Spindrift
Page 32
“He won’t get far,” Joel said. “A while ago I phoned Jimson and told him to come back with his men.” He held out the gun for me to see. It had a carved wooden grip and the barrel was short and sturdy. “It’s a derringer from Hal’s Western collection back in New York. Theo brought it with her. There aren’t any bullets.”
I managed to crawl out on the deck, but my knees were weak and I couldn’t seem to rise. Joel pulled me to my feet.
“Are you all right, Christy?” The distance was still between us.
I faced him. “I haven’t been all right for a long time. I know that now. I’ve been wrong about so much. So terribly much.”
“You need to let Adam go,” Joel said. “You need to come back into life.”
“I know,” I said. “There are so many things I’m ashamed of.”
He was shaking his head at me. “You’ve been right a lot of the time too, and I’ve been anything but blameless. There’s been too much listening to Theo. Too much stiff-necked Moreland pride. But I have fought for you, Christy, in my way.”
“Joel, is there any road back—to where we were?”
He smiled at me—that bright, shining smile I hadn’t seen for so long. “Not to where we were. Perhaps to something better. If you want to try, I think we can find the way.”
I went into his arms and he held me gently for a moment, kissed me on the cheek and let me go. It was a beginning—nothing more. But I knew now that it was not Adam or Bruce who had been strong. It was this man who stood beside me. Quiet and unassuming, he had never yielded on principle.
We started up the path from the boatshed together, to find that the fog was thinning up above, drifting away.
“How did you discover the truth about Bruce?” I asked.
“Through that letter Fiona wrote to you and never delivered. She hid it in a manuscript I was reading and I came on it today. I took it to my mother and I made her tell me everything. But I had to decide what to do so that you wouldn’t be too badly injured. I was afraid you were going off with Bruce today, Christy, and I was determined to stop that if I possibly could. I almost waited too long.”
From the direction of Spindrift we could hear someone calling, hear voices, hear Theo’s tones in a rising crescendo.
“There will be a bad time ahead,” Joel said. “Theo’s going to be in trouble. She deserves it, but she’s still my mother and some of the circumstances will help her. We’ll do what we can, Ferris and I.”
“Yes,” I said. “I know how bad it will be. But she has a lot of courage, Joel. At least she has that. When the police are through with us here, can we go home? Can we take Peter and go home?”
We had stopped side by side on Spindrift’s sloping lawn, and we could see the men now and the cars near the house.
“If that’s what you want, Christy,” Joel said.
The flood of feeling that went through me brought tears to my eyes, and the pain of emotion was more welcome than anything that had happened to me in a long time. I was Joel’s wife, and that was all I wanted to be.
“It’s what I want,” I said. “More than anything. Just to go home with you.”
He took my hand tightly in his and we walked toward the house together. I knew his stature now, and I did not think my foolish eyes would ever be blinded again.
A Biography of Phyllis A. Whitney
Phyllis Ayame Whitney (1903–2008) was a prolific author of seventy-six adult and children’s novels. Over fifty million copies of her books were sold worldwide during the course of her sixty-year writing career, establishing her as one of the most successful mystery and romantic suspense writers of the twentieth century. Whitney’s dedication to the craft and quality of writing earned her three lifetime achievement awards and the title “The Queen of the American Gothics.”
Whitney was born in Yokohama, Japan, on September 9, 1903, to American parents, Mary Lillian (Lilly) Mandeville and Charles (Charlie) Whitney. Charles worked for an American shipping line. When Whitney was a child, her family moved to Manila in the Philippines, and eventually settled in Hankow, China.
Whitney began writing stories as a teenager but focused most of her artistic attention on her other passion: dance. When her father passed away in China in 1918, Whitney and her mother took a ten-day journey across the Pacific Ocean to America, and they settled in Berkley, California. Later they moved to San Antonio, Texas. Lilly continued to be an avid supporter of Whitney’s dancing, creating beautiful costumes for her performances. While in high school, her mother passed away, and Whitney moved in with her aunt in Chicago, Illinois. After graduating from high school in 1924, Whitney turned her attention to writing, nabbing her first major publication in the Chicago Daily News. She made a small income from writing stories at the start of her career, and would eventually go on to publish around one hundred short stories in pulp magazines by the 1930s.
In 1925, Whitney married George A. Garner, and nine years later gave birth to their daughter, Georgia. During this time, she also worked in the children’s room in the Chicago Public Library (1942–1946) and at the Philadelphia Inquirer (1947–1948).
