Georgina Stuart was buried a week later in a private cemetery on Long Island. The Abramses and the Sibleys did not attend. But People magazine did.

I hear the screened door slam and look down from the dune line to see Alan waving at me from the deck. He is carrying a tray of Bloody Marys, and he is smiling. Everything looks good from up here, where I kneel surrounded by the rich black earth that I have hauled up in the wheelbarrow. Everything looks simple and good and very clear: the house, the deck, Alan, the scarlet drinks: everything.

"What are you doing?" he calls.

"Planting rosa rugosa," I reply. "Beach roses. They came this morning from that garden I told you about, in Nag's Head. Currituck. Cecie had them sent when we were there; they're a surprise. There's a card with them that says, 'L'chaim." Only it's spelled, La Hime. You never could spell shit, Miz Fiori."

"It wasn't me," Cecie calls from the chaise in the sun at the end of the deck. "I can too spell L'chaim. I can spell shit, too, as far as that goes."

She is looking much better now, a little heavier, faintly tanned from the days on our back deck, with only the thin white line of the bandage on her shoulder showing under the collar of her shirt. John McCracken, who took the bullet out and lost it and the record of her visit without raising a sandy eyebrow, says she can "resume normal activities" next week. She was ferociously adamant about my taking her to him, enduring the long drive and the pain with serenity. "Anybody else will report it," she said. "It doesn't hurt." And I don't think it did, not then. Cecie had simply gone away inside herself again. The bleeding was minimal, and stopped by the time we cleared Virginia.

So we will start with the Cloisters. And we will go on from there. Cecie has given me back my life, for a little while or a long one. I am going to give her hers now.

"We can't see the roses if you put 'em up there," Alan says, but he is grinning.

"Maybe not, but they'll be spectacular from the beach," I say. "And they'll live forever."

E-book Extra.

Pinpointing the Pirate and the Mermaid: A Reading Group Guide.

Outer Banks by Anne Rivers Siddons.

"Friendships between women are very complicated things, and not necessarily sweet. But I think those earliest friendships are some of the most formative of our entire lives. At 18, we're such unfinished people. When you come back together later, everybody's battered, beaten up, kicked. We're profoundly different people, and we're often wounded adults. We found the capacity of those old friendships was to heal. It was not only a vacation for us. But most of us went away feeling a lot wholer, and in some ways comforted."

Topics for Discussion.

1. According to Ginger, "whenever a ship is going to go down you can hear something like singing in the wind. Bankers say it's mermaids calling the sailors...they say when you hear it, you have no choice but to follow it, and you end up on the shoals." What is the significance of this myth for Siddons' characters? Did any of them hear the mermaids singing, yet not "end up on the shoals?" If so, what saved them? Who are the mermaids in Kate's life?

2. Kate can't help but imagine her cancer cells as microscopic Pacmen. How might this metaphor help her? How does it harm her? What is it that finally enables her to no longer fear the Pacmen? What does she mean when she thinks the Pacmen, "went with that other Kate, when she died on the Outer Banks?"

3. What does Kate mean when she refers to herself as an "abyss walker?" What is her abyss? Do you consider yourself one of the "non-abyss-people?" What role does her father's suicide play in Kate's understanding of her own abyss?

4. Kate muses, "how truly terrible, that it is easier to live a total lie, become a lie yourself, than assimilate to the hated truth." Which characters weave fictitious lives for themselves? And why? What is it that forces each of them to confront reality?

5. How are the four grown women who return to the Outer Banks different from the young sorority sisters they were 28 years ago? Which of them have been "battered, beaten up, kicked" by life the most? How so?

6. How would you characterize the different kinds of friendships and loves explored in Outer Banks? Which have the capacity to heal, and which to harm? Is it possible to have one without the other?

7. Why do you think this novel was set on the Outer Banks? What role does the sea play in these characters' lives? Why are they all drawn to the ocean? How relevant are the pirate and mermaid myths for these characters?

8. What is it about Dorothy Parker's poetry that so captivates the young Kate and Cecie? What is their relationship to her acerbic lines as they get older? Why do you think it changes?

About the Author.

Anne Rivers Siddons has written fifteen bestselling novels, including Outer Banks, Colony, and Up Island, which are available from HarperCollins e-books.

By Anne Rivers Siddons.

Fiction.

Heartbreak Hotel.

The House Next Door.

Fox's Earth.

Homeplace.

Peachtree Road.

King's Oak.

Outer Banks.

Colony.

Hill Towns.

Downtown.

Fault Lines.

Up Island.

Low Country.

Nora, Nora.

Islands.

Nonfiction.

John Chancellor Makes Me Cry.

Critical Acclaim for.

Anne Rivers Siddons and Her Books.

"Anne Rivers Siddons...ranks among the best of us and delivers the goods-the whole fabulous package-with every book she writes."

-Pat Conroy.

"One doesn't read Anne Rivers Siddons books, one dwells in them."

-Chicago Tribune.

"Anne Rivers Siddons establishes herself in the front ranks of Southern writers.... While there are hints of Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams...Siddons is her own woman."

-Los Angeles Times Book Review.

"Excellent.... Scarlett O'Hara's 'tomorrow' has come to the South and Anne Rivers Siddons has written the quintessential account of its arrival.... An intricate blend of truth and imagination...with wonderful, lyrical prose that sweeps and sings and soars."

-Publishers Weekly.

"Mesmerizing, enthralling, and totally unforgettable."

-Chattanooga News-Free Press.

"Like Faulkner and Conroy, the author calmly manipulates the reader, unfurling familial horrors with just the right degree of psychic tension."

-Miami Herald.

"Siddons's way of delving into a character's psyche is deeply satisfying."

-Denver Post.

Credits.

Designed by Alma Orenstein.

Cover illustration by Greg Harlin/Wood Ronsaville Harlin Inc.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to quote from copyrighted material: Speak Memory by Vladimir Nabokov. Copyright 1970 by Vladimir Nabokov. Used by permission of The Putnam Publishing Group.

T. S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays 19091950 by T. S. Eliot. Copyright 1950, 1943, 1939, 1930 by T. S. Eliot. Copyright 1952, 1936, 1935 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Copyright renewed 1963, 1962, 1958 by T. S. Eliot. Copyright renewed 1980, 1978, 1971, 1967 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Used by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost. Copyright 1969 by Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc. Copyright 1916 by Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc. Used by permission of Henry Holt & Co.

Ulysses by James Joyce. Copyright 1934 by Modern Library. Copyright renewed 1961 by Lucia Joyce and George Joyce. Used by permission of Random House.

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. Copyright 1923 by Kahlil Gibran. Renewal copyright 1951 by Administrators C.T.A. of Kahlil Gibran Estate and Mary G. Gibran. Used by permission of Random House.

Poems of Dylan Thomas, by Dylan Thomas. Copyright 1945 by the Trustees for the copyrights of Dylan Thomas. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.

The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker. Copyright 1944 by Dorothy Parker. Used by permission of Penguin U.S.A.

"It's Now or Never" by Wally Gold and Aaron Schroeder. Copyright 1960 by Gladys Music. All rights administered by Chappel & Co. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

"While We're Young" by Haven Gillespie and J. Fred Coots. Used by permission of Toy Town Tunes.

end.