The Last Secret: A Novel - Hardcover

Morris, Mary McGarry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0307451275 ISBN 13: 9780307451279

Publisher: Crown, 2009

Synopsis

“There are few contemporary authors whose work can absorb readers so fully and with such immediacy that the line between character and reader begins to seem dangerously thin. Among these few is the brilliant Mary McGarry Morris.” –Los Angeles Times
Mary McGarry Morris has been hailed as “one of the most skillful writers at work in America today” (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times). In The Last Secret, she tells the riveting story of Nora Hammond, a woman blessed with the perfect life: a charming husband, two bright teenage children, a successful career in the family’s newspaper business, and an esteemed role in the charity work of her New England town. But Nora’s comfortable existence threatens to unravel when she learns of her husband’s longtime affair–and when the specter of a sordid incident from her youth returns with terrifying force.

Confronted by shame and betrayal, Nora suddenly feels dangerously alone. With no one to turn to, she becomes easy prey to a ghost from her past–the cunning, relentless Eddie Hawkins.

A tautly told tale of psychological tension and chilling moral complexity, The Last Secret accelerates to a shattering conclusion as it explores the irreparable consequences of one family’s crimes of the heart. The Last Secret burnishes Mary McGarry Morris’s reputation as one of our most pro­digously gifted writers.

About this title

About the Author:

Mary McGarry Morris is the author of four highly acclaimed novels. Entertainment Weekly included her latest, Fiona Range, on its list of the best books of 2000. Vanished (1998) was nominated for both the National Book Award and the Pen/Faulkner Award. A Dangerous Woman (1991) was made into a feature film starring Debra Winger in 1993. Songs In Ordinary Time, was the 1997 Oprah Book Club Selection, and is available from Brilliance Audio.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

