Miranda Beverly-Whittemore - Bittersweet

The Borough Press

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by The Borough Press 2014

Copyright © Miranda Beverly-Whittemore 2014

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2015

Cover photographs © Morgan Norman / Gallery Stock (front cover); Shutterstock.com(back cover)

Miranda Beverly-Whittemore asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007536672

Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007536665

Version: 2015-04-23

For Ba and Fa, who shared the land,

and Q, who gave me the world

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

February

Chapter One: The Roommate

Chapter Two: The Party

Chapter Three: The Invitation

June

Chapter Four: The Call

Chapter Five: The Journey

Chapter Six: The Window

Chapter Seven: The Cleanup

Chapter Eight: The Stroll

Chapter Nine: The Aunt

Chapter Ten: The Inspection

Chapter Eleven: The Brothers

Chapter Twelve: The Painting

Chapter Thirteen: The Inevitable

Chapter Fourteen: The Collage

Chapter Fifteen: The Girl

Chapter Sixteen: The Rocks

Chapter Seventeen: The Voyage

Chapter Eighteen: The Rescue

Chapter Nineteen: The Discovery

Chapter Twenty: The Wedding

Chapter Twenty-One: The Kiss

July

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Secret

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Book

Chapter Twenty-Four: The Turtles

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Evening

Chapter Twenty-Six: The Mother

Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Festivities

Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Fireworks

Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Enigma

Chapter Thirty: The Apology

Chapter Thirty-One: The Date

Chapter Thirty-Two: The Scene

Chapter Thirty-Three: The Swim

Chapter Thirty-Four: The Morning

Chapter Thirty-Five: The Pile

Chapter Thirty-Six: The Threat

Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Woods

Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Sister

Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Revelation

Chapter Forty: The Return

Chapter Forty-One: The Proof

Chapter Forty-Two: The Good-bye

Chapter Forty-Three: The Waiting

Chapter Forty-Four: The Widow

August

Chapter Forty-Five: The Aftermath

Chapter Forty-Six: The Row

Chapter Forty-Seven: The Picnic

Chapter Forty-Eight: The Key

Chapter Forty-Nine: The Theft

Chapter Fifty: The Director

Chapter Fifty-One: The Camp

Chapter Fifty-Two: The Witness

Chapter Fifty-Three: The Jailbreak

Chapter Fifty-Four: The Memory

Chapter Fifty-Five: The Handoff

Chapter Fifty-Six: The Service

Chapter Fifty-Seven: The Truth

Chapter Fifty-Eight: The Curse

Chapter Fifty-Nine: The Chaperone

June

Chapter Sixty: The End

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

About the Publisher

BEFORE SHE LOATHED ME, before she loved me, Genevra Katherine Winslow didn’t know that I existed. That’s hyperbolic, of course; by February, student housing had required us to share a hot shoe box of a room for nearly six months, so she must have gathered I was a physical reality (if only because I coughed every time she smoked her Kools atop the bunk bed), but until the day Ev asked me to accompany her to Winloch, I was accustomed to her regarding me as she would a hideously upholstered armchair – something in her way, to be utilized when absolutely necessary, but certainly not what she’d have chosen herself.

It was colder that winter than I knew cold could be, even though the girl from Minnesota down the hall declared it ‘nothing.’ Out in Oregon, snow had been a gift, a two-day dusting earned by enduring months of gray, dripping sky. But the wind whipping up the Hudson from the city was so vehement that even my bone marrow froze. Every morning, I hunkered under my duvet, unsure of how I’d make it to my 9:00 a.m. Latin class. The clouds spilled endless white and Ev slept in.

She slept in with the exception of the first subzero day of the semester. That morning, she squinted at me pulling on the flimsy rubber galoshes my mother had nabbed at Value Village and, without saying a word, clambered down from her bunk, opened our closet, and plopped her brand-new pair of fur-lined L.L.Bean duck boots at my feet. ‘Take them,’ she commanded, swaying in her silk nightgown above me. What to make of this unusually generous offer? I touched the leather – it was as buttery as it looked.

‘I mean it.’ She climbed back into bed. ‘If you think I’m going out in that, in those, you’re deranged.’

Inspired by her act of generosity, by the belief that boots must be broken in (and spurred on by the daily terror of a stockpiling peasant – sure, at any moment, I’d be found undeserving and sent packing), I forced my frigid body out across the residential quad. Through freezing rain, hail, and snow I persevered, my tubby legs and sheer weight landing me square in the middle of every available snowdrift. I squinted up at Ev’s distracted, willowy silhouette smoking from our window, and thanked the gods she didn’t look down.

Ev wore a camel-hair coat, drank absinthe at underground clubs in Manhattan, and danced naked atop Main Gate because someone dared her. She had come of age in boarding school and rehab. Her lipsticked friends breezed through our stifling dorm room with the promise of something better; my version of socializing was curling up with a copy of Jane Eyre after a study break hosted by the house fellows. Whole weeks went by when I didn’t see her once. On the few occasions inclement weather hijacked her plans, she instructed me in the ways of the world: (1) drink only hard alcohol at parties because it won’t make you fat (although she pursed her lips whenever she said the word in front of me, she didn’t shy from saying it), and (2) close your eyes if you ever have to put a penis in your mouth.

‘Don’t expect your roommate to be your best friend,’ my mother had offered in the bold voice she reserved for me alone, just before I flew east. Back in August, watching the TSA guy riffle through my granny underpants while my mother waved a frantic good-bye, I shelved her comment in the category of Insulting. I knew all too well that my parents wouldn’t mind if I failed college and had to return to clean other people’s clothes for the rest of my life; it was a fate they – or at least my father – believed I’d sealed for myself only six years before. But by early February, I understood what my mother had really meant; scholarship girls aren’t meant to slumber beside the scions of America because doing so whets insatiable appetites.