Excerpt 1

Of the Fab Four in Postcards From Last Summer, DARCY LOVE is the Queen Bee. She’s a lot like her lipstick-red convertible: fast, pampered...and sometimes off the road. Though she’s still cruising guys and playing it loose enough to worry her friends, she knows that this will be the summer when Kevin, the love of her life, finally falls for her. This summer is supposed to be a hot one, and she’s planning to make it even hotter...

“Anybody here?” The sun was low in the sky as Darcy hugged the container of take-out sushi to her chest, hoping that one of the cleaning ladies or the day maid, Nessie, might still be around.

She hated coming home alone. Next time she was going to drive Kevin straight over and dump him on the overstuffed sofa. Even passed out, he’d be more reassuring than the hollow darkness.

Damn, Kevin. Damn Nessie, too.

When there was no answer she braced herself and stepped into the grand foyer, hardwood floors gleaming up at her, the new tapestry-print runner zigzagging up the stairs looking more welcoming than last year’s cream burber carpeting. Mother had swept through here with Miguel, her design consultant, last month and ordered a few decorating changes, but no amount of renovation or redesign could bring the life that was lacking to this house – people.

Darcy hated being alone in this house in particular. She was often the only one living here, and some nights, when she was alone in bed and listening to the scrape of tree branches against the side of the house, she felt like the last person on earth.

Lowering the thermostat, she wished Kevin had come home with her.  Even if he wanted to sleep, it would have been better just having him in the house, but somehow he didn’t get that. No one understood how lonely Darcy’s perfect life was inside this architectural gem. 

The Love Mansion was the envy of anyone who dared to trespass down the very private Mockingbird Lane. Darcy saw them sometimes from her bedroom window – faces looming in the open windows of Mercedes and Audis, twenty-somethings in big, bruising SUVs soaking up eyefuls of the lush, luxurious estate. But Darcy wanted to yell at them that it wasn’t all it seemed. Despite the family name, this gorgeous house had never become the warm, familial home she’d dreamed of when her parents had purchased it from a famous actress. Dad rarely spent more than a weekend here. As CEO of a giant corporation, his job always demanded his presence in the office, in the boardroom, in the convention center.  On the rare weekend when he did make it out to the Hamptons, Bud Love spent his time barking on the phone by the pool or golfing with business associates. And while Darcy’s mother Melanie Love had plenty of time on her hands, she’d always found it difficult to extract herself from the social whirl of their home in Great Neck, the Garden Society and the girls at the country club and, of late, the young tennis pro at the club who Darcy suspected was fooling around with her mother. Disgusting. Not that mother hadn’t kept herself in good shape, but really, what did a young, okay guy like Jean-Michelle see in her mother, a woman as chiseled as a cathedral spire and cool as cucumber gazpacho?

No, the Love Mansion had never fulfilled its name. Couldn’t feel the love in this place. “It’s all crap!” she once shouted down from her window to a bald man with the nerve to drive by in a Porsche convertible. “It’s crap!” He’d turned that dick-mobile around pretty fast.

“Hello?” Darcy called out again, but Nessie was long gone. Damn. Although Ness had done a good job cooking and corralling Darcy and her friends for many years, Darcy didn’t really need her anymore. Twenty-one and going into her last year of college, she didn’t need a nanny. And now, each afternoon, Nessie seemed eager to get back to her own family in Riverhead, Long Island, much to Darcy’s regret. She didn’t blame Nessie, and she didn’t know how to ask her if she could occasionally stick around to keep her company, to make some normal household noises and ward off the evening shadows.

If only she could have a big, noisy houseful of people, the way it was at the McCorkle house. Darcy used to love staying over with Lindsay, listening to Granny McCorkles’ stories and sitting at the dinner table with all the cousins. She’d been planning to wrangle a few invitations out of Lindsay this summer, but those prospects were shot now that Lindsay had said all those mean things about Kevin. Besides, Darcy didn’t think she’d want to be seen hanging around with someone that chunky. Darcy couldn’t understand how her friend could let herself go that way. For chrissakes, why didn’t she just stop eating?

Darcy wandered down the hall, stopping to stare into the darkness that loomed there. The living room, or parlor, as Mother called it, was way too grand for anyone to ever relax or want to spend any amount of time there. A large stained glass piece set into the center window always reminded Darcy of a medieval chapel, and the silk upholstered furniture, including authenticated pieces from one of those King Poopy-pants dynasties, made the room feel like a museum. Darcy paused in the doorway, wondering for a moment if she’d ever, in fact sat in that room.

She padded barefoot over the Chinese rug and chose the red silk chair, sitting like a queen on her throne. The chair creaked, and a faintly musty scent mixed with the mango-coconut smell of her suntan lotion. Wouldn’t mother freak to know she was getting Coppertone on the antiques.

Whatever.

Popping open the container, she bit into a slice of California roll, not worrying about the grains of rice that fell to the floor. That’s what the cleaning people were for, right? Gotta give Nessie and the girls something to do.

The cozier den in the back of the house, with its brown suede chairs, entertainment center and gray stone fireplace was more her style. She snapped open a diet Pepsi, turned on the VCR and sank into a chair to devour sushi and catch up on the soaps she’d missed that day. The characters of daytime dramas were Darcy’s year-round friends, and they never failed to appear with a new scandal or heartbreak, a thorny, submerged problem that made the issues swirling beneath the surface of Darcy’s life seem simple and harmless. Soaps broke through the hollow aloneness. So what if her mother was sleeping with a tennis pro? Affairs were a daily occurrence in soaps.  And all the accusations swirling around Dad’s investment firm were petty grievances compared to the serial murder, switched at birth babies and vindictive lovers in the daytimes soaps.

Watching as two lovers shared a kiss on a moonlit balcony, Darcy glimpsed her own future, and it was good.  No more putting up a happy front and knocking around in empty houses.  No more being alone. No more Darcy...just Darcy and Kevin. The McGowans. Mrs. Kevin McGowan...that sounded good. Together, Darcy and Kevin were going to make a life right here on America’s Riviera, where Kevin’s father already owned Coney’s on the Beach, a buzzing hot-spot, a small gold mine.  She and Kevin would have money, lux houses and sleek cars, great bodies and lots of good sex. 

Really, when you got down to it, what more could a person want?