PRIDE'S CHILDREN - a novel of obsession, betrayal, and love. Book 1

Chapter 2, Scene 3

She couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to, but the guest armchair enclosed and supported her like a full-body cast. Her gaze swept over the audience which wouldn’t stop clapping. Many of them stood. That people had liked her stories was evident from Elise’s sales reports, unreal numbers she had swallowed with a grain of salt knowing that returns from bookstores hadn’t yet been factored in. She had let Elise’s staff deal with any fan mail. The advances she discounted: publishers must have needed someone to fill a niche. But these were real people, and the roar was enthusiastic, not polite.

 To her right, the actor clapped along with the crowd. She retained an impression of muscled bulk in jeans and hand-knit fisherman’s sweater, sandy lion’s mane, eyes of intense blue. Dana was no help; if anything, she seemed to be encouraging the unmerited response.

 You might as well enjoy it: the damage was done the instant a TV camera broadcast your image. She hoped Charles wasn’t watching. She gripped right wrist with left hand over the hardcover in her lap, and awaited the Inquisition.

 Dana grinned. “This is a coup for us, Ms. Winter.” She reached for a hardcover edition of Prairie Fires on the end table, held it up. “I took it on vacation with me and stayed up half the night to finish.”

 Kary glanced at the TV monitor; the cover filled the screen. “Please. Call me Kary.” Another nail in my coffin? As if it matters. Her throat needed clearing. Stupid nerves. “Sorry for the lost sleep.”

 “I don’t even like historical fiction!” Dana shook her head as if amused at herself. “What made you choose to write about the wagon trains—and the women who settled the West?”

 “My public library.” This I can do. With an effort, she ignored lights, cameras, audience. She focused on their host: the younger woman would guide her through. “I chanced on a book called Women’s Diaries of the Westward Journey, by Lillian Schlissel. These pioneer women crossing the country in covered wagons put more in their journals than they realized.”

 “How so? Didn’t they record what happened?”

 “It’s more complicated than that. They’d make entries such as ‘stopped for one day’, ‘caught up with the train later’.”

 “But not why?”

 Perceptive. “No. From these fragments Lillian deduced the women were birthing babies, dying in childbirth, and losing children and husbands to disease, snake-bite, drowning—the obstacles imposed by the imperative to get across the prairies before winter hit.”

 “If I lost a child I’d be damn sure to record it,” Dana said.

 “On paper?” As if you could forget. “It was too painful. Lillian’s description of little crosses by the roadside makes you weep.” So many didn’t make it. Her shoulders rose, dropped. “And they couldn’t afford weakness. Not then, not when they got to the new lands.”

 “The rest?” Dana’s thumb and forefinger held far apart implied a thick book.

 “Journals, letters, government archives—lots of people helped.” Kary shrugged again. Nobody wants to hear about research. “I’ve tried to acknowledge them in the credits.”

 “Critics complained you pandered to mass markets by giving these women sex lives.”

 “Most were young and healthy.” With her free hand, Kary reached for the mug beside her. She sipped, had a flash of gratitude for whoever had filled it with iced water. Steady now. She met and held Dana’s gaze. “They had sex lives.”