Good Harbor Read Online Free Page A

decision to call Francesca was met with
     stares.
    “Mom, are you okay?” said Nina.
    “Yeah, Joyce,” Frank chimed in. “Maybe you ought to lie down or something.”
    “Why?” asked Joyce. “I think it’s a great idea.”
    “You wouldn’t even let me paint my room light yellow, remember?” Nina said, twirling
     a strand from her long, dark ponytail.
    “Isn’t there a clause about Linen White in our prenup?” Frank teased.
    Joyce was getting annoyed. “I’m simply admitting my inadequacy here.”
    “I still think we ought to take your temperature,” Frank said lightly.
    “Don’t tease Mom,” said Nina, suddenly rushing to her mother’s defense.
    “It’s okay, honey,” said Joyce.
    “No, it’s not,” Nina said, a hysterical catch in her voice and tears in her eyes.
     “He’s so mean to you.”
    “Nina,” Frank warned, “knock it off.”
    “Really, Nina, he’s just kidding around,” said Joyce.
    “Now you’re ganging up on me.”
    “That is not true,” Frank said, emphasizing each word. “And your behavior is not acceptable,
     young lady.”
    “You hate me,” Nina screamed. She ran for her room.
    “Let it go,” said Joyce. “There is no point in arguing when she gets like this. She
     can’t help it.”
    “She has to learn to control herself, and you shouldn’t undermine me like that in
     front of her.” Frank got up and headed for the computer. Joyce cleared the table and
     brooded. Life with Nina was a minute-by-minute drama, and Frank’s anger only made
     it worse. There was no predicting her daughter’s behavior, and no consoling her confused,
     abandoned husband.
    Nina had been such a daddy’s girl as a toddler, and all the way through grade school
     they had spent part of every weekend in the park, just the two of them. First swings
     and slides, then balls and bats, then soccer. They had private jokes. They quoted
     lines from The Simpsons at each other. Or they used to.
    Not anymore. As hard as Nina was on Joyce, she was ten times pricklier around Frank.
     Everything he said or did seemed to drive her crazy.
    Frank is grieving, Joyce thought, and he doesn’t even know it. She started the dishes,
     remembering when this had been a sweet spot in her day. Nina would perch on the countertop
     and squeeze dishwashing liquid on the sponge while Frank read a chapter from one of
     the Narnia books. Could that really have been last fall?
    There was no more reading aloud. No more spontaneous hugs, not even any TV couch time.
     Nina’s life revolved around her friends and soccer, a game that made Joyce go limp
     with boredom.
    I guess I’m grieving, too.
    As she rinsed the last pot, she heard Frank yell to Nina through her closed door,
     “Are you doing your homework in there?”
    Frank still thought there was a strategy for avoiding the thunderstorms of Hurricane
     Nina, but Joyce was beginning to suspect that there was no way through the next few
     years without getting drenched every few hours. Maybe that’s why I’m up in Gloucester
     so much, she thought, as she looked up Francesca’s phone number and muttered, “Duh,
     as my daughter would say.”
    Francesca was all that Joyce remembered, breezing into the Gloucester house later
     that week. Joyce followed her hot-pink linen pantsuit from one room to the next and
     felt her modest vacation home morph into a tacky double-wide trailer.
    In the kitchen, Francesca stopped and in a near whisper said, “Well, at least they
     didn’t leave you with orange linoleum and yellow countertops. I’ve seen much worse.”
    Joyce felt both murderously defensive about Mrs. Loquasto’s taste and mortified at
     her association with it. “Coffee?” she offered.
    “No thanks,” Francesca said, and opened an enormous book of color samples on the counter.
     She flipped straight past the greens to a page of dark purples and explained that
     in “situations like this” it was better to go for contrast.
    Joyce’s face betrayed her.