MalContents by Randy Ryan C.; Chandler Gregory L.; Thomas David T.; Norris Wilbanks Page B
Ads: Link
channel when the screen locked, paralyzing Newmark’s face in a slightly goofy yet undeniably sexy expression. Sunny sipped the refreshing water and studied the vision. He wasn’t quite the man Joseph was, but still oh so cute. The kind of one night stand you’d feel dirty and guilty about as soon as the deed ended, but would relive forever the moment you stepped out of the shower, she thought with a smirk.
Robin Newmark’s frozen face shorted out, replaced by a solid palette of cobalt blue. The lights on the box winked out in order, telegraphing that the satellite signal had been lost, which was to be expected in summer downpours and winter whiteouts, not that she’d ever braved the latter on Foster’s Island.
She waited. The signal didn’t come back, which was okay, she supposed. She hadn’t come to the island to lounge in front of the tube. She was here to finish the recuperation process. The body had healed. The spirit, too, mostly. Only the mind, the psyche, needed consoling.
Sunny needed to look within, decide about Slice and Dice , perhaps begin work on the next cookbook. There were vegetarian dishes she wanted to explore with greater urgency now that she’d been on the other side of the knife; now that she’d felt a pig’s, a cow’s, and a chicken’s slaughter so intimately.
Glass in hand, Sunny marched back up the stairs. It wasn’t quite five in the afternoon, but the storm had transformed the late day into a false dusk. The tight staircase took a turn to the right, toward the bathroom first and then the upstairs bedroom. The bedroom’s window faced the direction of the boathouse and, unavoidably, the neighborhood of houses where the Weir farm used to sit. Beyond the windowpanes, a golden streak shone down upon the distant rooftops. It was raining on the island, but sunny on the shore. A sun shower, she thought.
The cool billows of the central air conditioning were working magic in the upstairs. Sunny set the sweating glass down on the side table, atop a coaster—an official Sunny Weir coaster, beautifully decorated in a vibrant yellow lemon wedge pattern—and settled back on the bed, which bore the unpleasant mark of her sweat. While returning to match the position already sculpted into the bedclothes, she pondered the next few days. A new cookbook . . . she could assemble a proposal and pull together enough recipes to fill a book in a week’s time. The last cookbook, the one they’d been celebrating the night of the attack, had been a best-of, greatest hits collection from her TV show and had taken less time to pull together. Five days? Fast food, she thought with a chuckle. Only did she really want to bang out another cookbook this quickly after suffering the worst night of her life?
Sunny stretched out of her fetal curl. Maybe it was the perfect time to write her autobiography, using the attack as a jumping off point. After that moment of high tension, she would backtrack to her humble beginnings, the orphaned daughter of a single mom raised by loving grandparents on a farm in Massachusetts. She’d relate how she learned to make butternut squash pie in Grammy Rae’s kitchen for Thanksgiving, bright squash pie, the origins of her colorful cooking style. She’d turned sunny food into a career, a way of life, and a life story.
Energy surged through her. Saul would love it. So would Conelle. The readers, too. A celebrity bestseller, not that she needed the money, but the prestige would be great and a biopic deal would likely follow. She mentally cast Bullock in the role of Sunny Weir, borderline giddy at the possibility.
The book would open with the knife attack. She didn’t know how it would end, not suspecting as the rain fell, that the final chapter of this particular biography was far from written.
It was still raining the following morning. Gazing at the grimy bedroom windows, Sunny got her first inkling that something was seriously wrong. The landscape beyond the glass, the
Robin Newmark’s frozen face shorted out, replaced by a solid palette of cobalt blue. The lights on the box winked out in order, telegraphing that the satellite signal had been lost, which was to be expected in summer downpours and winter whiteouts, not that she’d ever braved the latter on Foster’s Island.
She waited. The signal didn’t come back, which was okay, she supposed. She hadn’t come to the island to lounge in front of the tube. She was here to finish the recuperation process. The body had healed. The spirit, too, mostly. Only the mind, the psyche, needed consoling.
Sunny needed to look within, decide about Slice and Dice , perhaps begin work on the next cookbook. There were vegetarian dishes she wanted to explore with greater urgency now that she’d been on the other side of the knife; now that she’d felt a pig’s, a cow’s, and a chicken’s slaughter so intimately.
Glass in hand, Sunny marched back up the stairs. It wasn’t quite five in the afternoon, but the storm had transformed the late day into a false dusk. The tight staircase took a turn to the right, toward the bathroom first and then the upstairs bedroom. The bedroom’s window faced the direction of the boathouse and, unavoidably, the neighborhood of houses where the Weir farm used to sit. Beyond the windowpanes, a golden streak shone down upon the distant rooftops. It was raining on the island, but sunny on the shore. A sun shower, she thought.
The cool billows of the central air conditioning were working magic in the upstairs. Sunny set the sweating glass down on the side table, atop a coaster—an official Sunny Weir coaster, beautifully decorated in a vibrant yellow lemon wedge pattern—and settled back on the bed, which bore the unpleasant mark of her sweat. While returning to match the position already sculpted into the bedclothes, she pondered the next few days. A new cookbook . . . she could assemble a proposal and pull together enough recipes to fill a book in a week’s time. The last cookbook, the one they’d been celebrating the night of the attack, had been a best-of, greatest hits collection from her TV show and had taken less time to pull together. Five days? Fast food, she thought with a chuckle. Only did she really want to bang out another cookbook this quickly after suffering the worst night of her life?
Sunny stretched out of her fetal curl. Maybe it was the perfect time to write her autobiography, using the attack as a jumping off point. After that moment of high tension, she would backtrack to her humble beginnings, the orphaned daughter of a single mom raised by loving grandparents on a farm in Massachusetts. She’d relate how she learned to make butternut squash pie in Grammy Rae’s kitchen for Thanksgiving, bright squash pie, the origins of her colorful cooking style. She’d turned sunny food into a career, a way of life, and a life story.
Energy surged through her. Saul would love it. So would Conelle. The readers, too. A celebrity bestseller, not that she needed the money, but the prestige would be great and a biopic deal would likely follow. She mentally cast Bullock in the role of Sunny Weir, borderline giddy at the possibility.
The book would open with the knife attack. She didn’t know how it would end, not suspecting as the rain fell, that the final chapter of this particular biography was far from written.
It was still raining the following morning. Gazing at the grimy bedroom windows, Sunny got her first inkling that something was seriously wrong. The landscape beyond the glass, the
Similar Books