They still don’t believe her, and why should they, but it’s always the
same, it is–this same dream, darkness, heat, and the song, the same
song, same deafening beat.
Driving. Midnight. Still driving; their beacon through the desert,
flashing lights, pink and green neon from the roadhouse roof. Eddie
cruises the parking lot. He parks on the farthest side, in shadows.
Tired and hungry, she slips after him into the reek of beery dust. It
coats the bar top, the windows, the dimly lit jukebox blasting that song
“Gimme Some Lovin’ ” over and over and over again. Their luck’s
about to change, Eddie says. He feeds quarters into the jukebox, the
last of their money–hers, mostly.
Sitting behind them, the only other customer, a skinny man, grimy
shirt, loosened tie, jacket bunched up next to his beer mug. His head
bobs over the table. Her own face floats in the murky bar mirror, outlined
in blinking red Christmas bulbs. This inferno of caged heat
pulsates between the sagging ceiling and gritty plank floor. A dream,
nothing’s real. The blur of overhead fan blades dizzies her.
Elbows sticking to the bar, she sips a rum and Coke; only seventeen,
but as long as she keeps sliding the drink back in front of Eddie,
the skinny bartender could care. He ignores her, acts like she’s not
even here. She grabs another cherry, and Eddie winks in the mirror.
Their last meal, hamburgers–this morning; “poor man’s brunch,”
Eddie said. Every time the bartender looks away, she grabs more, cherries,
olives, slimy little cocktail onions, shoves them into her mouth,
swiveling on the stool to hide her ravenous chewing. They have
devoured the bowl of pretzels. After warm beer in the car all day, it’s
rum Eddie wants. The more he drinks the sharper he grows, pale eyes
glinting, voice roughening, snagging on her soft parts, moving deep
inside, his hard running feet, tingling through her legs and thighs,
belly and heart, pounding with the music. She covers her grin. Drinking
makes her tired and silly, the least little thing, she’s laughing so
hard she can’t stop. Or crying. Today, mostly crying.
Another quarter, that song again.
Eddie pauses by the table. The man’s head jerks up. Laughing,
Eddie leans close, back muscles rippling through his damp T-shirt.
Blond, tanned, blue eyes, dimples, oh God. Her eyes burn. Eddie’s
gesturing. The man glances back, and she looks away. Now Eddie’s
hand is soft on her thigh, one finger stroking flesh high, high between
her legs. Her eyes close as his mouth brushes her ear, singing that
song, heat in her ear.
She’s known him forever, it seems through the haze of longing. But
only a summer month before she was a chambermaid at the Clayborne
Hotel in Lake George that drizzly day when he drove up in the yellow
Mustang, top down, his arm over the back of the seat. “Hey, pretty
girl,” he called as she dragged along the gravel path in her baggy green
uniform, arms loaded with buckets, scrub brushes, and mop. “I’ve
come to rescue you.”
It was her last summer of high school. Six years older, he knew so
much about life. After Yale, he’d invested the ten-thousand-dollar
graduation gift from his wealthy grandfather in an international grain
brokerage company. In just three months’ time he made a quarter of a
million dollars. Then came the sharks who, with a taste of his blood,
wanted more. “Bad deals and blind faith,” he’d sigh. “A deadly combination.”
There was a great job in L.A., a friend of his grandfather’s. He
just had to get there.
Tall with boyish hips, still almost flat-chested, but she drove him
crazy, Eddie said. “You’re the first one,” he whispered in his bleak
room, rented by the night. Too busy studying, he’d never had a social
life. He liked to turn all the lights on while undressing her.
Eyes closed, her arm over her face, trembling, craving the stasis of
sleep while he stroked her feet, traced each bone in her rib cage, murmuring,
“There, pretty girl, there, there.”
Eleven when her father died. Her mother, by necessity, stern, a
schoolteacher who, after having raised her older daughter Carol to a
college-educated, newly wed nurse, was bewildered by this younger
child’s moody volatility.
One day after work Eddie came by to say he was going. L.A. They
couldn’t hold the job much longer. Did she want to come? Yes or no.
Time was running out. He had another one of his terrible headaches.
She called from the road, cringing as her mother demanded to
speak with this Eddie she’d never even heard of, much less met. Smiling,
he took the phone and apologized for their abrupt departure, but
she could rest assured her daughter was in safe hands.
“I love her, Mrs. Trimble. And I’m going to take care of her. Always.
I promise. All we want is your blessing.”
“My blessing!” her mother shrieked across the line. “My blessing!
All you’ll get from me is a warrant for your arrest!”
Watching a baseball game at the end of the bar, the bartender
hunches close to the snowy black-and-white TV screen. Another quarter.
That song again. Eddie’s song. Red lights flash on his face. Her
stomach lurches, oniony bile searing her throat. Her sweaty thighs
stick to the brittle plastic. Eddie’s arm falls, heavy on her shoulders.
His tongue drags over her ear. She can’t believe what he wants.
Turning from the table, the man watches with a wet, imploring grin.
“Like a joke. You’ll see. C’mere. Feel. Feel, can you feel that?”
Eddie asks, pressing against her leg. “You know where that belongs.
You know. You know . . .” His moan burns her ear. “Just a little, that’s
all, to get us outta here.”
“No . . . no,” she whispers, curling her neck away from his face. It
takes all her effort.
“Look at him.” With Eddie’s contemptuous gesture, the leering
man waves. “Flashing that roll, just begging for it, and us hungry.
Come on. L.A., that’s all.”
“No.”
“Just get him outside, that’s all I ask.”
“No. No, Eddie!”
They’ll be doing the drunk a favor, Eddie says, smiling. The man
tries to wink back, instead both eyes close. “His money’s gonna be a
whole lot better spent feeding us than on that.”
“I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.” She is crying again.
Eddie shades his eyes. “Jesus Christ! Will you cut that out!”
Clenched jaw. Squinting. It’s the flashing lights. His headaches
scare her.
“I can’t help it.” She blows her nose in a stiff cocktail napkin. “I’m
sorry!”
“Just get him outside.”
She shakes her head.
“In my car. Front seat.”
“No!”
He squeezes her wrist against his chest. “Tell you what then, I’m
walking out that door, and you either come out with the asshole and
we’re on our way in two minutes, or stay here.” He leans close. “For all
the fuck I care!” He storms out.
“Eddie!”
The closing door, her flesh ripping from the stool, the grinning
man, clutching his suit jacket, staggering her way. “You pretty . . .
pretty . . . ,” he stammers, reaching for her. “You pretty thing, you . . .”
“No. Don’t.” Ashamed, she doesn’t want the bartender to hear. She
gets the door open. “I’m leaving. I have to go. You stay here. Don’t
come out.” She can’t pull free. His fingers dig into her arm. “He’s out
here! Don’t.” She pushes him. In the parking lot their scuffling feet
scrape a dead echo through the desert stillness. She shoves him away.
“Go back in! Please!”
“No!” His voice thickens with anger. “I can’t wait! I’m gonna fall
asleep. We hafta do it now!” As if for inspection he straightens, lifts his
chin, stares at her. “I come fast,” he promises with the pathetic, earnest
dignity born of a lifetime justifying inadequacies. “And I don’t slobber
around after.”
The Mustang’s shadowy hump rises from the side of the building.
From here the man can’t see Eddie crouched in back.
“See, you don’t know . . . you don’t understand . . . this isn’t what
you think,” she whispers. “This isn’t–”
“I know what this is!” the man shouts, his narrow face hatefully
contorted. “It’s a quick fuck before you go fuck your pimp on my
fuckin’ twenty bucks.”
“No! Please! Listen!” With the press of sweat, his, hers, unwashed,
vile, her knees sway. “I have to get out of here!”
“C’mere.” He’s trying to kiss her mouth. “You sweet . . . sweet . . .”
“Where’s your car?”
“He said his car . . .” Gesturing, he teeters.
“No! He’s in there. In the back, waiting! C’mon!” She grabs
his arm.
“Pervert . . . goddamn pervert.” The man staggers against her.
“ ’Magine . . .”
It seems the longest walk through the heat, jagged and spitting
light from the gigantic pink and lime green flower, flashing overhead,
obscene against the stars and the high white peel of moon. Nearing the
Mustang she senses Eddie’s dark coil about to spring. She runs toward
the man’s car, pulling him with her.
“Hurry!” she hisses as he fumbles in ...

About this edition

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0307451275
• ISBN 13: 9780307451279
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288