Paullina Simons - Lone Star

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

The News Building

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Harper 2015

Copyright © Paullina Simons 2015

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2015

Cover photographs © Patryce Bak/Cultura/Corbis (girl); Gary Cook/Robert Harding/Corbis (background).

Paullina Simons asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of 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: 9780007441631

Ebook Edition © March 2015 ISBN: 9780007441648

Version: 2015-05-06

Tully

“You’ll never look at life in the same way again. Pick up this book and prepare to have your emotions wrung so completely you’ll be sobbing your heart out one minute and laughing through your tears the next. Read it and weep—literally.” Company

Red Leaves

“Simons handles her characters and setting with skill, slowly peeling away deceptions to reveal denial, cowardice and chilling indifference … an engrossing story.” Publishers Weekly

Eleven Hours

“ Eleven Hours is a harrowing, hair-raising story that will keep you turning the pages late into the night.” Janet Evanovich

The Bronze Horseman

“A love story both tender and fierce.” Publishers Weekly

Tatiana and Alexander

“This has everything a romance glutton could wish for: a bold, talented and dashing hero [and] a heart-stopping love affair that nourishes its two protagonists even when they are separated and lost.” Daily Mail

The Girl in Times Square

“Part mystery, part romance, part family drama … in other words, the perfect book.” Daily Mail

The Summer Garden

“If you’re looking for a historical epic to immerse yourself in, then this is the book for you.” Closer

Road to Paradise

“One of our most exciting writers … Paullina Simons presents the perfect mix of page-turning plot and characters.” Woman and Home

A Song in the Daylight

“Simons shows the frailties of families and of human nature, and demonstrates that there’s so much more to life, such as honesty and loyalty.” Good Reading

Bellagrand

“Another epic saga from Simons, full of the emotion and heartache of the original trilogy. Summer reading at its finest.” Canberra Times

To Natasha, my first resplendent light

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions.

T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Paullina Simons

Dedication

Epigraph

Part One: Chloe and Mason and Hannah and Blake

Chapter 1: Insanity’s Horse

Chapter 2: Sweet Potato

Chapter 3: The Perils of College Interviews

Chapter 4: Paleo Flood at Red River

Chapter 5: The Irish Inquisition

Chapter 6: Mottos

Chapter 7: Olivia the Dancing Pig

Chapter 8: Empty Wells and Vernal Pools

Chapter 9: Red Vineyard

Chapter 10: Lupe

Chapter 11: Moody

Chapter 12: Peacocks

Chapter 13: Uncle Kenny from Kilkenny

Chapter 14: The Meaning of Typos

Chapter 15: She Will Be Loved

Part Two: Johnny Rainbow

Chapter 16: Modern Travel

Chapter 17: Carmen in Carnikava

Chapter 18: Cherry Strudel

Chapter 19: Zhenya

Chapter 20: Thorn Forests

Chapter 21: The Guider of Guiri, the Singer of Songs

Chapter 22: All Things Are Numbers

Chapter 23: Lost Children

Chapter 24: Missing Time

Chapter 25: Roses for a Farm

Chapter 26: Dread

Chapter 27: Emil

Chapter 28: Warsaw

Chapter 29: The Dragon and the Honey

Chapter 30: Instead of Auschwitz

Chapter 31: The Clock in Trieste

Chapter 32: A Town Called Heartbreak

Chapter 33: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Chapter 34: My Rags of Heart

Chapter 35: Jimmy Eat World Pain

Part Three: The Blue Suitcase

Chapter 36: Freshman Summer

Chapter 37: Sophomore Summer

Chapter 38: Junior Summer

Chapter 39: Senior Summer

Acknowledgements

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

We’re not serious when we are seventeen.

One fine evening, full of pints and lemonade,

In rowdy cafes with their dazzling chandeliers,

We stroll under the linden trees in the park.

Now you’re in love, till August anyway.

You’ll make her laugh, you’ll write her poetry

At night you wander back to the cafes

For more pints and lemonade …

We are not serious when we are seventeen,

And when we have green linden trees in the park.

Arthur Rimbaud, “Romance”

CHLOE SAT ALONE ON THE BUS RIDE HOME ACROSS THE TRAIN tracks, dreaming of the beaches of Barcelona and perhaps of being ogled by a lusting stranger. She was trying to drown out Blake, Mason and Hannah verbally tripping over one another as if in a game of drunken Twister as they loudly argued the pros and cons of writing a story for money. Threads of songs played their crowded lyric notes in the static inside her head. Under the boardwalk like no other lover he took my hand and said I love you forever—all suddenly overpowered by Queen’s matchless yawp Barcelonaaaaaaaaa …!

She placed her palm against the glass. The bus was almost at their road. Maybe then this psychodrama would end. Outside the dusty windows, made muddy by the flood of recent rain, past the railroad, near a clearing of poplars, Chloe spied a fading billboard of a giant rainbow, which two white-suited workmen on ladders were papering over with an ad for the renovated Mount Washington Resort in the White Mountains.