Cloud Nine
A deeply moving and resonant novel about the power of love and family feeling in the face of suffering and change.A beloved only child, Sarah was brought up on a wild island, where the people were as one with the landscape and where her father, George, farmed geese. After her mother died of cancer, he brought her up alone, but their lives were further twisted by trouble after Sarah was jilted by Zeke, an island boy, who left her pregnant and devastated. Shortly afterwards, Zeke was killed in a car crash, and Sarah fled the island for a new life on the mainland, leaving her father feeling rejected and angry.Now, fourteen years later, Sarah, making a living through her quilting business called Cloud Nine, is herself recovering from cancer. The illness threatened more than her life – the trauma brought to a head her difficult relationship with her son, Mike, who finally left her to go and live with his grandfather.It is at this point that their lives elide with another tragic family. Will Burke, the pilot she charters to visit Mike, has never recovered from the death of his own teenage son, which wrecked his marriage and has left his daughter Susan like a piece of flotsam drifting between Will, her mother and her mother’s ghastly new husband. In the tense, emotive story that unfolds, all their lives are changed as love, hope and endurance eventually find a way to transcend suffering.
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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.
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1999
Copyright © Luanne Rice 1999
Luanne Rice asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780006512929
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2016 ISBN: 9780008226497
Version: 2016-10-25
Acclaim for Cloud Nine:
‘In quiet, unassuming prose, Rice fashions a tightly paced story that is hard to put down’
Publishers Weekly
‘Immensely moving … Tender and heartbreaking’
IRIS JOHANSEN, author of The Face of Deception
‘With her elegant style and gift for painting scenery with words, Rice hooks the reader on the first page’
Denver Post
‘Warm, smart, and deeply touching. This is a novel filled with poignant emotion and the fine, soft twist of elegant storytelling’
DEBORAH SMITH, author of When Venus Fell
Contents
Another autumn had come to Fort Cromwell, New York, and Sarah Talbot was there to see it. She sat on the front porch of her small white house, drinking apple cinnamon tea, wondering what to do next. The college kids next door were washing their car. Spray from the hose misted her face. Wrapped in a red plaid blanket, she tilted her face to the sun, and imagined the drops were saltwater and she was home on Elk Island.
A blue sedan drove slowly down the street. It looked municipal, as if it might belong to an undercover police officer or street inspector. FORT CROMWELL VNA was stenciled on the side, and when it parked in Sarah’s driveway, a small, trim woman in a white coat climbed out.
Sarah smiled to see her.
‘What are you doing here?’ Sarah asked.
‘That’s a fine greeting,’ the visiting nurse said.
‘I thought you were done with me,’ Sarah said. Holding her blanket with one hand, she used the other to unconsciously ruffle her closely shorn white hair.
‘Done with you? My daughter would kill me. Besides, do you think that’s how I treat my friends?’
‘I’m your patient, Meg,’ Sarah said, smiling.
‘Were, Sarah. Were. We’re here to take you for a ride.’
‘A ride? Where–’ Sarah began. Glancing at the car, she noticed Mimi in the backseat.
‘Happy birthday, Sarah,’ Meg said, bending down to hug her.
Sarah reached up. She put her arms around the visiting nurse and smelled her citrus-scented shampoo. Meg’s pockets jangled with keys, pens, and a stethoscope. A colorful plastic teddy bear was pinned to her lapel, just above her name tag. Sarah could feel by the new padding between her bones and Meg’s skin that she was putting on weight. The hug felt good, and she bit her lip.
‘How did you know?’ Sarah asked when they pulled apart. Today was her thirty-seventh birthday. She was having a quiet day: no party, no cards or calls from home. In the car’s back window Mimi was waving with one hand, trying to paste up a bright pink sign with the other. In silver glitter she had written MANY HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY!
‘I read your chart,’ Meg said, grinning. ‘Come on.’
Will Burke stood in the hangar, his head under the hood of the Piper Aztec. Fall was his biggest season. He needed all three of the planes he owned serviced and ready to fly. The lake region was a tourist destination, with all the cider mills and foliage trails. He operated fifteen-minute aerial tours, especially popular during the Fort Cromwell Fair. The end of October brought parents’ weekends at two area colleges, with scheduled flights back and forth to New York, shuttling parents to see the big games and visit their kids.