After the release of her first novel, A Place for Ann (1941), a career story for girls, Whitney turned her eye toward publishing full-time, taking a job as the children’s book editor at the Chicago Sun-Times and releasing three more novels in the next three years, including A Star for Ginny. She also began teaching juvenile fiction writing courses at Northwestern University. Whitney began her career writing young adult novels and first found success in the adult market with the 1943 publication of Red Is for Murder, also known by the alternative title The Red Carnelian.
In 1946, Whitney moved to Staten Island, New York, and taught juvenile fiction writing at New York University. She divorced in 1948 and married her second husband, Lovell F. Jahnke, in 1950. They lived on Staten Island for twenty years before relocating to Northern New Jersey. Whitney traveled around the world, visiting every single setting of her novels, with the exception of Newport, Rhode Island, due to a health emergency. She would exhaustively research the land, culture, and history, making it a custom to write from the viewpoint of an American visiting these exotic locations for the first time. She imbued the cultural, physical, and emotional facets of each country to transport her readers to places they’ve never been.
Whitney wrote one to two books a year with grand commercial success, and by the mid-1960s, she had published thirty-seven novels. She had reached international acclaim, leading Time magazine to hail her as “one of the best genre writers.” Her work was especially popular in Britain and throughout Europe.
Whitney won the Edgar Award for Mystery of the Haunted Pool (1961) and Mystery of the Hidden Hand (1964), and was shortlisted three more times for Secret of the Tiger’s Eye (1962), Secret of the Missing Footprint (1971), and Mystery of the Scowling Boy (1974). She received three lifetime achievement awards: the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1985, the Agatha in 1989, and the lifetime achievement award from the Society of Midland Authors in 1995.
Whitney continued writing throughout the rest of her life, still traveling to the locations for each of her novels until she was ninety-four years old. She released her final novel, the touching and thrilling Amethyst Dreams, in 1997. Whitney was working on her autobiography at the time of her passing at the age of 104. She left behind a vibrant catalog of seventy-six titles that continue to inspire, setting an unparalleled precedent for mystery writing.
A young Whitney playing with her doll in Japan.
Whitney with her family in Japan, where they lived for approximately six years. From left: Lillian (Lilly) Whitney, Charles (Charlie) Whitney, Phyllis Whitney, and Philip (Whitney’s half-brother).
Thirteen-year-old Whitney dancing in the Philippines.
Twenty-one-year-old Whitney at her graduation from McKinley High School in 1924.
Whitney worked at the World’s Fair in Chicago, Illinois, in 1933. She was pregnant with her daughter, Georgia,
at the time.
Frederick Nelson Litten, Whitney’s mentor in writing and teaching, in Chicago, 1935.
Whitney’s first publicity photo for A Place for Ann, 1941.
Whitney, forty-eight, in her first study in Fort Hill Circle at her Staten Island house, where she lived with second husband Lovell Jahnke, 1951.
Whitney at sixty-nine years old with Jahnke in their home in Hope, New Jersey, 1972. Behind them hangs a Japanese embroidery made by Whitney’s mother.
Whitney at seventy-one years of age with Pat Myer, her long time editor, and Mable Houvenagle, her sister-in-law, at her house on Chapel Ave in Brookhaven, Long Island, New York, 1974. After her husband died in 1973, she lived close to her daughter, Georgia, on Long Island.
Whitney at eighty-one years old on a helicopter ride over Maui, Hawaii, to research the backdrop for her novel Silversword, 1984.
Whitney giving her acceptance speech for her Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1985.
Whitney rode in a hot-air balloon in 1988 to use the experience for her novel Rainbow in the Mist.
Whitney ascending in the hot-air balloon, 1988.
Whitney in her study in Virginia in 1996 at ninety-three years old, looking over her “Awards Corner,” which included three Edgars, the Agatha, and the Society of Midland Authors Award.
Whitney at ninety-six years old with her family in her house in Virgina, 1999. From left: Michael Jahnke (grandson), Georgia Pearson (daughter), Matthew Celentano (great-grandson), Whitney, and Danny Celentano (great-grandson).
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1975 by Phyllis A. Whitney
Cover design by Mimi Bark
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4695-4
This edition published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
180 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038
www.openroadmedia.com
PHYLLIS A. WHITNEY
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