Page 32 of The Light Year (Stardust Beach #6)

It had been the month before the fateful trip to the Jersey shore with her family, the one that led to her mother’s untimely death.

Barbie, spending her last weekend at home before she and Todd got married and moved into their own little home, had overheard her parents talking in one of the sitting rooms. She’d paused outside the door, although their voices were low and even; neither was shouting, and nothing in their tones jumped out at her.

Still, Barbie had paused, holding a stack of freshly laundered clothing that she’d intended to take to her room and pack for her move as a new bride, and listened briefly as her father spoke.

“You will do no such thing, Marion,” he’d said. “Leaving this house means leaving me, and I have a career to think of. No politician of good moral standing has a wife who lives apart from him.”

“It’s not permanent,” Marion Mackey had said. “Nothing concrete like that.”

“Yet,” George countered. “You mean nothing yet . But that’s what you’re telling me, isn't it? That you’d like to leave, set up your own house, and eventually divorce me, either legally or just unofficially, so that you can whore around and do whatever you damn well please?”

“No, George,” Marion sputtered. “There’s no one else.

” She’d paused, and Barbie stood outside the door, hugging her laundry to her chest as she held her breath.

“There’s no one else for me ,” Marion had gone on.

“But I understand that for you, there have been many other women. There’s probably another woman right now, for all I know. ”

“This is not part of the discussion,” Barbie’s father said. “Not part of it at all. The bottom line is that you’re going nowhere, and no one will see me living here alone like some sad divorcee. That’s not happening.”

There was a clatter from inside the room, and Barbie sucked in a sharp breath; her mother had undoubtedly given in to the fiery temper that always seemed to trip her up.

Barbie imagined her throwing a pillow from the couch and knocking over a glass figurine, or toppling an ashtray onto the Oriental rug with one brush of the hand across an end table.

“The children are grown, George. Barbara will be married in a month, and I’ve done my job here. You don’t need or want me anymore.”

“What’s gotten into you? Have you lost your damn mind?”

Marion sobbed inside the room, and Barbie nearly reached out to push the door open; she’d wanted to go to her mother in that moment, but instead, she pressed her body up against the striped wallpaper of the hallway and kept listening.

“You’ve treated me like a piece of furniture for years,” Marion Mackey sobbed, her voice sounding firm but soaked in tears. “You never loved me.”

“I never loved you?” George asked incredulously.

“You married me because you wanted comfort. Children. A life of ease. And you got all those things. And now you’re done with me?

No way—you’re my wife, and your job doesn’t stop just because those children you wanted so badly have grown up and left.

” Barbie’s father had paused there, and she’d puzzled for a moment over this turn of phrase that her mother had used: had she been the only one to want children?

Hadn’t George even wanted to be a father?

But she didn’t have time to ponder it too deeply, as her mother had gone on.

“George,” she begged, “I can’t keep going on as the wife who pretends she doesn’t know what her husband is up to.

Every time you leave for the capitol, or to go to D.C.

, I know that you’re with another woman.

Do you know what that does to me?” Wisely, George said nothing.

“You stopped touching me long ago. As my body changed, you stopped wanting it. Do you know what that does to a woman?”

George cleared his throat, his words coming out with a tinge of hesitation. “I assumed you didn’t want me to. When you—when your?—“

“Menopause, George. It’s called menopause.”

“Right.” Barbie’s father cleared his throat again. “I assumed that meant you were…”

“Undesirable?”

“No, uninterested.”

“Well, I was still interested, and I am now. And there are plenty of men out there who are interested in me.”

Another scuffle ensued, and again, Barbie felt tempted to push open the door, as she knew her father well enough to imagine that perhaps her mother’s insouciance frustrated him enough that he might place his hands on her.

“You will not be leaving,” George said. “And that’s final.”

“Stop me,” Marion challenged.

There was a stony silence from behind the door, and Barbie once again held her breath as she waited.

“You came to me with nothing, Marion. Nothing. And you’ll leave the same way you came.”

