Free Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas by James Patterson Page A

in between.
    “Hey, Mom. What’s the latest?”
    “You doing a little better today?” her mother asked. She knew that Katie had found someone in New York. She knew all about
     Matt and had loved it when Katie called to talk about him, especially when she said they would probably be getting married.
     Now he had left her, and Katie was suffering. She didn’t deserve that. Her mother had tried to get her to come home, but Katie
     wouldn’t do it. She was too tough—right. A big-city girl. Well, her mother knew better.
    “Some. Yeah, sure. Well, actually, no. I’m still a
mess.
I’m
pitiful.
I’m
hopeless.
I swore I’d never let a man get me into a state like this —and here I am.”
    Katie began to tell her mother about the diary and what she had read so far. The lesson of the five balls. Suzanne’s daily
     routine on Martha’s Vineyard. How she met Matt again.
    “You know what’s so strange, Mom? I actually like Suzanne. Damn it. I’m such a sap. I ought to hate her, but I can’t do it.”
    “Of course you can’t. Well, at least this dumb bunny Matt has good taste in women,” her mother said, and cackled as she always
     did. She could be wicked-funny when she wanted to be. Katie was always grateful that she’d inherited her mom’s sense of humor.
     But she didn’t feel like joking.
    Tell her,
Katie was thinking to herself.
Tell her everything.
    But she couldn’t. She had told her two best friends in New York—Laurie Raleigh and Susan Kingsolver— but couldn’t tell her
     mother she was pregnant. The words just wouldn’t come out of her mouth.
    Why not?
Katie wondered. But she knew the answer.She didn’t want to hurt her mother and father. They meant too much to her.
    Her mom was quiet for a moment. Holly Wilkinson was still a first-grade teacher in Asheboro, Katie’s mentor for thirty years.
     She was always,
always
there for her, supportive, even when Katie had gone to the dreaded, hated New York and her father didn’t talk to her for
     a month.
    Tell her, Katie. She’ll understand. She can help you.
    But Katie just couldn’t get the words out. She choked on them and felt bile rising from her stomach.
    Katie and her mother talked for almost an hour, and then she spoke to her father. She was almost as close to him as she was
     to her mom. He was a minister, much beloved in the area because he taught “God-loving” instead of “God-fearing.” The only
     time he’d ever been really mad at Katie was when she had packed up and moved to New York. But he got over it, and he never
     threw it up in her face anymore.
    Her mother and father were like that. Good people. And so was she, Katie thought, and knew it was true.
Good people.
    So why had Matt left her? How could he just walk out of her life? And what was the diary supposed to tell her that would somehow
     make her understand?
    What was the deep, dark secret of the diary? That Matt had a smart, wonderful wife and a beautiful, darling child and that
     he had slipped up with her? Had an affair with a New York woman? Strayed for the first time in his picture-perfect marriage?
Damn him! Damn him!
    When she had finished talking to her dad, Katie sat in her study with her good buddies Guinevere and Merlin; they curled up
     on the couch with her and looked out the bay window at the Hudson. She loved the river, the way it changed every day, or even
     several times in the same day. The river was a lesson, just like the lesson of the five balls.
    “What should I do?” she whispered to Guinevere and Merlin. Tears welled up in her eyes, then spilled down her cheeks.
    Katie picked up the phone again. She sat there nervously tapping the receiver with her fingernail. It took all the courage
     that she had, but she finally dialed the number.
    Katie almost hung up—but she waited through ring after ring. Finally, she got the answering machine.
    She choked up when she actually heard a voice. “This is Matt. Your message is important to me. Please leave it