fat. Their mother had gone beyond the pale. At first Susan found Anne moody and abrasive—"just another drunk,” she said. “And at that point I was tired of drunks.” (Susan herself never drinks, not even beer.) As the visit wore on, though, a certain rapport bloomed between the widow and the eldest daughter, one that owed, perhaps, to the streak of stubborn independence that ran through both women. After Susan flew back to Dallas, she stayed in touch with Anne, who made a point of keeping her abreast of all developments concerning her father’ estates, both financial and literary. There was very little money, and very little likelihood of any money in the future, given that it was on the new book, the lost book, that Boyd’ publisher had been staking all its bets. Now, without the impetus that Gonesse was supposed to provide, the first two novels lapsed out of print. There were debts. Nonetheless the affection that had sprung up between Anne and Susan intensified. They spoke frequently over the phone; once Anne even came to Dallas for a visit, bringing along Bruce, who had to attend a conference there. When she arrived, Susan was surprised to discover that Anne had quit drinking and smoking, and lost quite a bit of weight. She now had the leathery, weather-beaten aspect—a sort of beauty—that you see in women who have spent too many hours in the sun. Her voice, though it remained raspy, was higher, more girlish. It was during this visit that Anne introduced Susan to Bruce, and told her of her impending remarriage. Neither Bradley nor Karen had any wish to meet her. She also said that she had just lately rewritten her will, naming Susan executor of Jonah Boyd’ estate upon her own death.
So the bond was established. When the Ridges moved to Florida, Susan—tired of Dallas—decided to follow them. Her mother had recently died. She, too, felt ready for a change, and being an orphan, saw no reason why she shouldn’t, as it were, “adopt” the Ridges as her parents. They were no longer young. Although Bruce had children from an earlier marriage, none of them lived nearby; two were in California and the third, amazingly enough, in Katmandu. Also, through her former husband, Susan had made some lucrative investments in the stock market, and had a little money to spare. So she quit her job, packed up her kids, and bought a house in Tampa, where she found work at a law firm. She tried to visit the Ridges every weekend. Not only was she growing ever closer to Anne, but also to Bruce, whose departure from Kansas, she soon learned, had been hastened by something far less benign than a simple desire for better weather. For it seemed that one of the cloverleafs Bruce had designed had collapsed, due to a structural defect, killing seventeen people. Bruce could not reconcile himself to the idea that what was in essence a mistake in his own calculations had cost these people their lives. He gave up his work, gave up teaching. In Tarpon Springs, he grew increasingly absentminded, and spent as much time as he could sitting on the shores of lakes and sinkholes, painting burnished tropical sunsets and waterscapes in which alligators and manatees figured prominently. He painted flame trees. He painted snarky woodlands. Florida kitsch. So childlike had Bruce allowed himself to become that when Anne was diagnosed with lung cancer, she elected not to tell him, though she told Susan. The cancer, it seemed, was of a particularly pernicious variety; to combat its inevitable spread, her doctors were counseling surgery—removal of one lobe of Anne’ left lung—to be followed by intensive chemotherapy and radiation. But Anne would have none of it. Of late she had been studying alternative therapies: herbal remedies, acupuncture, and Chinese medicine. She started taking ginseng, Echinacea, and vitamin E in quantity. Then one night she had a dream in which a voice speaking from a turtle’ mouth gave her instructions as to how she could cure herself. Following the turtle’ directions, she temporarily left Bruce, and rented a small cottage on stilts on the Atlantic coast, near Saint Augustine. It was July. Every day Anne lay on the beach in her bikini, a wizened woman of sixty-five who would rise from her sun worship once an hour only to wade out into the tide carrying a little plastic telescoping glass, which she would dip into the sea. Then, while