“You would cut your own wife—the mother of your children—off at the knees? You would make no provisions for my safety, my shelter, or my happiness?” Marion asked, her words sad but also colored with the knowledge that she was speaking the truth: her husband would not pay for her to start again.

“Are you prepared to walk out of here with just the clothes on your back? To get a job, Marion?” George Mackey scoffed. “Are you going to work in an office somewhere? I don’t think old women get hired to do the work of beautiful, young secretaries,” he taunted.

This time there was no sound of things falling or being thrown, but the door was yanked open, and Marion stood in the doorway, halfway into the hall where she could face her husband with the anger that radiated off her in waves.

She had not looked yet to see her daughter standing just feet away, hand over her mouth, eyes wide in horror.

“You’ll regret this,” Marion said quietly, looking at George inside the room. “I will make your life a living hell if you don’t let me leave.”

Barbie could picture her father inside, examining his fingernails, or staring out the window. His tone was bitter. “You won’t,” he said calmly. “You won’t leave, and you won’t make my life a living hell. You can’t afford to.”

With that, Marion backed out of the room and hurried down the hall in the opposite direction, never looking back to see that Barbie was right there and had heard the entire thing.

“He will definitely stoop that low,” Barbie says of her father. “But I haven’t heard from him in the weeks since that meeting, so I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.”

Jo and Jude catch up with them then, and rather than talking about it anymore, Carrie just reaches over and squeezes Barbie’s hand quickly as they walk on, this time in a group of four.

“Oh, Barbara Sue, how I love you,” Todd croons, coming up behind Barbie in the kitchen and wrapping his arms around her waist as he tucks his chin into the crook between her neck and shoulder. He sways slightly while she has her hands in the soapy water, kissing her on the cheek.

“Todd,” Barbie says distractedly, forgetting her part in their little game.

Since high school, he’s jokingly called her “Barbara Sue,” though her name is actually Barbara Jean.

Sometimes he changes the tune from songs so that he can use her pretend name, and one of his favorites is to make “Peggy Sue” into a whole new song.

It’s a silly and playful tradition between them, but Barbie’s mind is elsewhere, so she forgoes her usual protesting, which is the part that Todd loves best.

“What’s up, my love?” Todd releases her and goes to the refrigerator, where he takes out a beer and pops it open.

Barbie rinses the soap suds off her hands and dries them on a towel as she turns around.

She’s wearing a red-and-white checked apron over her casual dress, and her hair is tucked behind both ears.

She can hear the boys playing with their trucks in the front room.

“Get me one of those?” she asks, lifting her chin at the bottle of beer as she wipes her hands.

Todd opens a beer for her. “You don’t usually drink after dinner on a weeknight,” he says.

“No, but I also don’t usually hear from my lawyer to schedule a phone call about an important family matter, and I’m kind of on pins and needles.”

“Barb!” Todd nearly chokes on the sip of beer he’s just taken. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Barbie tosses the dishtowel on the counter and puts the bottle of beer to her lips. The cold liquid slides down her throat before she answers.

“I got the call right before you came home, and I thought we should get through dinner and talk about it.”

“Okay,” Todd says, leaning against the counter. “Let’s talk.”

The details have been running through Barbie’s mind all evening, and she isn’t sure what to make of it.

“Harrison Black, the attorney from New Haven, called and said that he wants to have a call tomorrow morning at nine o’clock, and that he would be with my father and his attorney.

I obviously don’t need to fly up for it,” Barbie says, holding the beer bottle between both hands, “but I need to be fully present, because I think it’s going to be big news. ”

Todd’s eyebrows go up. “You think he’s going to give in?”

Barbie gives a single shake of her head. A slow, thoughtful shake. “I’m not sure. That doesn’t seem like him.”

“Hmm,” Todd says. “Okay. Well, do you think he’s going to make you an offer of some sort?”

This makes Barbie want to laugh; her father isn’t one for offers or for meeting halfway. “That would surprise me,” she says. “I can’t picture him doing anything like that.”

“People can surprise you, you know,” Todd says. He taps his fingers absentmindedly on his beer bottle and looks out the kitchen window. “So go into it thinking the best—if you can.”