The Definition of Wind: A Novel (Random House Reader's Circle) - Softcover

Buch 10 von 15: Random House Reader's Circle

Block, Ellen

 
9780440245766: The Definition of Wind: A Novel (Random House Reader's Circle)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0440245761 ISBN 13: 9780440245766
Verlag: Bantam, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Independence: the freedom to be yourself—or a day for fireworks, depending on your point of view
 
Summer has come to Chapel Isle, the quaintly quirky island that Abigail Harker has called home since she moved into the caretaker’s cottage at the local lighthouse. The season ushers in sweltering temperatures, along with throngs of tourists who are turning the sleepy town into pandemonium. The world Abigail fled after tragedy struck is descending upon her doorstep, and she isn’t sure she can stand the heat. 

Tourists and natives alike are buzzing about a sunken treasure in the treacherous shoals off the coast, and clues to its location are supposedly hidden in the caretaker’s cottage. Soon Abigail is the focus of everybody’s attention, including that of a handsome, seductive bachelor. Amid the swarm of vacationers, it’s hard to tell harmless visitors from those harboring dark intentions. 

As Independence Day nears, Abigail must decide: Should she stay on Chapel Isle—risking another heartbreak and even her own safety—or allow the ghosts of her past and the dangers of the present to chase her away?

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ellen Block is the author (as Brett Ellen Block) of The Grave of God’s Daughter and the Macavity Award–nominated novel The Lighting Rule. She lives in Los Angeles.

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9780440245766|excerpt

Block: DEFINITION OF WIND

Anneal ( n¯el´), v.t. 1. to heat (glass, earthenware, metals, etc.) to remove or prevent internal stress. 2. to free from internal stress by heating and gradually cooling. 3. to toughen or temper. 4. Biochemistry: to recombine (nucleic acid strands) at low temperature after separating by heat. 5. to fuse colors onto (a vitreous or metallic surface) by heating.—n: 6. an act, instance, or product of annealing. [bef. 1000; ME anelen, OE an¯ælan, to kindle, equiv. to an1 ¯ælan to burn, akin to ¯al fire]

•••

There was a word for what Abigail Harker had.

Trouble.

She’d been looking forward to the summer on Chapel Isle since moving there nine months earlier. Quiet strolls on the beach, spectacular sunsets, balmy evenings—those were some of the principal reasons she’d settled on the remote island in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. To her dismay, by the last day of June the pleasant weather had been replaced with a heat wave so intense that the thermometer was inching toward eighty degrees by daybreak. Abigail’s fantasy of a season full of fun in the sun had turned into a total scorcher.

She awoke to a humid breeze drifting through her open bedroom windows. Yawning and already sticky with sweat, she padded into the bathroom to discover that there was barely any water in her toilet and it wouldn’t flush.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

Abigail jiggled the handle, then removed the tank’s lid and tinkered with the inner workings, clueless about what was awry. Despite her best efforts and a few mumbled pleas, the toilet refused to work.

From the very moment she’d taken up residence at the caretaker’s cottage attached to the island’s lighthouse, the property had had its issues. There were the outdated appliances, the squeaky floorboards, the faulty wiring, and, most notably, a supposed resident ghost. But in the time she’d been renting the place, Abigail had acclimated to the home’s eccentricities. At least, most of them.

She’d weathered the fall and winter well, not an odd noise or bump in the night to be heard. Though the power went out occasionally when a bad storm would barrel in off the Atlantic and the brick front stoop was crumbling after its tenure exposed to the elements, life on the isle’s southern bluff had been relatively uneventful. That was until the toilet went on strike.

Downstairs, Abigail rummaged around for her landlord Lottie Gilquist’s phone number. She thought she’d put it in a drawer in the cherrywood end table in the living room. The end table, along with the rest of the home’s handsome antiques, had belonged to Wesley Jasper, the former caretaker rumored to haunt the property. After Abigail had renovated the house with paint and elbow grease, she carted his possessions up from the basement, where they’d been languishing for decades, covered in sheets like fun-house ghosts. The tufted settee, the mahogany dining set, the comfortably worn-in wingback chairs—she enjoyed having them around. They spoke to the true character of the house, to its history. She thought Mr. Jasper must have appreciated them too. Why else had he left her alone all these months if not as a thank-you? That was what she told herself on the days she believed the gossip. More often than not, she didn’t give it much thought. Her mind was occupied with other matters.

