
She grabbed the magazine in unsteady hands, opened it. Pages fanned one past another
until there it was: her picture again.
It was a small story; not even a full page.
THE REAL STORY BEHIND THE RUMORS
Aging isn’t easy for any woman in the public eye, but it may be proving especially
difficult for Tully Hart, the ex-star of the once-phenom talk show
The Girlfriend Hour.
Ms. Hart’s goddaughter, Marah Ryan, contacted
Star
exclusively. Ms. Ryan, 20, confirms that the fifty-year-old Hart has been struggling
lately with demons that she’s had all her life. In recent months, Hart has “gained
an alarming amount of weight” and been abusing drugs and alcohol, according to Ms.
Ryan …