Lottie’s number wasn’t in the end table, so Abigail tried the console by the door. The drawers were wedged shut, the wood having expanded with the climbing temperature, which was confirmed by a haze of condensation glazing the windowpanes. Outside, the overgrown grass was a dewy emerald, the ocean in the distance an electric azure, as if the water molecules in the air refracted the colors. The brochure Lottie had sent before Abigail came to Chapel Isle didn’t mention how steamy it got in the summertime. Abigail would have come anyway, but a little forewarning would have been nice.

Advance notice wasn’t Lottie’s forte. Petite, plump, and preternaturally cheery, she appeared to be the essence of sweetness and innocence. Her pastel tracksuits and white-blond hair, always combed into a tall bouffant to give her a couple of extra centimeters in height, were the perfect disguise. Under her floating heart pendant and bedazzled bosom lay the soul of a pint-size master manipulator.

Lottie made a habit of dropping by unannounced on the pretense that she had an urgent issue to discuss. In reality, she was conducting spot inspections of the caretaker’s cottage, ironic given that the house had been practically uninhabitable at first. Abigail had refurbished most of the place with no assistance or gratitude from Lottie, so when she’d questioned the motivation behind these surprise visits, Lottie simply laughed her signature high-decibel chuckle, then waved away any insinuation like a pesky gnat.

“A single lady out in the middle of nowhere all by her lonesome? Heck, it’s my civic duty to check on you, Abby. Make certain you’re A-OK.”

Like many of the locals, Lottie had checked Abigail’s left hand for a wedding band as soon as she arrived. The absence of a ring told people she was unmarried. It didn’t tell them the whole story.

A house fire had claimed the lives of her husband, Paul, and their four-year-old son, Justin, a year earlier. After recuperating from injuries sustained during the blaze, Abigail had retreated to Chapel Isle and told no one of her past. Better to be considered single than to divulge the painful truth. While apt, the noun widow didn’t feel befitting of her. As a former lexicographer and lover of words, Abigail understood the effect language could have on a person, how it could define someone. Even she didn’t call herself a widow. Then again, she didn’t refer to herself as a brunette, label herself a lefty, or consider herself a Capricorn, yet she was all those things. Certain traits in her life were a given. Widowhood now figured prominently among them.

Lottie’s phone number was buried under a stack of papers in the console drawer, which had taken five minutes to coax open. Anxious to get her toilet problem resolved, Abigail dialed the antiquated rotary-model telephone, numbers spinning backward slow as syrup. By the seventh digit, she was growing impatient. The outdated aspects of the caretaker’s cottage exasperated her only at moments such as this, when the speed and ease of the modern world felt a million miles away.

“I’m sorry,” a computerized voice droned. “Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please hang up and try again.”

“Not you too,” Abigail said, reprimanding the phone. “Maybe the heat toasted the wires.”

The third time she hung up and redialed, she finally got a connection. Static flared as Lottie answered, drowning out Abigail’s voice.

“Lottie, it’s Abigail. Can you hear me?”

“Barely. Sounds like you’re fryin’ bacon.”

“I’m not cooking, Lottie. It’s the phone. Something’s wrong with the line.”

“You’re doing fine? Is that what you said?”

“No, never mind about the phone. My toilet is clogged. Can you send a plumber?”

“A plumber ain’t gonna fix your phone. Do you have a cell?”

“Yes, I have a cell phone, Lottie. That’s not the point. My toilet won’t flush. That’s why I need a plumber.”

“Mercy me, Abby. I got six summer renters...

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Verlag
Bantam
Erscheinungsdatum
2011
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0440245761
ISBN 13 
9780440245766
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
288
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
preigu
mail@preigu.de

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